| | |  | Swiss Diamond | Home » » Adobe Photoshop Lightroom PC/Mac | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software is the professional photographer s essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens. | | | Features: | |
• One easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs
• Automated features help speed the downloading, importing, and renaming of files
• Fine-tune your photographs with precise, easy-to-use tools
• Efficient image viewing, evaluation, and comparison
• Elegant, uncluttered interface
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 7.3 inches | | Product Width:
| 5.6 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.3 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.1 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.3 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.6 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.3 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.1 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 84 reviews |
| | | System Requirements: | | | Platform:
| Mac OS X Intel / Windows XP / Mac OS X | | Media:
| CD-ROM | | Item Quantity:
| 1 |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 84 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
156 of 159 found the following review helpful:
 I lost over 40gb by switching to LightroomFeb 27, 2007
By Jason
Adobe Lightroom is amazing. I have been using it since the first beta, it just wasn't something I could switch to. At a studio I work at they have Capture One, which is an amazing piece of software, but I found it lacking when it comes to organizing "my" photos. I bought Apples Aperture when it came out, and it blew me away. Aperture has the loupe, (now found in bridge cs3), light table (Lightrooms new compare feature), which is amazing for setting up comps, if you like to do story work on your photos. Aperture has a rejection tag that you can use to reject photos to delete later (bad blur, or too many like shots), Lightroom now has this feature as well--you just press X, then when you are ready to rid yourself of those click the delete rejected photos button, if you rejected it accidentally press U, if you have a favorite pic just press P to "pick" it. Aperture has stacks, which if you shoot multiple exposures (hdr, pano, etc) they can be stacked up and you can choose a pick, Lightroom in version 1 now has this as well. The other big feature any other raw program needs to compete with Aperture for me is their collections. Its similar to a smart playlist in iTunes, you can sort by rating, keyword, what have you. Lightroom now has this as well, meaning you can pick your favorite waterfall photos from several years of shooting and put them in a logical folder, meaning no extra space to store your favorites. This feature, and rejection caused me to loose over 40gb by switching to Lightroom!
While my review may seem as though Lightroom copied the best features from Aperture and improved upon them, for the most part that's true. The best part is they improved soo many other features. If you have used Aperture, or iPhoto, you know how big a joke their clone stamp tool is. Lightroom? Just as good as Photoshop! I'm constantly changing lens when I'm out in the field shooting. It is such a pain to have to go to Photoshop and save psds of all my work just to get rid of the dust. Now I don't have too. Lightrooms clone stamp feature is worth the price alone.
Lightroom also has snapshots. You can make a sweet black and white, a fancy stylistic design, or whatever, and save these as snapshots, which are basically separate images, that only take up 24k and is store in that one raw file, opposed to 8-22mb depending on your camera. If snapshots are too complicated to mess with you can use "Virtual Copies" (my personal favorite), where you make a virtual copy of the photo, it stacks it behind the other photo. The big deal is this file is fake, it only takes up the 24k that any raw adjustment takes up inside of Lightroom. You can make multiple copies of the same photo, try different effects, and combine these. I cant tell you how many duplicate files I have on my machine, from multiple PSD's of the same image, to copied over raw files being afraid of messing something up.
Another thing Lightroom excels at is speed. The interface is blazing, I can't believe how fast I can view my raw files. The shortcuts just make since, and everything works like a charm. I am truly in love with this program. Another "speed" aspect of Lightroom is when the canon 400d came out, I wanted to buy it as a backup, I did, and Lightroom was the first, and only raw program to support it for sometime. Aperture didn't support the camera until a couple months ago. I plan on buying the new canon Mark 3 for weddings, and this fact alone makes me want to have Lightroom.
If all this isn't enough, you can create your favorite keywords and apply them as keyboard shortcuts, so if you have something you want to send to a stock photo agency, set a keyword up for that and press cmd+1 or whatever you setup your keywords as. Also I enjoy using bridges way of pressing 1-5 for ratings and 6-9 for colors. Aperture makes you press the + key to rate up however many times. It's not well thought out.
