Adobe Lightroom Public Beta Release

By Galen Fott
When Apple released its digital imaging program Aperture last fall, many wondered how the new program would affect the relationship between the Macintosh computers that professional photographers typically use and the Adobe software that is usually running on those machines. With the public beta release of its Lightroom software on January 9, Adobe seems to be taking an active interest in this question.
Like Aperture, Lightroom isn't designed to be a substitute for the multifaceted powers of Adobe Photoshop. Both Lightroom and Aperture are targeted at professional photographers, providing a complete workflow solution for managing, editing, and outputting digital images. The emphasis is on RAW format photos, but not to the exclusion of JPEGs. While there's some overlap with Photoshop's toolset, neither Lightroom nor Aperture offer layers, selection tools, or a text tool.

But there are striking differences between Aperture and Lightroom, most notably that Lightroom will be a cross-platform application, running in Microsoft Windows as well as on the Mac. Adobe isn't developing the Mac and Windows versions concurrently, and the initial public beta release is Mac-only. But Adobe states that the Windows version won't ship far behind the Mac version (though that's currently not scheduled to happen until late this year).
Another important difference for Mac users is that Lightroom's system requirements are less strenuous than Aperture's. Adobe requires minimally a 1-GHz G4 processor with 768MB of RAM and only 1,024-by-768 screen resolution. The Windows requirements should be roughly analogous.

Adobe stresses that Lightroom is a work in progress. The public beta release—an unusual step for Adobe—is intended to allow photographers plenty of opportunity for input as Adobe adds features and polishes the application. But judging from the beta, Lightroom is off to a compelling start. The interface is sleek and dark, designed to showcase your images with a minimum of distractions. The program is divided into four modules. The Library module is where you organize, sort, rate, and add keywords to your photos. Image enhancement happens inside the Develop module. The Slideshow module lets you create customized slide shows that can be viewed onscreen immediately or exported to HTML, Flash, and PDF formats. Finally, the Print module provides tools for making contact sheets or picture packages.

Mac users—particularly those with systems not up to snuff for running Aperture—may well want to download Lightroom at labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom and check it out for themselves. As with the original release of Photoshop, Windows users will have to wait a bit.

Source:pcmag