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The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog
NAPP Lightroom training updated for Windows (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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Now that you Windows users have heard that there's a beta of Adobe Lightroom for you (a free download from Adobe), you're probably hungry for some Windows specific training. As usual, NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) is right on it. They've updated their Lightroom training page with some new videos that show the Windows version of Lightroom, including Matt Kloskowski's Intro to the Develop Module, Secrets of the Tone Curve, and Magic of Split-Toning. Mac users will benefit from these videos too, because Lightroom's settings are similar across the platforms.

And if you want to see what other users are saying about the Windows beta or post your own impressions, join in on Adobe's Lightroom Beta Windows discussion board.
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Author: Jan Kabili | Category: Adobe Lightroom | More...
Windows version of Lightroom beta now available (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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Last month Adobe released a third beta of Lightroom, and now a Windows version is available for download. It doesn't seem like any major new features or updates have been added, but Windows users can finally stop re-forwarding request emails to the Adobe Labs team and take Lightroom for a spin.

Being that Lightroom has seen three (beta) versions on the Mac, we'd like to hear your thoughts on how well the Windows versions performs and stacks up to its counterpart.
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Author: David Chartier | Category: adobe | More...
Lightroom beta 3 released (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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Adobe has released a third beta of Lightroom, their photo management and editing app specifically designed for professional photographers. Check out the release notes (PDF link, since HTML is so 1995) for the full details, but highlights include improvements to import and export options, live comparisons of image adjustments in Before and After previews, an additional straightening tool, as well as a new Web module (apparently heavily influenced by forum feedback - cool) with HTML and Flash export options.

This sounds like a slick new release, and I'll crack open the download sooner or later and give it a look. Unfortunately, there still isn't a version for Windows users, though they are offering a sign-up notification form if you'd like to be on the list.

[via MacNN]
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Author: David Chartier | Category: adobe | More...
O'Reilly Network debutes 'Inside Adobe Lightroom' site (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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The O'Reilly Network has taken the wraps off of Inside Adobe Lightroom, a new site featuring articles, a blog and a podcast covering Adobe's professional photo management app. Tips on color correction, adding music to slideshows, how to migrate images from iPhoto  and more are all on the menu, so swing by and find out how much you really didn't know about Lightroom.

[via Daring Fireball]
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Author: David Chartier | Category: Adobe | More...
Adobe Lightroom podcast #4 (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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We're a little late on this one, but it appears that the Adobe Lightroom podcast has released its 4th episode (iTMS link). As John Nack summarizes on his blog, this one was recorded at the Greg Gorman digital photography workshop in CA. George and his guests (Martin Evening, Peter Carides and Bryan O'Neil Hughes) discuss digital photography workflows, fashion photography, Lightroom features and archiving strategies.

Check it out in the iTMS podcast directory or grab it at Adobe's RSS feed here.
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Author: David Chartier | Category: archiving | More...
New Adobe Lightroom Podcasts (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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adobe lightroom betaI was pleasantly surprised today as I went through my podcast playlist in iTunes to find the first two episodes of a new audio podcast about the Adobe Lightroom beta [iTMS link]. The podcast features members of Adobe's Lightroom development team chatting with some of the photographers who offered input into the Shadowland project, which was the development precursor to Lightroom.

Episode 1 features photographer and Photoshop guru Jeff Schewe talking with three key members of the Adobe Lightroom team--product manager George Jardine, lead engineer and "founder of the Lightroom team" Mark Hamburg, and engineer Kevin Tieskoetter. This episode focuses on printing and color management in Lightroom, with some other juicy tidbits (like Jardine's view of the ideal marriage--oh, George) thrown in for good measure.

This podcast is very enlightening on several levels:
  • First, it offers fascinating insight into the Lightroom development process and the thinking of the Adobe team.
  • Second, it brings home how very receptive the Lightroom team has been to the input and practical viewpoints of its audience, insofar as they are represented by Schewe, Bruce Fraser and other professional photographers.
  • Third, I was struck by how transparent the development of this product has been, particularly as compared to the hush-hush nature of prerelease programs for other Adobe software (which shall rename nameless to protect the innocent).
There is lots of eye-opening information about Lightroom in Episode 1. Highlights follow after the jump.
Printing from Lightroom:
The team has tried to make printing from Lightroom simple, easy, and fast. Hamburg says that inkjet printing from Photoshop is far more difficult than it ought to be. Draft mode printing in Lightroom speeds things up quite a bit. Instead of rendering each image from the original raw file, Lightroom takes the largest rendered image that's in the cache and uses that instead, providing sufficient resolution for most contact sheets.

