Adobe Lightroom
Encyclopedia
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a photography
software program developed by Adobe Systems
for Mac OS X
and Microsoft Windows
, designed to assist Adobe Photoshop
users in managing large quantities of digital images and doing post production work. It is not a file browser like Adobe Bridge
, but rather an image management application database which helps in viewing, editing, and managing digital photos, the same way photographers used to do in the non-digital world.
's, to create a new look for the application.
Photoshop Lightroom's (LR) engineering talent is based largely in Minnesota, comprising the team that had already created Adobe's ImageReady
application. Troy Gaul, Melissa Gaul, and the rest of their crew (reportedly known as the "Minnesota Phats"), along with Hamburg, developed the architecture behind the application. George Jardine, a skilled photographer and previous Adobe evangelist, rounded out the early team, filling the Product Manager role.
-only public Beta, on the Adobe Labs website. This was the first Adobe product released to the general public for feedback during its development. This method was then later used in the development of Adobe Photoshop CS3.
On June 26, 2006, Adobe announced that it had acquired the technology assets of Pixmantec, developers of the Rawshooter image processing software.
Further Beta releases followed. Notable releases included Beta 3 on July 18, 2006, which added support for Microsoft Windows
systems. On September 25, 2006, Beta 4 was released, which saw the program merged into the Photoshop product range, followed by a minor update on October 19, which was released as Beta 4.1.
Lightroom v1.x is not updated when an upgrade to v2 is installed; a new serial number is required, too.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Beta was advertised in official emails from Adobe in April 2008. New features include:
The official release of Lightroom v2 was on July 29, 2008, along with the release of Adobe Camera Raw v4.5 and DNG Converter 4.5. Adobe has added DNG Camera Profiling to both releases. This technology allows custom camera colour profiles, or looks, to be created by the user and saved. It also allows profiles matching the creative styles built in to cameras to be replicated. Adobe released a complete set of such Camera Profiles for Nikon and Canon models, in addition to basic Standard Profiles for all supported makes and models, through Adobe Labs, at the same time as the Lightroom v2 release. This technology is open to all programs compliant with the DNG file format standard.
On March 23, 2010, Adobe released a second beta, which added the following features:
Although not included in any beta release, version 3 also contains built-in lens correction and perspective control.
The final version was released on June 8, 2010 with no major new functionality added. It had all the features included in the betas, added the lens corrections and perspective transformations and a few more improvements and performance optimizations.
The Develop module has a number of standard presets for colour correction or effects and supports the sharing of custom presets online. Another often used feature in the Develop module is the ability to synchronize the edits from one particular photo to the whole selection.
product manager John Nack, of all the 1,045 North American professional photographers who were interviewed, 37.0% used Lightroom and 6.3% used Aperture while 57.9% used the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in. Of the Mac
users, 44.4% used Lightroom and 12.5% used Aperture.
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
software program developed by Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
for Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, designed to assist Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
users in managing large quantities of digital images and doing post production work. It is not a file browser like Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge is an organizational software application created and released by Adobe Systems as a part of the Adobe Creative Suite, beginning with CS2. Its primary purpose is to link the parts of the Creative Suite together using an interface similar to the file browser found in previous versions...
, but rather an image management application database which helps in viewing, editing, and managing digital photos, the same way photographers used to do in the non-digital world.
History
In 2002, veteran Photoshop developer Mark Hamburg began a new project, code-named "Shadowland". Hamburg reached out to Andrei Herasimchuk, former interface designer for the Adobe Creative Suite, to get the project off the ground. The new project was a deliberate departure from many of Adobe's established conventions. 40% of Photoshop Lightroom is written using the Lua scripting language. After a few years of research by Hamburg, Herasimchuk, Sandy Alves, the former interface designer on the Photoshop team, and Grace Kim, a product researcher at Adobe, the Shadowland project got momentum around 2004. Herasimchuk chose to leave Adobe Systems at that time to start a design company in the Valley, and then Hamburg chose Phil Clevenger, a former associate of Kai KrauseKai Krause
Kai Krause is a software and graphical user interface designer, best known for founding MetaCreations Corp., his Kai's Power Tools series of products, and for his contributions to graphical user interface design.-Biography:...
's, to create a new look for the application.
Photoshop Lightroom's (LR) engineering talent is based largely in Minnesota, comprising the team that had already created Adobe's ImageReady
Adobe ImageReady
Adobe ImageReady is a bitmap graphics editor that was shipped with Adobe Photoshop by Adobe Systems for almost ten years. ImageReady is written in the C++ programming language...
application. Troy Gaul, Melissa Gaul, and the rest of their crew (reportedly known as the "Minnesota Phats"), along with Hamburg, developed the architecture behind the application. George Jardine, a skilled photographer and previous Adobe evangelist, rounded out the early team, filling the Product Manager role.