For me Lightroom is a killer app. At 200 it is a steal. My nature photos usually require Photoshop to get rid of dust on my images. I then use Photoshop to do some color correction and sharpening. Now with Lightroom if I need Photoshop at all, it is for comp work, selective sharpening, and special effect work (lighting, vignettes, filters, adjustment layers, etc). I know a lot of people who shoot that never get dust on their lens at all, and this clone stamp might not seem like a big deal, but it is, you can clone plants to fill in gaps, get rid of blemishes, etc. Lightroom is a one stop shop. You can import your photos as DNG's, apply keywords and metadata, while you import. Then you can choose your favorites, go to the develop module, finish up your images, then print, or put it on the web. You can even customize the Lightroom logo on the top now to say "Your Studio" or whatever; it's really a fun app, I hope Lightroom sees some plugins soon to add even more functionality, but right now I am very satisfied, and I am very picky.
5 Stars.
100 of 101 found the following review helpful:
It's about time...Feb 23, 2007
By C. Stoneham
It feels like I've tried them all. Windows Digital Imaging Suite, Adobe Photoshop Elements and so on. They all had strengths and weaknesses. What one did well, the other failed at miserably (and visa versa). Along comes Photoshop Lightroom and it's like a ray of light in the darkness.
I'll try to cover the highpoints:
#1 Speed: While it's not as fast as RawShooter Premium (perhaps the best on the market but sadly gobbled up by Adobe) it handles RAW files like most other programs handle JPGs. Once it has cataloged the collection, thumbnails spring up reasonably quick. The program itself is snappy, with a fast load up and responsive controls.
#2 Interface: In a word... "elegant". The interface feels professional and has innumerable settings to accomplish what you want. Heck, a simple hotkey and all the "clutter" is dimmed so you can focus on your image. hit again, and all the controls black out, leaving just your wonderful (or perhaps not-so-wonderful) photo
#3 Power: The tool suite (to me) feels quite powerful. Elements (4) will never again find its way to my hard drive and Photoshop CS2 is on just as a backup for those hard-to-handle jobs. I really feel like I can do any image adjustment I might want without having to launch a 3rd party program. Granted, I haven't played with the "develop" as much as I'd like, so I'm not sure about tools like dodge, etc.
#4 One program: I no longer have to open Digital Image Suite to catalog the files, then open them up in Photoshop Elements for editing and maybe launch Photoshop CS2 for the in-depth stuff. If I had to pick one program, this would be it. Would I pay the current retail for it? I don't know since it was a free upgrade for me (RawShooter Premium users get it free) and I already have a pretty significant investment in other image-editing software. If I was new to digital photo-editing and didn't have anything else? In a heartbeat. Will I buy 2.0 when it comes out and pay the upgrade price? Without doubt.
I know every person is an individual, so my comments should be taken with a grain of salt. Will some people hate it? Probably. Will most love it?
Without doubt. Is this the "Photoshop-killer" for the average person? I think so.
So, bottom line: Lightroom is the merger of functionality, elegance and power I've been looking for for the past 2-3 years. I can finally put away the review sites and Google searches and trial downloads. Lightroom has a permanent spot on my computer. Heck, when I do my semi-annual OS reinstall, it may find its way to the HDD before MS Office does [though I gotta say I love Office 2007, but that's another review ;) ]
(PS If you're not convinced, Adobe has a 30-day trial on their site you can download but if you're familiar with other programs, give yourself a day or two. The interface is different (but better once you learn it))
Update: One month later and I still love this program. The cataloguing features are phenomenal. Tagging images on import is a breeze and the "look" of the library is "clean". I'm able to disply any of 20-30 different image attributes (such as shutter speed, ISO, meta tags, etc) in the "Library" or hide them with a simple hotkey. Response is still quite fast, even with over 1,000 images imported. It has also changed the way I manage my photos. Instead of importing all 14,000, I simply import the ones I want to work. I put the ones I like best in a separate collection then clear the other from the library (I save *every* picture taken, but I don't necessarily want to wade through them all). The ability to stack images by time-taken is wonderful. I can choose to group them within one second or one hour or one day. Absolutely wonderful. The more I use this program, the more I'm sure the going price of $200 is worth it. I strongly suggest you give the trial a whirl and then buy before 4/30 when it jumps to $300...
