Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom

If there is one piece of software that has changed the way I work over the past year, Adobe PS Lightroom is without a doubt it. Lightroom has become such an important part of my daily workflow, I can barely remember a time without it. Adobe really does know a thing or two about the way photographers work, and it clearly shows here. It has taken my personal, and it has to be said, rather complicated workflow/organization and streamlined it so that any image I want from any period is just a moment away.

Apple of course has also released a similar application called Aperture and there is much to like with that software too. In fact, I used it for about a month and there are still things I miss about that application, second monitor support springs to mind, but taken as a whole I personally work better with Lightroom. It swallows up the images from my digital film and organizes them for me. I then can rapidly go through hundreds and sometimes even thousands of files and kill off the images I know are not going to be used. Rating them 1 through 5 is a huge benefit so that I can display them in a way that prioritizes what I should be working on first.

Now that I am using Lightroom, I find I use CS3 far less often. Basic tweaks can be handled perfectly well from within Lightroom - some not so basic ones too. The really great thing though is if I do hand the file over to CS3, Lightroom knows about it, tracks the changes and then automatically adds it back into the appropriate Lightroom library.

I currently have over 65,000 images cataloged in Lightroom and it runs very smoothly on my workstation. The real benefit though is that I can use almost any conceivable criteria to find an image. This is where keywords come into play, its so very important to add keywords to your images. Its a good idea to try to keep the number of keywords down to a manageable level, but there will always be additions such as the couples name which will help you locate the image you want quickly. You can even search using the camera model and lens used if you know the image was taken with particular equipment. Of course, narrowing down the date ranges will always be helpful so there are countless ways to find the image you are after.

Lightroom’s built-in web gallery feature is the one aspect that really tipped me in its favor though. I’ve used them for the two sample galleries on the website, as well as every single selects page I’ve done for a client. They are very professional, yet take only moments to put together. Being able to show the client their images in a professional and timely manor is vital in this day and age.

There are some additions I’d like to see added, but this is a new application and I have no doubt they will be in the near future. I really, really want the ability to use a second display, some additional web gallery templates would be helpful to mix it up a little. The noise reduction function could be a little better as I find it either doesn’t suppress it enough or flips to the other position of zapping the sharpness too much, the sharpening in general too could be a little better. The prints module really needs to be beefed up, but these things are finishing touches around the edge of what is simply an indispensable application for a working photographer. Well worth the money, it will save you hours and make your life easier.