Adobe Releases Photoshop Lightroom 4, Slashes Price in Half to $149

They feel the breath of Aperture's price point.

Way to go Adobe!

It's a shame Adobe doesn't have as much competition for its other apps.

ipad 3 just tomorrow. Imagine...

An Aperture app for the new iPad would be fantastic. PixelSync is good but limited, if Apple could do something similar with tethering to the iPad it would become really useful.

I've always wondered why the education upgrade price is the same as the normal upgrade price...

Mike Oxard said:

An Aperture app for the new iPad would be fantastic. PixelSync is good but limited, if Apple could do something similar with tethering to the iPad it would become really useful.

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Yes! I'd love to be able to at least browse through my Aperture library on my iPad...!

Aperture for iPad = Filterstorm Pro

scott911 said:

I've always wondered why the education upgrade price is the same as the normal upgrade price...

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Because that's Adobe's "Kook Aid" indoctrination route: get the creative to buy into their tool while they're still in school, and then they'll be buying upgrades forever.


-hh

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Now everyone's photos can stand out from the crowd!

Wait...

Here in the UK the price with box is £103.00 or $162.00, sorry Adobe, I'm sticking with Aperture, you're propensity for ripping people off continues unabated.

I know this might be controversial and I'm not trying to stir up the ages old Aperture vs Lightroom debate, but I imagine there are other reasons for the price change other than Aperture, and I imagine the same price point will be applied on the Windows version where Aperture does not exist.

I have used both pieces of software (I now use iPhoto) and I have to say that while LR bugged me with some things it did, Aperture had far more significant problems. When I got Aperture it had added photo books support, and it was so buggy and slow that it was literally impossible to use without having it crash after long periods of beachballs. Updates came and did not address it, after a while I suppose it was fixed but I had certainly lost interest at that point. Sharing photos was/(still is?) pathetically complicated. The performance of the whole suite was ridiculously poor. The machine I used Aperture on (same as LR) was 2.4ghz MBP with 8GB of RAM and the photo library was large-ish but <50GB. None of this happened with any version or BETA of LR .. far from being an Adobe fan, I at least respect that they do reasonable verification of their software that they sell (for insane pricing)

I will be jumping on this right away... been a user of Lightroom since the first beta and love it. I can safely say it has saved me hundreds of hours processing my images as a sports photographer. If you are a photography and don't see value in Lightroom, you probably don't know how to use it properly. If that's the case, I'd encourage you to check out some video tutorials because it really is a huge productivity tool for photography. I'm sure Aperture provides similar capabilities, but I've never used it and prefer to stay in Adobe for when I do need to bounce to Photoshop, which is extremely rare with Lightroom 3, and will be even more infrequent with LR 4.

I have always flat out refused to pay adobe's prices.
Now if they price Photoshop and Illustrator at points that don't make me wet myself laughing they might get some of my money.

Hardtimes said:

I have always flat out refused to pay adobe's prices.
Now if they price Photoshop and Illustrator at points that don't make me wet myself laughing they might get some of my money.

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To be fair, Photoshop Elements is a great product for non-pro users & is priced very reasonably.

Adobe knows Apple is getting market share and they should compete.

I went to Lightroom website and guess what? Now the videos play in h264 and not the crap Flash!

Tried to stay away from Adobe products (resource hog, installs crap everywhere, activation problems, meaningless "upgrades"...). IMHO, thanks to Apple they're improving. Lightroom has a more competitive price, installation is neat (easy) and Lightroom seems like a good product. I'm happy with Aperture but maybe I'll try Lightroom if enough positive reviews comparing to Aperture appears.

Photoshop and Illustrator should be sold at this price.

I don't think that the price change is due to anything from Apple. I think it has more to do with their upcoming strategy with CS6 which undoubtedly will be released this year. I'll be upgrading to LR4 when I get home from work. I've had Photoshop since version 1 but I may finally let photoshop go over time and just focus on Lightroom, Nik Tools, and onOne. Covers 98% of what I need.

Regardless, the price decrease is welcome and should bring in a lot of new people. Yet it's still funny to see people complain about a price DECREASE! lol

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That is a smokin price point

-hh said:

Because that's Adobe's "Kook Aid" indoctrination route: get the creative to buy into their tool while they're still in school, and then they'll be buying upgrades forever.


-hh

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ok - I can "buy" that argument - but while the student is STILL in school, I think it makes sense to have a discounted upgrade price. just my two cents...

Macman45 said:

Here in the UK the price with box is £103.00 or $162.00, sorry Adobe, I'm sticking with Aperture, you're propensity for ripping people off continues unabated.

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LR3 was nearly £200 a few months ago. So not ripping off as much as it used to be. The price is actually nearer £80 when you exclude VAT.

Writing as an Aperture 1.0 devotee to now, an open letter to Apple:

Do you or do you not want to transform Photography? (Was this one of the 4 areas Steve noted?) I see what you've done with music, communication, and soon TV/video. But I'm not feeling that the push is there to innovate in photography. Everything seems reactive and second-thought now. At the photo trade shows and conferences, Lightroom is *assumed* to be the tool you are using. (There are only the occasional Aperture speakers; Apple is a no-show.)

If you've got $100B in the bank, why not commit $1B to the development of image processing upgrades and services. Keep the AP development team large and healthy, not at the expense of other divisions but hire and develop specialized talent. Deploy the multi-user server-hosted Aperture library with the remote (iDevice/Mac) editor capability. Make it faster, more sleek. Get camera updates pushed out first, and keep the RAW engine overhauled regularly. Bottom line: Make it utterly seamless to store, edit, and use our images (and videos) across our devices with a central library. Take the professional's needs (all of them) utterly seriously, not just provide templates for press books.

Do you not notice there constant buzz in the Adobe community and deafening silence among the dwindling Aperture users? I prefer to keep using Aperture, but 3rd party tools are increasingly geared to LR/PS integration for professional work, which puts me at a competitive disadvantage. Is this not utterly unacceptable to the company that produced the first full Photo Management & Processing product?

Feel free to contact me via my site. Thank you,

Still too expensive.

I don't really know anything about photo software, so go easy on me...

So what's the difference between Elements and Lightroom? Similar pricing, both seem to be aimed at a similar user...what's the real difference, which is a better choice for a basic consumer user, and why do they have the two different apps instead of just making them one?

And for higher end users, would they still have use for this or is this functionality included in the full Photoshop?