It’s a great time to be a photographer—first Aperture, now Photoshop Lightroom. Aperture has the advantage of being out for more than a year; has Lightroom’s public beta period made up for it?

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I have been working with [2] Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 for a couple months now—importing my photo library, developing photos with the Develop module and making some prints and web galleries. If you haven’t heard of Lightroom yet, then I’m not sure which cave you’ve been hiding in: Adobe has done a spectacular job exposing Lightroom to the world with its [3] year-long public beta period and grouping it with Photoshop as part of the [4] “Photoshop family”. [5] NAPP and [6] KW Media Group (Scott Kelby’s business outfit) have also pushed Lightroom heavily, making it a big part of the recent [7] Photoshop World (entire tracks were devoted to Lightroom) as well as introducing the Photoshop World crowd to new products such as the new [8] Darkroom magazine and Adobe Press’s [9] Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book, The: The Complete Guide for Photographers. Lightroom probably has more early exposure for it than any other Adobe application, and definitely more than Apple gave [10] Aperture—interestingly enough, I don’t see Aperture being promoted by anyone other than Apple, and they were conspicuously absent at Photoshop World.

All publicity aside, how does Lightroom stack up? Even though it’s a 1.0 release, is it mature enough to be useful in professional workflows? I think the answer is yes.

CHANGING INTERFACE FUNDAMENTALS

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Figure 1: The Lightroom interface.

Lightroom’s interface (see Figure 1) is unlike any other in Adobe’s stable of creative professional software:

• The dominant color is dark gray and black (I am curious if Aperture’s interface influenced its design, but I do know that Lightroom existed before Aperture hit the market so it’s unclear).
• Many of the keyboard commands do not require modifier keys (E alone brings images into Loupe View; G alone returns users to Grid View).
• Users are granted an unparalleled control of the interface, allowing modification of everything from the background colors and [12] identity plate to the flourishes at the end of the panels. The identity plate is a particularly striking example of this because the Lightroom branding and typography can be taken right off the product and replaced with the user’s own logo and typography!
• Even though Lightroom shares tools and functions with Photoshop and Camera Raw, they look very different—Lightroom’s slick, dark panels are a stark contrast with Camera Raw’s light gray dialog boxes, which look slightly dated next to Lightroom.

Figure 2: The Identity Plate feature allows you to “brand” your Lightroom space.

It should be noted that identity plates (see Figure 2) can be either text or graphics—if you have a logo, you can use it; if you don’t, you can still leverage your company name.

Adobe has always set the standards for application interface design for creative professional software—but is Lightroom a step backward or forward? I think it’s a step forward in its ease of use (I absolutely love using keyboard shortcuts without using modifier keys all the time) and especially in its allowing users to customize the interface itself. Ever since I first started working with computers, I and others have worked on making our machines our own—creating and inserting our own icons, making desktop patterns, tweaking screen savers and sometimes making our own alert sounds. Apple allowed the Macintosh to be customized; Windows followed suit. Now we have Lightroom, and Adobe found a consumer base (the pro photography market) that had a strategic business reason for wanting control over interface design: to present photography with their studio’s brand integrated with the application presenting the photography. So we have the identity plate—I’m not sure I like the name “identity plate,” but being able to put my logo on my photography presentation software is very cool. This can also be used in the Slideshow, Print and Web modules to add your brand to your slide shows, printed pages and web galleries. Adobe definitely listened to their beta photographer users when they thought this one up.

The panels work quite well, and this is where I see influence from the Adobe CS3 palette behaviors. Panels can be hidden and revealed when the mouse is brought close to the panel area. Like palettes docked together, panels can be collapsed to make room for panels below it. The triangles on the panel headers will collapse and expand the panels, and these act the same as the Mac OS X triangles next to folder names in List and Column View. I like the panels—they work well together and tools are easy to find—but I think they take up too much space in the interface. Adobe palettes have always been a great size—not too small but not too large—but these panels are extra large even when they’re shrunk down as far as they can go. Adobe Bridge allows more freedom in shrinking sidebars way down, but despite its customization features Lightroom is quite rigid.

Ironically, what I like about the interface—its differences with Adobe’s other interfaces—is what I don’t like about the interface. Lightroom is like the big kid in your grade school class that was several inches taller than everyone else: it sticks out too much. None of the buttons and icons look the same as those on other Adobe apps. The text used on the panel headers is different. Panels can act fundamentally different from palettes in Adobe’s other applications—Auto Hide & Show, for instance, might throw you off if you don’t know you can right-click on a side panel’s triangle arrow to control how the panel responds to mouseovers. This is a very minor quibble and anyone who uses Lightroom enough will eventually find its subtleties second nature and sometimes wonder why Adobe didn’t think of this sooner! Everything is new with Lightroom’s interface, and innovation is great most of the time but the new interface requires some hands-on experience to get the most out of it—especially if you are a long-time user of Adobe’s products. Once you get used to it, you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

IMPORTING PHOTOS

Lightroom makes importing photos easy:

• Lightroom recognizes connected media cards and asks where to import from, making it easy to pull photos from digital cards.
• The Import Photos dialog box gives the user a lot of control—the user can move, copy and convert photos to DNG; change the file naming conventions; add metadata and keywords; create an automatic backup; and view the photos to be imported before they actually are imported. Most of this is nothing new and can be done with other applications, but the Import Photos dialog box rolls it into one interface that’s pretty easy to use.
• All these settings—metadata, keywords, naming conventions and others—can be saved as presets and refined in detail. The naming conventions, for example, can be tweaked with a Filename Template Editor that is fairly complex but still makes revising naming conventions easy.

