Adobe Lightroom

Adobe annonserte i dag en betautgave av Lightroom, en ny løsning for digital bildebehandling for profesjonelle fotografer. Betautgaven har ennå ikke fått alle funksjoner på plass, ikke minst fordi Adobe ønsker å gjøre endringer i samsvar med tilbakemeldinger fra fotografer.

Det ferdige produktet skal komme på markedet sent i 2006.

Betautgaven kun tilgjengelig for Macintosh, kanskje fordi Adobe vil komme raskt på banen i forhold til Apples Aperture. Den endelige utgaven av Lightroom vil også komme for Windows.

Lightroom baseres på Adobe Camera Raw-teknologien, noe som innebærer støtte for mer enn hundre kameraer der konverteringen fra råformatene bygges inn i arbeidsflyten.

Programmet kan eksportere slideshows med forskjellige design, levert i Flash, PDF eller HTML-format.

Sjekk en forløpig utprøving av programmet hos Luminous-landscape.com:

In a word or two, Lightroom is best described as next-generation photographer's software. Simply calling it a raw file converter, or an image processing program, would miss the fact that Lightroom also is designed for sorting, cataloging, presenting and printing ones files. It is intended to offer photographers the vast majority of the tools that they need when working on their images ? all under one roof. And, even though it's from Adobe, it breaks with a number of the Photoshop and Camera Raw paradigms, providing photographers with new, powerful, and in many cases easier to use tools for processing their images.
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By releasing Lightroom now Adobe likely hopes to further side-swipe Aperture's early sales momentum, though Apple bears considerable responsibility for Aperture's generally negative early reception by reviewers and many users. With Lightroom out in the wild as a free beta for much of 2006, and with availability for Windows computers coming in the relatively near future, Adobe clearly hopes that huge numbers of photographers will explore and then start using Lightroom. Then, when it launches as a commercial product, a very large installed base of pre-sold buyers will exist. It also means that Lightroom (hopefully) will contain features and functions that are a result of feedback from these early adopters, and thus will engender a loyal user base. A pretty smart strategy, in my view.

And as for Aperture, if history is any teacher we can expect to see Apple turn its newest baby into a powerhouse, especially now that it has Adobe breathing down its neck with such a promising alternative. In the end the winner will be all of us ? photographers who will have choices, and a rich new set of tools with which to pursue our art and our craft.

betaversjonen kan lastes ned fra Adobe Labs - Project: Lightroom.