55 of 60 found the following review helpful:
 Still a lot of rough edgesFeb 23, 2007
By orangekay
I've been using Lightroom since its first beta, and overall I like it a lot. Its interface is pretty slow and unresponsive, but I've actually sat down and timed myself, and despite its sluggishness I still find myself accomplishing a great deal more in less time than I could have in the formerly holy trinity of Bridge, ACR and Photoshop. The highlight recovery, fill light and HSL adjustment sliders alone save me so much time it's not even funny.
Suffice to say I'm very happy that it's finally been released as a commercial product, but in all honesty, I wish it would have had at least another five public beta revisions before this point. Many of the features they snuck into the GM which we beta users had never seen before are just plain awful--the implementation of "stacks" in particular--and could have benefited greatly from some user feedback. Other features still seem woefully incomplete. Pretty much every module after "Develop" in the topmost toolbar feels like an afterthought which nobody really wanted to dedicate any real time to; slideshows don't work at all for me, the web galleries are painfully simplistic and inflexible, and color management support in printing is just plain horrible (it can't even FIND any of my ICC profiles so the only choice I get is to let the printer do its own color management).
I still like it much better than Aperture, but I really don't think Adobe should be charging money for it just yet. What's worse is that their online bug report form is broken, so there's no way for us early adopters to provide feedback anymore now that the public forum on the Adobe Labs site has been put to pasture. Get the demo and try it out before you plunk down $200 for it. It's still a little green for my tastes, but I do have high hopes for the future.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
GroundbreakingMar 29, 2007
By Charles G. Bragg Jr.
I got this (using the trial, soon to purchase) because it allows non-destructive editing of JPGs as you can with RAW files. I have a DSLR that shoots RAW, but I also have a couple of quality P&S cameras that don't. Editing copied JPGs and preserving master copies gets old really fast, even in Photoshop CS2 which I own. As an organizational tool, LR is a breakthrough. I only have to keep *one* JPG photo - it's archival *and* can be diddled with, just like a RAW image.
Editing in LR you can do a few things you can't in Photoshop - such as put your cursor on the image and drag it to change the saturation or hue for the precise color under the original click (and wherever it occurs in the rest of the image, natch). This is *so* much easier than moving sliders. It allowed me to erase the green cast of a fluorescent light in a few seconds - no experimenting. There is also a "vibrance" adjustment that adjusts the saturation of the image but weights the movement in favor of the under-saturated colors, not all colors equally. Brilliant! These features will probably become available in updates to Camera Raw and to PS, but if you have to choose, there's a big price difference.
Rudy said that "Conversely, the most simple album tasks such as renaming an image or moving a file to another folder are maddeningly inconvenient." I think he is mistaken. Moving images is drag and drop (be sure you drag from the middle of the image, not the border) and file renaming is as simple as typing over the old name. (Multiple file renaming is available, but I haven't tried it yet.)
LR will not do many things Photoshop does in the way of montages and even the clone stamp, which is much harder to use in LR. It won't do perspective cropping (but it does do level cropping to straighten horizons and so on). But, what it does it does really well, and again, for organizing photos, it kills Photoshop and Bridge. The bargain package for new users might just be LR and Photoshop Elements for under $300. (You can set up LR to work with *any* other photo editor, such as Paintshop Pro or whatever.) Need more than that? You are dangerously close to becoming a Pro.
Four stars because it's release 1.0 and I hope will add features I need. Then it gets Five.
