Why choose Lightroom?
Lightroom is not the only application out there that off ers some
of these features, Apple’s Aperture and even Adobe’s Photoshop
off er some or all of the functionality of Lightroom. So, in part, the
choice will be down to you and what you feel comfortable with.
For those users who have Photoshop CS3 and above, Lightroom
may seem to replicate a lot of functionality, and you would be
correct to think that, but Lightroom’s advantage is its packaging
of the photographic functionality of Photoshop, Bridge and
Camera Raw into one application with some added benefi ts.
If you are currently a Photoshop CS3 user, you possess
applications that off er similar features to Lightroom’s modules.
Bridge is, in passing, and equivalent to the Library and Slideshow
modules, the Camera Raw Plug-in is equivalent to the Develop
module and Photoshop off ers Web, Print (although at a slightly
lesser level) and Export functionality compared with the
Slideshow, Web and Print modules.
However, Lightroom’s selling points are that it is an all-inone
package, it is solely aimed at photographers, and it uses
a database to off er metadata, cataloging and searching
capabilities way beyond those of Bridge. All the editing takes
place parametrically, whereas once you have brought an image
into Photoshop, you are editing at the pixel level. (This can
be mitigated by using Adjustment Layers and Smart Filters,
but most image editing in Photoshop will have a measure of
destructiveness.
Photoshop is a massive and wonderful application, but
photographers are a small part of its user base, so there are
many features in Photoshop that will never be needed. Since
Photoshop is a part of the Creative Suite there is an expectation
that it is part of a suite aimed at Illustrators, Designers, and Art
Directors, as well as Photographers.
Over the years the code-base has become enormous and
complex, whereas Lightroom is programmed to be agile and
easily extensible. A good example of this is that Adobe was
relatively easily able to make Lightroom run in 64 bit mode, but
has found the job much harder in Photoshop. The Mac version
of Photoshop won’t be 64 bit until version CS5, whereas the
Windows version will be in CS4.
Bridge is also designed to be more than a photographic
application. Its aim is to be a media cataloging and management
tool for the whole of Adobe’s Creative Suite, so it is capable of
managing PDFs, EPS, InDesign, Flash fi les, Web graphics and
more. It was originally a simple fi le browser and while it has
grown up to be a more useful application than that, it is still
aimed at a diff erent purpose than Lightroom. If you had to
compare it with another application iView Media Pro (or as it now
is Microsoft Expression Media) would be the nearest equivalent.
iView certainly used to be the darling of the Digital Asset
Management world, but the impression is that is has suff ered
under the ownership of Microsoft.
Lightroom’s original goal was to aim for ‘ unreasonable simplicity ’
in its approach. Version 2 has, of course, gone a bit further than
that, but the engineers still use this as their mantra when adding
new features. Sometimes this can lead to puzzling omissions
from the feature set; version 1 came without dual monitor
support which led to some users complaining that the software
was ‘ unusable ’ because it lacked it. But the reasoning was that the
application was perfectly usable without it and because it had
been designed to work with one monitor there was no ‘ absolute
need ’ to include it. So if a feature was deemed a nice-to-have
rather than a ‘ must have ’ , it might not make it into the feature set.
Version 2 has relaxed this strict attitude somewhat but there are
still features that some users consider ‘ essential ’ that are missing.
Partly this is due to the aforementioned unreasonable simplicity
rule and partly because the Lightroom team is relatively small
compared with others in Adobe. This coupled with release date
time constraints tends to lead to some ‘ interesting ’ exchanges
between users on the various forums dedicated to Lightroom!
Lighroom is a stand-alone application, but is also beholden to
simultaneous releases with Adobe Camera Raw, and Lightroom
releases generally can’t get in the way of Photoshop releases.
Lightroom tends to be on a more frequent release schedule than
Photoshop, which tends to be updated every 18 months. So there are
extra pressures on the Lightroom team to release in a timely fashion.
:thumbup:
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