Digital Darkroom Shootout - Part 1
Adobe announced the public beta 4 of their new Lightroom product, and also clarified the name...going forward, it will be known as “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom”. Makes sense to stick “Photoshop” in there somewhere since it’s the best known photo editing app, and has even started to become a verb to the general population (make sure you see Adobe’s Permissions and Trademark Guidelines for proper usage). They have really enhanced the UI on it by generally prettying it up, but more importantly, they improved the following items, which I thought needed to be done before it could be a useful product.
- There is new search code which should be generally more responsive.
- When photos are copied or moved into the Photoshop Lightroom Managed Photos directory on import, they will be moved around as they are moved from one shoot to another (and changing those shoot names will change the names of the corresponding managed folders). Note that currently there isn’t any indication whether a photo/shoot is managed, and it is possible to mix managed and unmanaged items.
- Recovery—This slider changes the hard clipping of Exposure into a soft roll-off and can pull highlight detail back in. Pushed further, it will also enhance highlight contrast. It is particularly useful for overexposed photos as an alternative to turning down Exposure and then immediately turning up Brightness to compensate for having made the photo too dark.
- Vibrance—This control was inspired by RawShooter, however, the effects are not identical. It essentially controls a non-linear saturation adjustment which will avoid blowing out the saturation on heavily saturated colors. It also tries to be smart about flesh tones.
- Tone Curve—The tone curve has been heavily reworked. We essentially have 4 regions defined by 3 split points underneath the curve graph. Photoshop Lightroom now allows for a new style of direct manipulation of the curve.
- ACR Curve—This provides limited access to the curves used in Adobe Camera Raw and is intended primarily for settings compatibility.
The last four items are a big improvement to the Develop module and will help make this the true workflow app that it is supposed to be. The less you need to go into Photoshop, the better.
BUT THEY STILL HAVEN’T IMPROVED THE ASS BACKWARDS CROP TOOL!!! ARRRGGGHHH!!!!