Beta development
On January 9, 2006, an early version of Photoshop Lightroom, previously just called Lightroom, was released to the public as a MacintoshMacintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
-only public Beta, on the Adobe Labs website. This was the first Adobe product released to the general public for feedback during its development. This method was then later used in the development of Adobe Photoshop CS3.
On June 26, 2006, Adobe announced that it had acquired the technology assets of Pixmantec, developers of the Rawshooter image processing software.
Further Beta releases followed. Notable releases included Beta 3 on July 18, 2006, which added support for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
systems. On September 25, 2006, Beta 4 was released, which saw the program merged into the Photoshop product range, followed by a minor update on October 19, which was released as Beta 4.1.
Version 1.0
On January 29, 2007, Adobe announced that Lightroom would be shipping on February 19, 2007. US list pricing was set at $299. The UK retail price was £199.Lightroom v1.x is not updated when an upgrade to v2 is installed; a new serial number is required, too.
Version 2.0
- Localized corrections (edit specific parts of an image)
- Improved organization tools
- Multiple monitor support
- Flexible printing options
- 64-bit support
The official release of Lightroom v2 was on July 29, 2008, along with the release of Adobe Camera Raw v4.5 and DNG Converter 4.5. Adobe has added DNG Camera Profiling to both releases. This technology allows custom camera colour profiles, or looks, to be created by the user and saved. It also allows profiles matching the creative styles built in to cameras to be replicated. Adobe released a complete set of such Camera Profiles for Nikon and Canon models, in addition to basic Standard Profiles for all supported makes and models, through Adobe Labs, at the same time as the Lightroom v2 release. This technology is open to all programs compliant with the DNG file format standard.
Version 3.0
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 beta was released on October 22, 2009. New features include:- New chroma noise reduction
- Improved sharpening tool
- New import pseudo module
- Watermarking
- Grain
- Publish services
- Custom package for print
On March 23, 2010, Adobe released a second beta, which added the following features:
- New luminance noise reduction
- Tethered shooting for selected Nikon and Canon cameras
- Basic video file support
- Point curve
Although not included in any beta release, version 3 also contains built-in lens correction and perspective control.
The final version was released on June 8, 2010 with no major new functionality added. It had all the features included in the betas, added the lens corrections and perspective transformations and a few more improvements and performance optimizations.
Features
Unlike traditional image editing software, Photoshop Lightroom is focused on the following workflow steps:- Library – image collection review and organization - similar in concept to the 'Organizer' in Adobe Photoshop ElementsAdobe Photoshop ElementsAdobe Photoshop Elements is the consumer version of the Adobe Photoshop raster image editing product, targeted at hobbyist users and hence sold at a fraction of the cost of the professional product. It contains most of the features of the professional version but with fewer and simpler options...
- Develop – non-destructive RAWRAW image formatA camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor...
and JPEG file editing - Slideshow – tools and export features
- Print – layout options and preferences
- Web – automatic gallery creation and upload
- Tethered Capture Support for many popular Nikon and Canon DSLRs
The Develop module has a number of standard presets for colour correction or effects and supports the sharing of custom presets online. Another often used feature in the Develop module is the ability to synchronize the edits from one particular photo to the whole selection.
Marketshare
According to 2009 statistics from research company InfoTrends, released by Adobe SystemsAdobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
product manager John Nack, of all the 1,045 North American professional photographers who were interviewed, 37.0% used Lightroom and 6.3% used Aperture while 57.9% used the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in. Of the Mac
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
users, 44.4% used Lightroom and 12.5% used Aperture.
See also
- Comparison of raster graphics editorsComparison of raster graphics editors- List :- General information :Basic general information about the editors: creator/company, license etc.- Operating system support :The operating systems on which the editors can run natively , meaning which operating systems have which editors specifically coded for them - List :- General...
(but not giving any details about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom)
External links
- Adobe - Photoshop Lightroom
- Review of Lightroom v2 with examples, on dPhotoexpert.com
- Lightroom Forums Lightroom dedicated forum
- Talk given by Troy Gaul, Adobe's lead Lightroom programmer in 2009 at the C4 conferenceC4 (conference)C4 was a Macintosh software developers conference held in Chicago, Illinois. The conference ran from 2006 through 2009. It was created by Jonathan Rentzsch after the demise of MacHack...
, covering Lightroom's history, code and architecture up to version 2.0