13 of 13 found the following review helpful:
A wonderful program with a few drawbacksMar 23, 2007
By MiRSD
I purchased Lightroom a little under a month ago and absolutely love it.
I've used Photoshop for several years for touching up images to make them just as I wanted, but with the placement of different settings it can be quite difficult to quickly go in and make multiple adjustments and boost the image quality.
I'm an amateur photographer and wanted a way to enhance my images without going through this process one by one through my collection and Lightroom is the perfect program for that.
The program uses different tabs which each offer a different area to work with.
The Library tab allows you to view all of your image galleries for quick navigation and finding the images you need. Here you can "Tag" pictures with keywords to group them or quickly locate using the built in search box. Perfect for digital camera images which often use a generic IMG0001.JPG filename and allows you to stay organized.
In this view you can also flag images as accepted or rejected and rate them using a 5 star scale - another useful feature for sorting.
The Develop tab is the one you'll be using most - this is where you make the actual adjustments. Here you can adjust the temperate, white balance, saturation, exposure, black levels, fill light, vibrance, contrast, brightness, highlights, shadows, noise reduction, sharpness, luminance and a variety of other options via slider menus. All changes are reflected instantly in the program window so you can tell instantly if you like it or not. If you decide you dont, undo it or use the History command to go back and undo as many changes as you'd like.
One of my favorite options here is the before/after view - you can view a side by side or split screen view of your original image and the one with the changes you've made.. Really useful and a feature I use almost every time.
One of the nicest options though, is the ability to perform a series of actions to ALL images in a gallery. If you take several hundred convention photos (like I did) only to realize that they're a little too dark.. you can edit one of them and carry the changes over to as many photos as you'd like with just a few clicks.
The Slideshow tab lets you create a custom slideshow and export it as a PDF (something I didnt know was possible with the format) - I havent used this function and probably won't for a while. I would've much preferred an "export to DVD" or video file option, and some more customization.
The Print tab is pretty straightforward.
The Web tab lets you optimize your images/galleries for the web - it goes as far as creating the actual HTML coding for the galleries and can even export flash galleries. This is a very nice option for those who don't have a lot of time or experience to create one yourself. It looks professional but the templates are limited and you'll see the same ones used by many people over the web -- if you're doing this professionally though, you probably already have your own templates though.
The program is very nice and easy to work with. You'll quickly realize what each option does and when to use it (or when not to use it). You can make some very neat images with very little tweaking but there is a slight problem here..
Lightroom uses the ProPhoto colorspace while most modern desktops are configured to use the sRGB colorspace.. Something I never bothered to get into because I just didn't feel that I needed to. The problem is that when you work in lightroom, you adjust the images by using what you see on screen. When you export the images though, they look completely different (either darker, less contrast, less vibrance or a number of other issues) when viewed in programs like Windows Photo Viewer.
I re-adjusted all of my computer settings to match the ProPhoto settings and programs like Windows Photo Viewer still have the exact same problem. Only programs that use the selected colorspace will display properly. This was quite disappointing since it makes it "What you see is what you get.. as long as you use this program, this program or this program". If you plan to use Lightroom for your image galleries, this is fine (probably also works fine on professional photo viewers). For beginners who are looking for an easy way to enhance their snapshots, this can be a huge drawback.
Another problem I had was with printing. I use an external photo printer (no connection to a PC and operates using memory cards) - this one had the same issues as the computer, not printing the images as they appeared in Lightroom.
With that said, I do still highly recommend the program and the issues seem to mostly be with other programs not reading computers colorspace correctly.. However, I would have liked an option to change the Lightroom colorspace independently like you can in Photoshop (for us non-professionals).
Lightroom also works with Photoshop and by right clicking an image you can export it to photoshop to make further changes.
If you have photoshop, you can always use that for touching up images. Lightroom expands on that and allows you to touch up groups of images all at once rather than individually working with each image on its own. Because of this, I highly recommend it. I'm hoping some future upgrades to it will address some of my complaints.
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