You don't get true output sharpening when you do draft printing from Lightroom.

Schewe says he's been comparing output from Photoshop and Lightroom and has been able to achieve parity. Being able to set up for multiple prints, rather than document by document print settings, is one advantage of Lightroom.

Jardine asks if we'll be able to save driver-specific settings to achieve a one-button print job. Hamburg answers that the team would like to, but the OS doesn't make that easy at this point. You can't access specific printer settings until you hit Print and have already sent data to the printer. The Lightroom team is "leaning on the powers that be" to try to move some of that upstream so that it can be captured and stored in a preset.

Color management in Lightroom:
The upcoming Lightroom Build 3 will fix color management rendering intents, which were broken in previous builds.

Jardine asks what is the minimal amount of configuration for acceptably color-managed output from Lightroom? Kevin and Mike explain that all you have to do is go to the Print module, select a template, and leave color management set to Managed by Printer. Here's the key -- in the printer driver settings you should specify Color Sync (which is not usually the default) and the paper you're using. The printer driver should then pick up the right profile and do the right thing with it.

Soft Proofing:
Schewe says you've got to have soft proofing so that you can predict what the image will look like when the ink hits paper and you see the reduced dynamic range of the final print, so that you can tweak the tone curve and color rendering. Soft-proofing also allows you to be more economical with ink and paper; you don't have to make lots of prints if you can predict what the image will look like. In addition to Lightroom, you need a calibrated and profiled monitor and a good printer profile for soft proofing.

Printer profiles:
Tieskoetter solicits Schewe's opinion on printer profiles, asking: if a user does not have a custom profile he built for his printer, is it best to let the printer manage the color or selecting one of the profiles that came with the printer as a custom profile and turning off color management at the driver level? Schewe answers that the ideal is to have the default printer driver profiles for printer and paper be accurate. All the major printer manufacturers--Epson, HP, and Canon--are now realizing that accurate profiles are important for printing and soft-proofing. For example, Epson's K3 UltraChrome printer profiles are much better than other printer profiles. If you don't have a custom profile, Lightroom's Print module does seems to be using Color Sync the right way. The default profile is selected from within the print driver via Color Sync, and that does seem to work. You will need custom profiles if you're using specialty third-party papers.  Schewe reports that he has gotten excellent results using custom printer profiles and turning color management off in the print driver. Hamburg adds that you can also use the Color Sync utility to change the printer's default preferences, although that is not well publicized or documented. Schewe warns that you don't want to do that; it's too messy.

Third-party module development:
Users on the forums have been asking about plug-ins for Lightroom, which brings up the issue of how much flexibility there will be for the development of Lightroom modules by third parties. Hamburg explains that other than some fundamental pieces that are owned by the app, the Library, Develop, Print and Slideshow user interfaces are built as modules using an architecture that should eventually be revealed to developers. So third parties should be able to build additional modules. For example, a developer could build another module that will send images to whatever output you want or do additional organizational things with them. The upshot of this discussion is that there may be the potential for third-parties to make new modules after version 1 ships, but extending existing modules might be more difficult.

Check out Episode 1 of the Adobe Lightroom Beta podcast to hear these highlights and more.
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Author: Jan Kabili | Category: Adobe Lightroom beta | More...
Inside Mac interview with Photoshop Product Manager John Nack (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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John NackPhotoshop Product Manager John Nack spoke about Flash and Photoshop, Adobe/Macromedia integration, and more in an podcast interview with Inside Mac Radio's Scott Sheppard. The interview took place this week at Flash Forward 2006, which was the first Flash conference since the Adobe-Macromedia merger.

You can hear the full interview on the March 2, 2006 episode of Inside Mac Radio [ iTunes Music Store link ]

Here are key excerpts from the Nash interview:

On his own Flash background:

"It's really funny. Flash is really the reason I came to Adobe. I was working for an agency out in New York called agency.com. We were doing Web sites in Flash for Nike, and Gucci, and all these big companies. And I really wanted to build a new experience there and solve some of the problems I was having. So Adobe said, hey we're making a Flash animation tool. Do you want to come work on that. So I said sure. And they were just about to ship their first version. So I came out and joined the Live Motion team in 2000. And worked hard, got a bunch of cool things going. But ultimately we didn't get enough things right fast enough to really make it take off, and the project got canceled. So about four years ago I left that and came over to Photoshop. Well then you can imagine last April I just about dropped my cereal on the floor. I was like, what Adobe and Macromedia are getting together. Totally unbelievable. I couldn't be more excited because a lot of the pain points, the things that just waste people's time and keep them from doing cool stuff, we can now finally fix. And that's really exciting."

