Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0, Upgrade Version (PC/Mac) 
Product Description: - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 software is essential for today sdigital photography workflow. Now you can quickly import processmanage and showcase your images — from one shot to an entireshoot. With Lightroom 2 you spend less time in front of th
Customer Ratings: - digital darkrooms terrible twos.
4.0 out of 5 stars digital darkrooms terrible twos, May 17, 2009
Lightroom is an incredibly useful and comprehensive tool for the digital photographer, and is to all extents and purposes a 5 star application, i found the move from version 1 to 2 though was not as well thought-out as is the norm in a photoshop upgrade. Several of the changes in this version, i found irritating and it has taken me sometime to migrate fully from version 1, there is not really a pressing reason to move to version 2. Loss of the middle mouse buttons functionality to move sliders when developing is still enough to make me return to Lightroom 1.
The new features are far from breathtaking, and some of the changes are outright annoying and ill thought-out, but this is still a super powerful and very impressive piece of software which will bring new life to any photographers collection.
The Graduated filter is really the only new feature of note, and personally i find the other new targeted adjustment tools of little worth, but it does potentially free up the lightroom user from having to use photoshop at all, which is no bad thing for many digital photographers.
Lightroom is at heart a super powerful tool for organizing and managing big or small collections of digital images, and allowing the photographer to creatively edit images in a completely non-destructive fashion, and although the true power can be unleashed when working with camera RAW files, its also a great tool for anyone working with libraries of jpegs.
Lightrooms printing and web capabilities are extensive, and for any photographer wanting a quick and easy way to create amazing professional web portfolios using flash or html, it could not be easier, likewise the slideshow option is a quick and easy solution for professional looking results.
Lightroom 2 although a slightly shaky upgrade from version 1, offers professional photographers a complete workflow tool, and for all other digital photographers an amazingly powerful and relatively easy to use digital darkroom. - From fantastic even better!. Been a user of Lightroom since the beta although I did give up on it as was painfully slow when I started. Saw Release 1.0 at a friends and was hooked.....held off upgrading to 2.0 as didn t see a need, until I used it at a friends and couldn t not upgrade! The improvements mean even less time in photoshop for the majority of files - well worth the upgrade!!!!
Lovin it! - Good package but it has its limitations, looking for an alternative. I was a very happy user of Adobe Photoshop Elements for several years while I took jpg format photos and did not know anything about colour management. Elements has excellent catalogue and editing features plus it is not expensive. I have over 3000 photos in Elements.
Then I started to take RAW photos and moved to 16 bit colour management. Elements can t do this and CS4 is way beyond my budget. So I tried Lightroom, first v1.1 then upgraded to v2.2 after about a year (hoping it would perform better).
Lightroom has many features, I won t repeat a review of these here. It also has its limitations that need to be understood. Very slow performance is my problem. Other than Lightroom being CPU and memory hungry, the factor that affects performance most is the size of the RAW files. I have a 10GB Olympus camera and these photos can be slow to process. I also have a 12GB Canon camera and these photos are very slow to process. I would like to upgrade to the latest 21GB Canon camera but I already know that Lightroom on my PC will not cope. By comparison, CS2 (I have an old copy) goes like greased lightning.
The user manual that comes with the software is useless (they mostly are). I bought Martin Evening s book which does explain everything at length, this is essential and not cheap so add this to the cost. There may be other books available, I did not look recently. I wish these guys were paid to be concise rather than by the number of pages in the book.
Lightroom is about whole photo editing (v2.2 has a few local editing features but they are rough and ready). If you want pixel level editing (like cloning out an unwanted telegraph post say or using layers etc.) you need to export the photo to CS2/3/4. Lightroom does this CS exchange well but it is still a hassle. I am thinking of migrating fully to my CS2 but Bridge is not a catalogue and it would be yet another massive software package to learn, I prefer to take photos. For now I will live with Lightroom but one of these days I will move on.
For reliable installation and running, you need up-to-date drivers on your system, especially the screen drivers.
