[WMBP]

If you're using Lightroom 1.0, you may know this already. I got the alert automatically when I launched Lightroom a few minutes ago. Anyway, the eagerly-awaited 1.1 release is now out. I've downloaded it (30MB or so); now I'm off to install.

For more information, you could start here.

Will

[WMBP]

OK, I've now installed Lightroom 1.1 and I have a tip for you, or may have a tip for you.

Although the application itself is in the Applications folder on my C drive, I store my Lightroom library and all my photo files on an external hard disk. When I first launched 1.1 after the installation - everything was blank. No photos. Didn't panic, read the info, and figured out that it had created a new default library file on the C drive, and of course that new default library knew about no photos at all. To switch to my old library file, I had to quite Lightroom, and then relaunch while holding down the cntl key.

Launching version 1.1 with the cntl key held down, I got a dialog asking me to locate the existing library that I wanted to use. The OLD library file was named "Lightroom Library.aglib". Perhaps yours is named something different, but I think that ".aglib" filename extension is what you want. Anyway, it's no longer called a library, it's now called a catalog, and it has a new file format and a new extension (".lrcat").

The main thing I want to mention is that, when I selected the old library, I got another dialog warning me that the old library had to be converted. The alert advised me that this would take a while and that during that time, Lightroom might appear to be unresponsive. I had my web browser running at the time; I would recommend that before you launch LR 1.1 for the first time and convert your old library, you quit all other applications, even your browser. That's good advice generally, I just failed to think of it myself this time. As a result, the conversion progress dialog at one point showed the text "(Application Not Responding)". That's usually bad news, but I heeded the earlier warning. Quit my web browser and stepped away from the computer. Came back 10 or 15 minutes later and it was all done. Lightroom was open and all my photos (all 80 GB) were there once again.

Summary: quit everything before installing the update and launching the new version; select your old library file; leave the computer completely alone while Lightroom converts the old library to the new format. Enjoy.

Will

[Khukri]

Dear Mr Porter,
May I know what 'Lightroom' is all about, please? What can it do that PS CS2 cannot, or perhaps not as well?
Thank you.
Bharat

[Edvinas]

Dear Mr Porter,
May I know what 'Lightroom' is all about, please? What can it do that PS CS2 cannot, or perhaps not as well?

Well, probably nothing except the fact that all editing in Lightroom is non destructive.

Everything else can be done in Photoshop.

The biggest difference is that Lightroom is a tool for photographer with better workflow, it doesn't have any designer oriented features, just photo retouching. It is likely you're going to use all features of Lightroom while (I bet) you use just very small part of Photoshop features.

[WMBP]

Dear Mr Porter,
May I know what 'Lightroom' is all about, please? What can it do that PS CS2 cannot, or perhaps not as well? Thank you.

Lightroom is an integrated photography workflow program, like Apple Aperture. While the Adobe Creative suite consists of a number of different applications that work together, Lightroom is a single application, and this integration of all the elements makes Lightroom a very streamlined, easy to understand tool. And while the image editing component of the Creative Suite - namely, Photoshop - is very powerful, it also has many, many features that have nothing at all to do with photography and are used instead by artists creating logos or illustrations, etc. Lightroom on the other hand is all about photography - and nothing but photography. While Photoshop continues to be primarily a one-image-at-a-time application, Lightroom has been designed to serve especially well the needs of photographers who process a lot of photos. Monday evening I shot nearly 700 photos at a swimming meet. With Lightroom's file management tools for tagging, ranking, labeling, etc., I was able to organize those images pretty quickly, getting rid of the bad ones, identifying the good ones. And Lightroom makes it easy for me to edit a single image (adjusting the exposure or tone curve slightly, sharpening a bit, etc.), and then very easily apply those editing settings to a batch of similar photos.

Just about everything that can be done to edit an image in Lightroom can be done in Photoshop; and Photoshop has many advanced or specialized tools that Lightroom doesn't. But Lightroom does 99% of what I want and need to do with my photos. I don't personally use or need Photoshop.