On potential integration of Photoshop and Flash:

"Mike Downey, the Flash product manager, put up a survey a week or two on his blog and said, what's the top thing you want to integrate. And I think the top thing was Photoshop and Flash. But of course a lot of folks are using Illustrator, Fireworks, and they want those to integrate as well. Same with After Effects."

"There are just a lot of really obvious basic things we can make work right--bringing in a layered PSD file, bringing in a layered Illustrator file--things that are not creative tasks, but things that just should work better. And it's really great that we can get the teams together and give them access to each others' code and a lot of knowledge, and make that stuff work. . ."On empowering the Flash developer community to create Photoshop tools:

"Just moving files around is a big thing. But also we need to think about, well look, Flash and Flex there's this great developer community. They're using other Adobe tools than Photoshop. They want to sell their knowledge and skills more broadly. How can we leverage technologies like Flash to make it easier to develop for things like Photoshop and Illustrator, and can we make it so that you can develop interfaces that work across platforms and across applications -- things that folks have wanted for years but we never had a way to do it. And I think that when we move those tools together developers will have a whole new way to leverage their skills that takes what they do for the Web even beyond that."

What did Nack see at Flash Forward that wowed him?

"We got to see Erik Natsky's talk on Tuesday, and he was showing how he evolved from being just like a pure timeline/motion graphics guy to writing his own scripts and then writing his own tools that write scripts. That's really inspiring because it means that you shouldn't have to wait on Adobe or another developer 18 months, 2 years, whatever, to make a new tool. If you have the skills, you should be able to make it yourself. And that's the kind of thing where we open these doors to developers. So that really got me thinking."

"Seeing the guys from Jib Jab today with the way that they animate in Flash, then take that into After Effects and start adding some blurs and lighting effects and 3D. I mean, my head is just spinning with where we can go with this stuff."

"We're definitely seeing a trend towards really rapid prototyping, really rapid application development. There was a demo in the keynote of Flex, about how to build an application like iTunes built in about 5 minutes, just snapping together components with Flex. So if you think about, well that's cool, I can put that on the Web. Well why can't I put that on my desktop, or why can't I put that in one of my desktop tools? So I think there are a lot of possibilities there. And it means that with one set of skills and even with one set of assets in some cases you can build experiences for online, you can build them for the desktop, you can build them as components. And so it opens a whole lot of new doors, and I think a lot of different communities are going to benefit from that. . . "

"Wouldn't it be cool if instead of necessarily having to run all of your Photoshop extensions in a plug-in window, why not have them be tools. . . . We should democratize the development of tools, so that it's not just you kind of put a message in a bottle and you send it to Adobe and hopefully we get a chance to make it happen. If you want to make something different you should have the chance to pop open the hood, start banging around, and make it different. . ."

On extensibility in Lightroom:

"In the case of Lightroom one of the big things for that team is extensibility. Now they look back at the history of Photoshop, and one of the things that made it successful from 1990 onwards was the fact you could build plug-ins. And it was like, yeah I like 8 out of 10 things here but these two aren't really working. So that's an opportunity for a third party. Well those guys are saying, that's great, but third parties shouldn't be limited in that way. Why not be able to develop entire modules for the application. And why not leverage some of these Web technologies directly, so you can do things like, well the sky's the limit. But suffice to say that rapid extensibility is a big, big part of their plan going forward."

On progress toward Universal Binary versions of Adobe products:

"We recognize that to really address the way the market's been changing around digital photography it wasn't going to be good enough to just keep doing incremental additions to our existing code. What we really need is to start with a fresh slate. So in the case of Lightroom, because they did that, it's been a lot quicker for them to move to Mactel.

"With some of the more mature apps, like Photoshop, Illustrator, it's a really big project, and there's a lot of work to move the code from Code Warrior over into XCode, get that compiling, and then get that compiling on Mactel. So it's something where it's a long process. I wish we could do it faster. But Apple's been really great in supporting that. There've been Apple folks on site all the time over at Adobe answering questions, bouncing ideas back and forth. . . Both companies really want to see this happen, just like users do. We'll have it out as soon as we can, with the obvious qualifier that we want to right. We don't want to just rush it out there and have it not work well. So it'll take some time, but we're definitely working closely on it."