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Figure 3: The Import Photos dialog box makes the importing process easy.

Figure 3 is the Import Photos dialog box, and I’ve revealed the file handling pop-up to show the options. It’s a very robust tool for importing your photos exactly where you want them, with your choice of settings, metadata, keywords and file location.

I have been converting my photo library (mostly JPEGs and some RAW files) to [14] DNG, Adobe’s digital negative standard. While I am doing this, I am also organizing my photo library into folders according to year, month and date. Lightroom does all this for me, which is what great computer programs do—the dirty work!

WORKING WITH PHOTOS: THE GRID AND THE LOUPE

Most of your time in Lightroom will probably be spent working in Grid View and Loupe View (”Loupe” may be somewhat confusing—the Loupe View simply works with individual images). I am impressed by Lightroom’s ability to show a lot of information quickly without making things too cluttered: in Grid View, cell headers and footers can show image size, format, pick flag and rating. All these can be revised by selecting View –> View Options (Cmd/Ctrl-J). I also like how Loupe View can show these same details with text overlaid on the photo, though you can only show three pieces of information with this text. There is a Navigator panel that I actually use regularly when working within Loupe View to zoom in and out of images. Photoshop’s Navigator palette has never done much for me and I usually don’t have it open, but Lightroom’s Navigation panel and its zoom features are helpful. Quick tip: you can click an image within Loupe View to toggle between the “Fit” zoom setting and whatever ratio zoom you’ve applied (the default is 3:1).

COMPARING PHOTOS: COMPARE AND SURVEY

I am always opening bunches of digital photos in Photoshop, tiling them and then sorting the good from the bad in order to find the perfect one to use for my designs. Lightroom has other comparison methods that make mine look like garbage:

• Compare View (Figure 4): Compare a photo with any number of candidate photos. As you weed out inferior images, you can swap selected photos with other candidates or remove selected photos in favor of candidates.
• Survey View (Figure 5): View a group of photos side by side, and weed out inferior images to find the best one.

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Figure 4: The Compare View.

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Figure 5: The Survey View. Note Figure 6 below, which is the Survey View used within the Develop module to check color-correction.

If you are always comparing images to find the best one, Lightroom’s comparison options alone may be worth the price of the software. The Compare View also works wonders in the Develop module (see next section), allowing users to compare original photos with their developed counterparts. Comparisons can happen side by side or top to bottom, and can be split (left half of one, right half of the other) or not.

DEVELOP, QUICK DEVELOP

There are actually two ways to develop your photos: Quick Develop, a quick-and-dirty method that’s really for amateurs or those just wanting to try some general color-correction moves before using the real stuff; and Develop, which is probably the most sophisticated and complex Camera Raw interface I’ve ever seen (fortunately, if you never use panels in the Develop module such as Split Toning or Camera Calibration, you can hide them easily). If you are familiar with the sliders and tools within Camera Raw, you will have no problem with Lightroom: they are practically the same, just better-presented. The interface has truly taken a leap forward in Lightroom, and I wish Photoshop CS3 Extended’s Camera Raw dialog box had the look and feel of Lightroom—this is how a professional Camera Raw interface should feel. Unfortunately, as Tom Hogarty (Photoshop Lightroom product manager) described to me, Photoshop’s Camera Raw interface is in its fourth version and is a natural evolution of versions one, two and three—while Lightroom’s Camera Raw interface has the benefit of starting from the ground up. This is true—but in future versions I REALLY hope the Photoshop team looks at the great things the Lightroom crew is doing and use what they can to make Photoshop Camera Raw even better. Adobe teams often seem to be working on their products in a vacuum, and I think of this every time an Adobe product makes a great new innovation (scrubby sliders is a prime example) that other product teams seem oblivious to for years. Another prime example Lightroom has given us: If you make adjustments in the Develop module and want to revert, simply double-click the slider and it snaps back to its original position. It’s a wonderful new innovation (thank you, Lightroom team!) but I doubt we will ever see it in Photoshop. For the record, to reset sliders in any Photoshop dialog box just hold down the Option/Alt key and the Cancel button becomes a Reset button—but it will reset all sliders in the dialog box, not just one.

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Figure 6: Using the Compare View to compare a correction photo to its original.

