Lightroom 2.0 and it's spunky new features.

Garbz · Aug 4, 2008

For those who missed it Lightroom 2.0 went gold last week and I had a chance to play with it on the weekend. I must say I am impressed. For those participating in the beta none of this will be news but for those who haven't here's some of the selling points which make me love it even more:
- Selective sharpening on export, the options are simple yet effective for a quick send to a friend via msn kind of picture. Nice to have and I will probably use it often but never for archiving.
- A gradient tool. Yes finally the ability to create an almost ND grad filter. Now there's no reason to go into photoshop anymore. Well I say almost because you gain no dynamic range since you're still only using one frame, but HDR stuff and multi frame blends is not what lightroom is about.
- An exposure painter with proper masking, and excellent brush options. This is the number 1 reasons I jump into photoshop and now I don't need to anymore.
- Many other things which interest me much less so I won't even mention them.

Anyway here's a quick example of what the gradient tool, exposure painter, and sharpening do. Don't critique my methods though this was a 30 second job

:
On the left: RAW file exported to JPEG. On the right (or bottom depending on your screen) : RAW with gradient at the top to the centre, exposure painter on the left and write of our subject, and on export the screen sharpening option was selected. All other options are on default.

Bifurcator · Aug 4, 2008

Thanks Garbz. I didn't understand the explanation of the "Selective sharpening on export" but I'm off to check it out. I think I'm going to buy it if it's out for Mac already.

BTW, who's the pretty girl?

Bifurcator · Aug 4, 2008

BTW, this might be a nice complimentary tool for LR: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles:Editor

Bifurcator · Aug 4, 2008

It's available AND it's 64bit too! Mmmm... nice.

<Looks around for the on-line purchase form...

>

usayit · Aug 4, 2008

Yup.. I downloaded a trial the day of their release. It took a little bit of time to figure it out (no experience with previous version) and I'm impressed. Pretty much sold on it and ordering license in the next week or so.

Garbz · Aug 5, 2008

For previous version users it's almost identical. A few tools have moved, a couple of extra buttons here and there, but other than that every bit as good as the previous and better.

Bifuracator wrt sharpening. There are different ways of sharpening images to produce the best results on screen, on matte paper, on glossy paper, etc. There are whole programs dedicated around this specific sharpening like Nik Sharpen Pro which goes to the effort of tailoring sharpening to actual specific printer brands too.

This lightroom option gives you the choice of output of screen, matte or glossy paper, and 3 levels of sharpening strength. Yes it's incredibly primitive, but this is a single option in the export menu meant for batch processing of images when you take them out of lightroom, it is applied post resizing which is a benefit to this specific form of sharpening, and it's a godsend compared to the equivalent of applying a specific unsharp mask to each image in photoshop.

As can be seen above by looking at my friend who was reffing a rather biased game of volleyball (one of the teams was also QUT

) specifically at her hair around the ear and the zipper. Btw that camera profile editor looks pretty sweet. I think it's getting about time to shell out for one of those colour checker charts.

usayit · Aug 5, 2008

Did a test print to an Epson 2200. Just as good as Photoshop CS. So far, the only bothering me is that it won't let me make a single job (letter sized paper) with a picture package of two 5x7 photos that are different. It seems to only allow a two 5x7 photo picture package of the same photo.

I've imported my entire library and it seems handle everything just fine. The interface is pretty darn straight forward. I like the quick develop feature.

I love the dual monitor support. I have 3 monitors (1 in portrait positioning) and I can finally take advantage of it without having to drag a window and resizing.

The develop panel rocks. It's feature rich enough for the photographer but not so much so that it gets in the way of workflow. At times, panels seem a bit primitive but very purposeful. Any more detailed editing should be done in photoshop anyway.

Output to a few JPEGs with online viewing as the intention. Good output so far.