"As we work with Apple we want to make sure that our applications keep evolving and taking really good advantage of all the new innovations they've got. They came out with the dual processor, dual core G5's. They're making some really great changes around the graphics architecture, like with the new MacBook--much faster memory systems with their GPU. And so I think that this evolution will help us stay really current and take good advantage of that. And of course every time a new system comes out one of the key benchmarks is how fast does it run Photoshop. And so it's in everybody's interest to make sure that our apps really shine on the new boxes."

On getting together with all the Adobe product managers at Flash Forward:

"It's kind of funny. We actually realized that we had never had the product managers from Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and After Effects physically in the same room together. We'd been on the phone; we'd been talking on email. But because we're all in three separate offices we'd never actually been in the same room. So it [being together at Flash Forward] was pretty cool. We had a chance to publicize it a bit on the blogs, and to say hey, you know what, this is all new to us. You know we've never really been one team before. So come on out. Let us know what you're thinking."

On feedback about how to integrate Flash with other Adobe software:

"You know a lot of what people said wasn't a surprise, which I think is good thing because it means what we're already coding up is going to be pretty successful. But, yeah people had all kinds of good ideas--things like: Hey when I'm designing in Photoshop or Illustrator give me a mode where I can tell what's going to work well in Flash and what isn't. Make it easy to get between After Effects and Flash, and then Flash back to After Effects. Just lots and lots of ideas there. And actually I'm going to go and bending out engineers ears, and saying what if we did xyz, I bet that would be cool."

More on Macromedia-Adobe integration:

"So basically the upshot of all this is--it's really new to us. It's only been three months since the deal closed, and we've actually been legally allowed to talk to each other. So we're really just in the very early days of this planning. So we're going out on the road. We're meeting customers togther. We're asking questions on blogs, reading up on what each of us finds out."

"I just really encourage people--if you've got something to say and you've got some ideas, there's a million ways to do it. A bunch of us have blogs at adobe.com. Or you can read the Macromedia News Aggregator. Of course we've got user forums, and we're reading those."

"This is as excited as I've been to be at Adobe in about six years, which is exactly how long I've been here. We're just getting warmed up. I'm psyched."

"I think that each company, for good reasons, when they were separate was kind of off on its own, doing it's own thing, and didn't have a lot of access to some shared technology. We'd all try to work together, but there's only so much you could do. And so now I really feel like, when I was a kid you'd get a new set of legos, and you'd bust that open, and you'd be like, oh man, now I've got a horse, and an arch, and these chairs, and like I could just build anything with that. And I really feel like that with the technology."

 "What I really want to do is make sure we use the technology to open doors so that users themselves can build this really cool stuff. Because as many good ideas as we're going to come up with, people are just continually amazing us with the stuff they end up building. And so I think that's the key thing--is just to open the door, and people are going to run through it."

"I feel like we're just drinkin' from the fire hose. In these early days we're just sucking down information, and have probably dreamed up ten years worth of features just in the last couple months. So I really feel like as we go forward hopefully people will give us feedback, keep us honest, make sure we're not running off in some wierd direction. I'm psyched to see what we can come up with together."
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Author: Jan Kabili | Category: Inside Mac Radio | More...
Lightroom public beta 2 released, PhotoshopNews goes in-depth (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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Remember that leaked tutorial video with (an assumed) second version of the Lightroom beta? It seems the rumors were true, as Adobe has officially released Lightroom public beta 2, and you can pick it up from the Adobe Labs site - curiously hosted at labs.macromedia.com.

Domain naming issues aside, the latest Lightroom beta still only runs on a Mac, although it now runs on both PPC and Intel version of Mac OS X (Windows support is still forthcoming). Updates in this version include, but are not limited to: crop and straighten tools included in the Develop module, ability to add music to slideshows, more camera support, Ability to create hierarchical keyword sets, and more. In fact, PhotoshopNews, where I found this, has already delved into the new beta with a whole slew of screenshots and briefs on new features. Head on over and check out their rundown, and don't forget to pick up your own free copy.
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Author: David Chartier | Category: Adobe labs | More...
Lightroom beta 2 seen in leaked tutorial video (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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Oops. Not only was a Lightroom tutorial movie (QuickTime link) somehow leaked in the Adobe Lightroom Forums, but some clever viewers noticed an as-yet unseen crop button (pictured) in the lower left of the movie, betraying an upcoming second demo of this most excellent of pro photography apps.