PRESENTATION, PART 1: SLIDESHOWS

Slideshows are wonderful, and a version or two ago Adobe made PDF presentations possible: a PDF that can run through its pages as if they were a slideshow. Photoshop got onto the bandwagon with CS2 (look in File –> Automate for PDF Presentation) and Lightroom has as well. Once you have your images selected from the Library and properly developed, the Slideshow module allows one to create a PDF presentation and with a lot more control:

• Add strokes and drop shadows to photos
• Include your identity plate and position it where you want it—even underneath your photos if they overlap
• Show ratings
• Add any metadata (EXIF or IPTC) as a text overlay
• Backgrounds: add a color wash or a photo
• Add a musical soundtrack from iTunes, either a playlist or your entire library (downside: you can’t specify individual songs)
• Tweak the slide duration and randomize the order if you like

There are already a few slideshow templates packaged with Lightroom—look for them in the Template Browser panel in the Slideshow module. Another good thing about Lightroom: almost anything you can do to a photo can be saved as a preset or template.

The Slideshow module is great, but it can be better; you’ll note that there are a couple downsides evident with the Slideshow options. It’s already a wonderful tool for photographers, but my experience with creative professionals is that they want to control every detail when presenting their work—the portfolio or slideshow is itself a part of their body of work, and every detail is worth customizing. Photoshop’s Flash galleries are a great example: [18] my article on these galleries generated a ton of responses asking questions about modifying all kinds of elements—even though these templates were designed for quick-and-easy web galleries. I hope to write a follow-up piece about modifying Lightroom’s presentation PDFs and web galleries beyond what the Lightroom interface can do.

PRESENTATION, PART 2: PRINTING

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Figure 7: Creating a contact sheet within Lightroom.

For years, Photoshop has had the capability of creating photo packages and contact sheets for printing (again, look in File –> Automate) but they have been merely okay or, in the case of the Photo Package option, outdated and not a lot of fun to use. Lightroom has an improved print engine that’s easier to use and more versatile. The identity plate is still available for branding your prints, and you can tweak your print layouts in a variety of ways including strokes, frame auto-fill, margins, grids, cell spacing and sizes. The Print module works really well if you are wanting to create prints of individual photos or contact sheets, but photo packages can be tricky because you can’t have multiple image sizes on the same page. This is a deficiency that Photoshop’s Picture Package feature can handle.

There are also color management setting available during the print job, such as settings for resolution, profile and rendering intent. I am glad these are here and they will help many who use the software, though for high-end output I am not sure the Print Job panel will satisfy elite professionals. For best results, I think these setting should be tinkered with so they produce great output on a local printer (perhaps an photo inkjet printer) and then use it for that purpose.

PRESENTATION, PART 3: WEB GALLERIES

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Figure 8: Creating a web gallery in Lightroom. Note that the one shown here is a Flash template, one of ten Lightroom offers. These make excellent photo galleries.

Like I mentioned a moment ago, Photoshop’s web galleries are very popular among designers trying to get their work out to potential clients on the Internet—and the addition of Flash gallery templates in CS and CS2 have proven very popular though hard to customize. Lightroom provides a Web module that makes web gallery creations pretty easy to do, and the templates they include have ten Flash-based galleries. Lightroom can actually play these Flash galleries—proof that Adobe has integrated Flash technology throughout its product line. Colors, text and other elements can be changed easily with the panels, but those who want to add text and do things the templates don’t expect will have as hard a time as if they were creating their gallery in Photoshop. Templates are designed so all that work isn’t necessary, but many people are searching for the easy way out with templates while demanding control over every element. If Adobe wants the popularity of their templates to skyrocket, they should allow users to edit everything on the page and add whatever they want, wherever they want. I am not sure that’s a feasible goal (if you want a custom Flash gallery, hire a Flash designer) but it is what the people want.

Adobe took the Web module a step further and built in an FTP browser—allowing easy transfer of files to a remote server. If you are showing your gallery online and need to make changes to it, simply make the changes and then click the Upload button. Lightroom takes care of the rest! I am surprised no one had really thought of this before (another great innovation by the Lightroom team), but it’s here now I hope other software engineers take notice. Aperture does something similar, but of course it only works with a .mac site, which Apple provides for a fee. Lightroom will upload photos to any server—making it more versatile and valuable.

Tom Hogarty, Lightroom product manager, also told me they are working on ways to make Lightroom more extensible—and users are already figuring out how to make their own custom templates. [21] LightroomGalleries.com is probably your best online resource for customizing Lightroom templates, and there is also some good information about this over at [22] seanmcfoto.com. Both these sites also offer good information for Lightroom in general.

CONCLUSION

Photoshop Lightroom is brand-new, but it feels mature—maybe a 2.0 or even a 3.0. A lot of thought has gone into this product and it shows. That’s not to say there are ways to improve it—my review alone uncovered some missed opportunities and others that were not quite met—but it doesn’t have far to go. [23] My experience with Aperture 1.0, on the other hand, was less solid; most of this was due to the fact that Aperture needed a lot of computing power to run well and ran poorly on lesser machines. Lightroom has no such handicaps. Aperture has become a leaner application since I reviewed it in 2005, but Lightroom beats it handily when it comes to minimum system requirements and smooth performance. If you need Aperture or Lightroom and are using a machine more than 18 months old, Lightroom may be your only real option.

[2] Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0
[25] Adobe Systems
US $299