Lightroom

Discuss which third party applications you use to help create your slide shows using ProShow Producer. This is not a forum to promote other slide show software programs.
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Lightroom

Postby Penny47 » Tue Mar 27, 2012 1:54 pm

I have never used the Lightroom Program and am wondering if it is worth my while even thinking about it. Are there any advantages to having this program and would I have to buy it? I am not sure if anyone else knows anything about it but I am sure that some of you must and are no doubt very good with using it. I would love to have some feed back on this please.

thanks Penny

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Re: Lightroom

Postby gpsmikey » Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:09 pm

Yes, you do have to buy it. For a while recently, they had LR3 for $79 although that seems to have gone away. Anyway, Lightroom has a number of features - some that may be of interest and some not. You need to decide. One of the features that I am giving lots of consideration to is the catalog (Library) module that allows you to have all your images in a catalog and you can sort by keywords. There are a couple of things that I don't like though - if you use Photoshop, any images you save as psd files have to be saved with "maximize compatibility" turned on (which saves a flattened version of the image in the .psd file so Lightroom can see it. Lightroom also does not understand png files - I have found a number of discussions on why or why not and some of the reasons seem valid, but the bottom line is it does not understand png files (Adobe's position seems to be that LR is for professional photographers and no cameras shoot png). That said, try saving a jpg with transparency :evil: The new version of Lightroom (4) that just came out, according to the "system requirements" requires Vista or better (anything is better than Vista :lol: ). Anyway, there is some quick info on LR. Lynda.com has some good tutorials on it if you subscribe to them. There are also a number of tutorials out there at Adobe etc that you may find helpful. The Library module is what you would use for cataloging your images. The "Develop" module is for making adjustments to the images and that side of it is actually pretty cool - it doesn't actually modify the image, but stores the mod information in the catalog. When you export the image, it applies the changes, but you can always go back and change what you had done to the original non-destructively.

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Re: Lightroom

Postby debngar » Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:19 pm

I've been using Lightroom since about version 2 and love it. I process all my images with it (except for the ones on my cell phone which I usually process with a phone app) and only go to Photoshop when I have further stuff I want to do to an image that can't be done in LR which is less than about 5% of the time.

I don't know what you mean, would you have to buy it. It's not free if that's what you mean. :roll:

The recent version 4 has incorporated some ability to handle video clips. But it's not a video editor exactly.

This might help give you an idea of what it can do.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... e=view_all

A free trial of Lightroom can be downloaded here though:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/inde ... _lightroom
Last edited by debngar on Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lightroom

Postby Penny47 » Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:48 pm

Thanks for the information, it has helped a lot and I will now sit down and decided if this is for me or not. it sounds like it could be a good thing to have. Anyhow thanks again to you both.

Penny

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Re: Lightroom

Postby Bart_B » Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:48 pm

Penny,

What are you using now for your photo editing. If you tell us that, then we can put into perspective what the difference would be. In short though, Lightroom is great but it is fairly complicated and takes some learning.

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Re: Lightroom

Postby WBD » Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:28 am

Penny,
It also should be noted that Lightroom 4 requires a 64 bit processor. Version 3 is 32 or 64 bit program.
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Re: Lightroom

Postby Ron » Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:25 am

Bart Said:
What are you using now for your photo editing. If you tell us that, then we can put into perspective what the difference would be.

Bart nailed it, but not only what are you using now but I think we would need to know what type of photographer you are by knowing how many photographs you have to deal with on a weekly/monthly basis? and what type of editing do you do most often on a regular basis ? (cropping, color correcting, layers, masks, composites ..etc...) ??
I think knowing all this will help in your quest for answers.
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What is Lightroom? "It's a photography software program, designed to assist 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".
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Re: Lightroom

Postby jojo » Thu Mar 29, 2012 5:15 am

Actually LR4 is both for 32 and 64 Bit systems. Once you get used to it, the workflow is much smoother.

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Re: Lightroom

Postby WBD » Thu Mar 29, 2012 6:12 am

The information that I stated in my earlier reply (64 bit processor required) was based on the Adobe Lightroom 4 specifications on their web site.
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Re: Lightroom

Postby gpsmikey » Thu Mar 29, 2012 7:30 am

I'm not sure where you get the fact it has to be 64 bit - in looking at the LR4 specs at the Adobe site, for windoze, it indicates the requirements are:
Windows

Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
Microsoft® Windows Vista® with Service Pack 2 or Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1
2GB of RAM
1GB of available hard-disk space
1024x768 display
DVD-ROM drive
Internet connection required for Internet-based services*

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop ... specs.html
which does indicate it has to be Vista or better (I can just imagine trying to get things to run in 2 GB of RAM though).

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

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