Availability of this second beta is yet to be announced.

[via PhotoshopNews]
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Author: David Chartier | Category: beta | More...
First impressions of Lightroom - it's fantastic! (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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I finally got around to playing with the Lightroom beta over the last couple of days and I have to say: it's fantastic. I'm running it on the latest version of the 15" PowerBook G4, with a hi-res screen, 1.67 GHz G4 and 1.5 GB RAM, and it runs quick. App startup time is virtually nil, and the whole thing just feels zippy. It offers a great array of features centered around this image comparison/organization paradigm, and some of them are the type of tools where, upon using them, I never even realized I was missing. Some of the toolsets are simply a sort of remixing of the tools and palettes found in Photoshop, offering a very different and handy UI for accomplishing the same kinds of editing, touching up, print preparation and comparison tasks. If you haven't checked out a demo yet, I highly recommend you do (as long as you're on OS X; a Windows demo is still pending).

The differences and similarities of Lightroom to Bridge are very interesting, as I mentioned John Nack covers in one of his posts. First and foremost, I think, is Lightroom's use of an all-encompassing Library (in ~/Pictures/Lightroom) for organization, with not much in the way of a system file browser to be seen. Upon importing images to work with, you have the choice of leaving them in whatever folder structure they are stored, or you can copy/move them into Lightroom's library. This stands quite in contrast to Bridge's more "file browsing and organizing" approach, allowing you to browse the file system and add individual folders to a "favorites" list for easy retrieval. I'm not saying either system is bad or good; I just wanted to point it out for those who might have an organizational preference for one paradigm or the other.

But of course, Lightroom isn't really meant to be a pro version of Bridge - it's an image comparison and touch-up/editing tool, and at those tasks it excels. I think the new and remixed UI of editing tools is a dream to use. I honestly don't want to be gleaming with Lightroom appreciation here, but I haven't really run into any complaints yet. Of course, I'm not a six-figure photographer with gobs and gobs of images from photoshoots to crunch through, so I'm anxious to see more serious run-throughs from those more pro than I.
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Author: David Chartier | Category: comparison | More...
Lightroom listed in Macworld Magazine's "Best of Show" at MWSF 06 (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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TUAW has picked up on Macworld Magazine's "Best in Show" announcement, covering all the latest and greatest of the Macworld Expo 06 that's rounding up in San Francisco today. Among the new software, gadgets and gizmos named is Adobe's new Lightroom application, citing its complementary organizational nature to Photoshop and its friendly hardware requirements.

If you haven't checked out the beta of the Mac-only (for now) Lightroom, I'd recommend you grab a copy from Adobe Labs and give it a spin.
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Author: David Chartier | Category: Adobe Labs | More...
Adobe promptly releases Lightroom FAQ (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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PhotoshopNews has the lowdown on Adobe's quick move to release a Lightroom FAQ. The diverse FAQ tries to spearhead a lot of the initial questions that can arise from a new (beta) app like this, such as where Lightroom stands in the face of Bridge and Camera RAW, how Lightroom and Photoshop compare and more. Check out the article for answers to most, if not all, of the questions you have about Lightroom.
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Author: David Chartier | Category: Adobe | More...
Adobe unleashes beta of Lightroom, Aperture competitor, open for feedback (Fri, 21 Nov 2008)

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So everyone's picked up on Adobe's release of a beta of Lightroom, a new pro app for photography workflows, and you can pick up a copy from Adobe Labs. I caught a rather interesting post on John Nack's blog, however, that goes a bit more into detail and explains what they're really trying to do with Lightroom. Sure, it's admittedly a competitor to Aperture, but would you expect anything less from the king of desktop image editing and publishing?

John delves into who Lightroom is for and what exactly Adobe plans to do with it. He also opens up the door for submitting feedback, emphasizing again the app's main function and the fact that they're not going to build in every little bell, whistle, button and feature they can think of. The post is a good read on Adobe's latest offering, and there's even a Lightroom introductory movie (link to mov file) that's also available as a podcast via iTunes.

[UPDATE: Lightroom, at present, only runs on Mac OS X. A Windows version is in the works.]

[pic via TUAW]
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Author: David Chartier | Category: Aperture | More...
  

 
 
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