It needs a powerful, modern PC. My ageing Pentium 4 2.4 GHz PC was fine for Elements but it barely copes with Lightroom. I upgraded from 1 to 2GB memory which helped a little but what is really needed is a new PC which I cannot afford. - Too many bugs. I recently purchased this product and upgraded to 2.2 as I had read that this fixed the many bugs that were present in the earlier version. But when using the adjustment brush my computer crashed. I was advised to update my drivers for my Nvidia graphics card, which stopped the crashing issue, but the tool is slow to respond and after a while grey blocks appear and if I carry on using it the screen goes blank! If you go to the adobe site and look at the forums, there are many unsatisfied customers. The concept is excellent, on the face of it this programme is aimed solely at the photographer and in that respect I can really identify with what they are trying to achieve here, but for the time being I will return to photoshop and hope that the next Lightroom patch will address the many issues. If it does then this is a fine product. In the meantime I am left wondering why I paid good money for a product that isn t ready for the market!
- An significant upgrade to a great application. Ideal for anyone with an expensive camera, image management software Photoshop darkroom 1.0 was a great image editing and processing application. Now Lightroom 2.0 has arrived. Lightroom is kind of a batch processing application where it uploads photos from your camera card, tags and sorts them, and then allows image editing [cropping, enhancement, optimisation] before exporting them to disk, printer or web/email. It has a powerful set of editing tools built in and almost removes the need for a separate image editor like Photoshop CS4. You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe to see if it meets your requirements or whether budget consumer Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 or the fantastically expensive Adobe PhotoShop CS4 is more suitable for your needs. Lightroom 2.0 even integrate into PhotoShop CS4 if you are lucky enough to own it, and passsing images to it no longer requires export as TIFF or PSD files. Lightroom 2.0 is an ideal application if you have to shoot loads of photos one minute and pass them on to visitors the next, or you simply want to minimise image editing time on the PC and get out there again with your camera.
The only downside is that the full version price of Lightroom 2.0 has jumped up to £230, although that makes this far cheaper upgrade price seem better value if you already own Lightroom 1.0, particularly as this is a worthwhile upgrade. The most obvious change in Lightroom 2.0 are dual monitor support, more options for localized image processing/editing, an ability to take 3rd-party plug-ins, better removable drive handling and the smart collections image database tool. There s now an Adjustment Brush and a Graduated Filter that can apply affects within the image rather than just globally as before, e.g. for doing things like softening skin on faces and darkening & colouring skies respectively. There s a new [search] Filter Bar and the Library Module has been redesigned and offers more image information [for image selection]. There s a new picture package layout engine for printing multiple copies of photos, offering 16-bit printing and adaptive output sharpening can be applied to the print output based on image resolution. In addition Lightroom 2.0 now has 64-bit Vista and Mac OS 10.5 support.
Be warned though the application layout has changed and you need Adobe s latest update patches and a modern fast multi-core Intel graphics workstation PC to get Darkroom running smoothly [which I have] - my PC is a dedicated workstation though, rather than a home multi-media PC infused with all sorts of software. Plus I don t care for the trendy charcoal gray interface, text has been black on white since the written word was invented millennia ago for a good reason, and classic XP/Vista window colour schemes and layout are simply more practical during use. It does help you concentrate on the image though I suppose, and it recreates that vintage darkroom feel [where you can t see squat else]. Still that s a minor quibble given the merits of the application. School kids, college students and departments will qualify for significant educational discounts on all Adobe s software, so check these out if that includes you. Visit Adobe for further details of the software & educational discounts.
PC system requirements are an Intel Pentium 4, XP or Vista Premium, 1Gb system RAM, 1GB hard-disk space and a 1,024x768 display. The fact that AMD processors aren t mentioned might be significant. Adobe installers often reject any PC that falls below the minimum spec, plus 4Gb system memory, a ~3GHz multi-core CPU and a fast graphics card will certainly speed things up. To quote Adobe: The new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is the serious 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.
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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0, Upgrade Version (PC/Mac) (ID: B001CHLZ72)