Will

[spillway]

Thanks for the notice, Will! Downloading now.....
Looking forward to the new sharpening and the clarify functionality.

-Larry

[WMBP]

Thanks for the notice, Will! Downloading now.....
Looking forward to the new sharpening and the clarify functionality.

The clarity slider is my new favorite feature. I have no idea what it does, technically, but it did such a good job on a number of my swim-meet photos from the other day that I found myself not using the curves at all on many of them. The meet was shot outside. Started late afternoon but the light was rather funny. The sun, when it appeared, was bright, but there were also heavy clouds hovering around quite a bit; eventually the meet was terminated prematurely because there was lightning. Anyway, a lot of the shots were a bit hazy, but setting the clarity slider to 25 really helped.

Will

[Kaimarx]

Thanks for the heads up! Lightroom has kinda grown on me and even though i have Photoshop, id really rather use lightroom, its got a wonderful and intuitive interface. I really like the print and slide menu as well.

[Alex Balotskiy]

The clarity slider is my new favorite feature. I have no idea what it does, technically, but it did such a good job on a number of my swim-meet photos...

Hey Will, have you ever read this article by Jeff Schewe? He does a pretty good job of outlining the new features in ACR 4.1 (improved sharpening and noise reduction, and the clarity slider). The paragraph on clarity is all the way at the bottom, right before the concluding paragraph. Hope it helps!

As for Lightroom, my biggest beef with it was that it seemed unresponsive on my, I would consider, powerful machine. I upgraded last night and spent about twenty minutes playing around with it and noticed a definitive increase in performance.

[WMBP]

Hey Will, have you ever read this article by Jeff Schewe? He does a pretty good job of outlining the new features in ACR 4.1 (improved sharpening and noise reduction, and the clarity slider). The paragraph on clarity is all the way at the bottom, right before the concluding paragraph. Hope it helps!

Good link, Alex - thanks a lot. I just read it through once and will give it a more careful reading later.

The thing I really don't understand about Lightroom is how and to what extent the various editing controls overlap one another. I've picked up a lot of tips here and there - don't use saturation, use luminance; don't use contrast, use tone curves; etc. But I'm still very vague about the difference between, say, increasing the exposure and increasing the brightness OR raising the mid-tones using the tone curves. I can see that they do not do QUITE the same thing - but they do SIMILAR things, and I am not very clear about where the similarities end and the differences kick in.

I've gotten tolerably good at processing my photos in Lightroom. I'm getting to where I can look at a photo for a few seconds and see very quickly that I should, say, lower the dark midtones a wee bit. But there's no theory to my understanding. I'm like a cook who knows that a teaspoon of minced garlic is crucial to the success of the dish, but doesn't really know why.

Will

[Alex Balotskiy]

But I'm still very vague about the difference between, say, increasing the exposure and increasing the brightness OR raising the mid-tones using the tone curves. I can see that they do not do QUITE the same thing - but they do SIMILAR things, and I am not very clear about where the similarities end and the differences kick in.

I know that Bruce Fraser wrote about the exposure versus brightness versus etc. question in his book Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS2. I don't think purchasing the book would make much sense since Lightroom is based on an updated version of ACR, but perhaps you can find this book at a library or just sit down with it at a bookstore (I know that both my local Barnes and Noble and Borders stores carry it).

Unfortunately Bruce Fraser isn't around anymore to write an update of his book for ACR 4/CS3, but Jeff Schewe, the author I linked earlier, will take up the slack, and hopefully he'll leave that section in the book. In the meantime, perhaps there's something about this in Martin Evening's new book on Lightroom? I've seen it online and in bookstores, but never actually thumbed through it. Might be a good place to check.

[Mattp9]

Jeff Schewe and Mr. LL himself do a great job of illuminating Lightroom in a video series which is priced at under US$20! There's a free 1.1 update which goes into great detail, esp. regarding sharpening and clarity.