News and Reviews > Image Manager Shootout

Newbie on the block looks set to rock the world ...

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Carol Haynes:
Well maybe not quite yet but this looks really cool ...

Adobe is developing a new product called AdobeLightroom and it is currently open to public beta but unfortunately at the moment only for Macs.

This prog looks set to be just about as flexible as anything I have seen out there and they are rapidly responding to beta users requests for features.

There will be a Windows beta (you can sign up to be told when it is available) and I will definitely be one of the first to download it!!

Check it out here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

There is also a great set of onscreen videos on that page worth checking out to see what is available see http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/video/

I guess this will be at Adobe prices but it looks REALLY cool.

mouser:
i'll wait to hear nudones comparison of this to acdsee.
the interface looks fancy but i don't see anything really new.

Carol Haynes:
Have a look at video 2 - it has all of the RAW image processing capacity of PhotoShopCS2 plus some more, and add to that you canapply all the same options to other formats too !!

The huge plus to my way of thinking is that everything you do in this app is completely non-destructive - it doesn't touch your original files at all. All editing and correcting that you do is stored as scripts within the database and only applied as you output a fresh copy to load in Photoshop. This all happens transparently so it means you can edit and change a photo and save copies of it without ever altering the original in any way at all (whilst still retaining all the processing you have worked out). It is really cool and ACDSee doesn't do anything like this.

The other really cool feature is the library organisation. You can leave all you images in the folders they are in at the moment or allow the app to reorganise everything (the way you want because it is completely customisable). Either way the internal organisation for the app is held in its own relational database meaning that you can organise your photos into 'shoots' and 'collections' as you want, apply multiple tags really easily (by drag and drop) etc. To me this gives real multidimensional flexibility (and not just a tree structure like most othe picture browser setups including ACDSee).

Don't get me wrong - I have bitten the bullet and upgraded to ACDSee Pro not so long ago, and they seem to ironed out the problems I experienced before but Lightroom looks to have the potential to make ACDSee look like DOS compared to Windows.

Maybe I am getting overexcited (especially since I haven't played with it) and doubtless it will be horrendously expensive (which will be really frustrating as a lot of the RAW workflow functionality is from code lifted straight from Adobe Bridge which I already have).

mouser:
The huge plus to my way of thinking is that everything you do in this app is completely non-destructive - it doesn't touch your original files at all. All editing and correcting that you do is stored as scripts within the database and only applied as you output a fresh copy to load in Photoshop. This all happens transparently so it means you can edit and change a photo and save copies of it without ever altering the original in any way at all (whilst still retaining all the processing you have worked out).
--- End quote ---

ah well that is a great idea. and i have to admit i know nothing about these image programs and raw files, so ignore me  :huh:

nudone:
i was expecting lightroom to be just a beefed up version of adobe bridge but from what Carol has mentioned it sounds like something that could well replace ACDSee for me.

if lightroom is going to work with vector images like the bridge then i'd be tempted to use it - if lightroom is going to be as quick to load as acdsee then i'd almost certainly use it.

i wonder how ACD Systems will respond to it when they bring out the next version of ACDSee?

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