Why Lightroom?
I recently saw a blog post (from a totally unrelated industry) about one simple word - Why? The writer encouraged people to think about why we do things. It got me thinking about Lightroom. I teach it to so many people. I'm excited about it. I think using it over Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw (for photographers that is) is the right thing to do. But why? Could it be the fact that I had $200 bucks burning a hole in my jeans pocket? :) Probably not. After pondering away for hours (ok, 7 minutes), I did come up with one simple answer: it's just easier. Truth be told, I was hoping for a more complicated answer. Then I started thinking about whether or not everything needs to be quantifiable and have a long drawn out answer. Is the answer "it's just easier" enough? I don't know exactly why, but LR is just so much easier for me to use then Bridge and Camera Raw ever felt. They worked, but it seemed like it was clunky. It felt like I was using tools that were created for the masses and not tools that were made for me. That's where LR feels easier to me. It's one program and it does a very finite number of things. I know that. I like the fact that I'll eventually run out of choices in Lightroom and I'll have to stop. It makes my photo processing much easier as a result.
You can kinda compare it to the iPhone. Is the iPhone revolutionary in what it does in any way, shape or form? Not one little bit. I was doing iPhone-like things on my phone 2-3 years ago. So why has it taken the country by storm? Compare this to Lightroom and why it has become the total buzz in the photography community. LR doesn't really offer any new tools does it? Cataloging, Raw processing, printing, web galleries. We've been able to do the exact same stuff in Photoshop, Bridge, and Camera Raw for years. But it's not always about what it does... it's about how it does it.
So why do I use Lightroom? It's just easier. I may not be able to expand on the why but what I do know are the results. I get more done with Lightroom then I ever did with Bridge and Camera Raw. I find my photos MUCH faster. I process my photos faster. It allows me to concentrate on the task at hand without getting caught up in several interfaces. This leaves me time to a) process more photos or, b) more importantly, spare time to do the other things I like to do. In the end, the "Why?" may not be that glamorous but hey, I gave it the old college try. That said, consider leaving a comment here about why you use Lightroom. Is it just the pretty interface or is there more? Trust me, I'd love to read what you have to say. It'll help me a ton because when I'm standing in front of 400 people and they ask me "Why use Lightroom?", telling them that it's just easier doesn't really cut it. Thanks.
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November 26th, 2007 at 5:33 am
I don’t think that Lightroom offers an easy way of opening a RAW file as a smart object in Photoshop. If they fix this I’d use it 100% of the as it stands opening photos as smart objects is very useful to me and I don’t want to loose it.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
The top reasons to buy Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Extensive workflow support
Transfer and work with large volumes of photographs with ease. Automated features help speed the downloading, importing, and renaming of files and let you easily apply global adjustments to photographs.
N
ondestructive editing
Enjoy robust support for more than 140 camera raw formats, and experiment with confidence. Adjustments you make to images in Lightroom won’t alter the original data, whether you’re working on a JPEG, TIFF, DNG, or camera raw file.
Professional editing tools for making global adjustments
Fine-tune your photographs with precise,
easy-to-use tools for globally correcting white balance, exposure, tone curves, lens distortion, and color casts.
Efficient image viewing, evaluation,
and comparison
Browse, evaluate, and select your images with efficient, flexible viewing and comparison tools.
Elegant, uncluttered interface
Ease the learning curve and be productive quickly. Task-oriented modules whisk you through typical workflow tasks by putting
just the tools you need at your fingertips.
F
ast, high-quality printing
Quickly and visually format high-quality prints, whether working with one photo or 100, on one page or many. Recall your favorite layouts with saved presets and enjoy speedy output, even of large files.
F
inely tuned black-and-white conversions
Convert color images to black-and-white with precision. Familiar sliders allow you to control the contrast and detail based on the colors in the original photograph.
Versatile client presentation capabilities
Use simple yet powerful tools to present your images and get client approval in print, on the web, or in a slide show.
Automatic tracking of image changes
Always find the image state you need by keeping track of the changes you’ve made to images, including alternates, with the
History panel.
