I downloaded the public beta of Lightroom from Adobe and tried it out. Wow. I must say, I'm thrilled. This post provides my first impression of this software. Although I can already say upfront: due to the freely accessible beta, every digital SLR owner with a Mac should get this and take it for a test drive.
The most important thing for me: the software is usable even on a Mac Mini - although some actions are a bit slower than one might wish, on the other hand, one must consider that RAW images are edited live.
What I like right away: you can hide window frames and menus, dim the controls, and fully concentrate on the image content. There are also a number of tools that make a very good first impression - I was particularly impressed by the grayscale mixer, with which you can easily adjust the contrast distribution to the different color ranges. Much simpler than with the channel mixer in Photoshop. It's a shame that you can't set the desired mode for the display in the settings - the program always starts with the standard layout.
Nevertheless, the whole program gives the impression in many places that someone has finally dealt with the sometimes quite unpleasant usability of Photoshop. For example, adjusting highlights and shadows is much easier without immediately risking ruining the image result. The histogram is finally worth its name and provides prompt and meaningful information about changes (and it doesn't lie as much as the histogram in Aperture).
The browser for the image collections is quite decent - the features of iView Media Pro are partly more complete, but Lightroom is already much better than using the browser from Photoshop or some other rather simple tool (e.g., the Mac version of ACDSee) to access the images. However, the keyword assignment is still quite meager - you create a new keyword without completion or similar, and then assign it to one or more images by drag-and-drop. iView Media Pro can really offer much more here. In addition, no number of assigned images is displayed next to keywords, although numbers are displayed everywhere else.
The choice is definitely nice when importing images: you can index folders that remain in their old place, or move or copy images to a central image storage (and thus immediately create a backup). And the really nice thing: when transferring to the central storage, you can immediately convert the images to DNG, so you get rid of the manufacturer-specific formats - but without loss of information. And you can mix it all well - you can leave some images on external drives or also move them to the central storage. It's a shame, however, that you can't move the images between the storages via Lightroom - an image that lies somewhere should better stay there, otherwise Lightroom looks stupid.
The speed is not only okay when editing; importing and exporting also takes place at a decent speed. However, you should consider the memory requirements - on a Mac Mini, it makes sense to close other programs to use the memory, which is quite scarce with 1 GB, completely for Lightroom. It will thank you!
Of course, some things are still missing - it is, after all, a beta. What I spontaneously missed: there is no tool with which you could extract sections from the image. But that will certainly come. It would also be very nice if Lightroom got a downsizing/upsizing function with which you could convert images to print formats in a qualitatively usable way. With that, Lightroom could potentially replace iView Media Pro, Raw Developer, and Size Fixer for me.
In any case, it is a tough competition for Aperture and iView Media Pro - therefore, it is to be expected that there will finally be a bit more movement in the image management specifically for photographers. The only question remains: what will the fun cost when it is available as a product at the end of the year. And how the betas will develop in the meantime.
