Adobe released a beta of Lightroom 2 this week, and it's very cool. The Develop module just keeps getting better and better. A few highlights of the new/fixed stuff:
- Non-destructive dodge and burn
- Other non-destructive brushes like clarity (!)
- Much better Photoshop integration (you can open the RAW file as a smart object to allow for later re-editing of the RAW settings)
- Post-crop vignette tool (finally)
- Smart collections
I imported the images from my "6 months old" shoot w/ Judah as a test. Lightroom doesn't have a managed library concept like Aperture does, so I have to get past the less abstracted file management model... so initially, as is always the case with Lightroom, I'm a little irritated with the import process. I REALLY like the project model in Aperture, and after importing into Lightroom, I don't feel like I know where my images are.
Projects make sense to me, why Lightroom has yet to have a mode where you work with projects and not folders on a disk (even if they are folders on a disk) I don't know. I'm fairly certain that I could make the folder model work like projects, but I think I'd be spending a fair bit of effort to do so.
Lightroom's Develop module is fabulous. It is definitely the strongest piece of the application. The non-destructive selective editing brushes (dodge and burn, clarity, etc.) are excellent, and fact that they're non-destructive is a big win over Aperture 2.1's dodge and burn controls (though Aperture's mechanism is generic and extensible by third parties, I'm not sure that Lightroom's is... but Photoshop is Lightroom's extensible editor anyway).
The quality of the RAW processing is excellent... I probably have a hair-thin preference for Aperture's renderings, they're better in the red channel IMO, but the difference is slight.
The other feature I've tried (so far) is the web gallery. I like Lightroom's HTML web galleries (the Flash galleries are unusable, IMO, because Flash itself ignores ICC color profiles). However, I want some kind of permanence to a gallery. I want to create it, name it, and keep it around, to add to later (or whatever). Aperture handles this very nicely and Lightroom doesn't handle it at all. I can cobble together the same effect from creating a collection for the gallery, and then also creating a web gallery preset so that I can reproduce the settings later... but this is hardly "creating a gallery" which I can later modify.
I guess it boils down to web galleries being one-offs in Lightroom, and an integrated feature in Aperture. I prefer the Aperture way by far.
Overall, Lightroom 2 is very compelling as a digital darkroom, but a bit disappointing as a workflow tool IMO. I admit that I may not be "getting it" and I can do everything I want, but it isn't clear to me and because it isn't clear, it doesn't work for me. But I know Lightroom works for a lot of people, so it's more a matter of workflow taste.
Having said that, the new develop features are so compelling that I might consider buying Lightroom anyway, especially if they price it at $199 (where Aperture is).
This is really a 'first look' review... I'll follow up when I've had a lot more time to spend in the app.
Technorati Tags:
lightroom, workflow, lightroom 2, adobe, photography