November 26th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
LR is not the realy a verry good program, becouse it does’nt work together with the bridge. It does not recognise the stars and lables i made on 60.000 (!) pictures! And when i want to open a picture into Photoshop, it first saves a psd(?) and then opens it inside PS. this realy eats up my memory on my harddisc. And for 800 pictures LR needs 600 mb for just the thumps. When you re-open a raw picture from the Apple finder it doesnot has the ajustments wich you made in LR….
For a prof this is not realy handy…
Thanks for al the tutorials by the way but also make one of these problems
November 27th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
I have really only just started using lightroom and what first sparked my interest in it was the catalouging capability. I don’t have a massive HD and I also don’t own an external HD (yet) so space is always at a premium for me.
I am extremely impressed with the fact that I am able to load my images into LR, convert them to DNG, sort, rename, add key words and copyright metadata then after backing up the DNG files onto DVD… take them off my HD and still be able to see the preview.
The database catlouge is an huge leap forward in the way of doing business when it comes to catalouging images… a simply keyword with the number of the DVD it’s stored on helps easily find it without having to sift through what can be mountains of discs and files.
Everything else for me is a bonus although I do have to admit that it makes the entire workflow so much easier than ever before. All of my basic editing and catlouging in one application then into PS for final tweaks and retouching.
I have heard the phrase that LR is possibly a PS killer… but for me that’s not the case. More to the point, it has blown Bridge out of the equatation.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Not sure if this will convince your audience:
My mother in law (age 64, only started using a laptop because of ebay)
She love taking digital pictures, but was always getting them messed up on her laptop using explorer, irfanview etc etc.
She started using Lightroom 2 weeks ago and after 10 minutes of explanation she was able to create collections, slide shows, export pics of grandchildren for emails to friends.
Isn’t one bit worried about messing up her original pictures anymore.
Like someone wrote here ealier: its design makes it inviting to explore the options. For the first time she enjoys working with the pictures on a computer, instead of it giving her nightmares.
AK
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I’ve been trying Lightroom the last few days. Reading different resources on the web, even watching some tutorial videos. I find Lightroom doesn’t fit my needs. It’s possible I just don’t know how to use it though. I think it’s slow (I’m using a Quad 6600 processor) and I found adding keywords cumbersome. The develop module I rather like though. But for me, I think I’ll continue using Bridge and Camera RAW for my editing and iView for my cataloging. Unless anyone could point me in the right direction
F
December 17th, 2007 at 12:26 am
I bought my first camera a few days ago. I have no idea what i am doing. My neighbor told me to check out the Education section in Podcasts. I watched a lot on photoshop and other photo editors. Then I found LR Killer Tips and it was really easy to follow and effective. So I guess I used LR because you told me to.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Easy seems to be the word that fits Lightroom best. But Organization is what Lightroom is all about. Also can’t over look the image editing that packs quite a punch for a photo organization tool, I frequently use the web galleries and it is a great convience to me that makes Lightroom well worth the money.
December 26th, 2008 at 2:41 am
Can I also ask Why?
i tried LR, it had good and bad points, but the bad weighed more than the good. yes its great for editing photos, very easy to do, but i dont like the catalogue. what happens if you copy those images to another computer? just copying the files from windows explorer to the other computer, not using export or anything from LR? any changes made to that photo are lost because all the changes are stored in the catalogue not the actual photo! so if you crop, adjust colour or exposure then copy the original file to another computer, or even just move the image to a different folder you’ve lost all changes.
i do like certain aspects such as if you crop an image, adjust other aspects of the image such as exposure, then later on want to print the image, but print it at a different aspect ratio to that it was shot in, then the cropping may need to be changed, so usually i would need to go back to the start and crop it to suit the new aspect ratio then redo all the changes i later made to the image, but with LR you can just go in and change the crop. that point is brilliant, but again thats all saved in the catalogue so when you open the photo in any other application its just the original image unedited.
i am saying this and asking why, because i may be wrong, there may be some other way of doing things, if so i would like to know about it.
February 10th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I started using Lightroom 2 (now 2.2) and my analogy at the time was that Lightroom was a surgeon’s scalpel compared to Photoshop’s very sharp knife when processing small and large amounts of RAW captures.
After approx 3 months of daily use, I still stand behind that statement.
Ray