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Adobe Announces Lightroom Beta, Aperture Competitor

bretm said:
They have always made software because they were always the underdog to Windows based machines. In the last 5 years or so they had to truly become a software company BECAUSE they are a hardware company that software developers were quickly not fully supporting. Companies like Avid, which used to only run on Apple, were fully switching to Windows and actually toying with the idea of leaving Apple. Apples chip manufacturers were doing squat, and Apple had to create reasons for loyalty.

Now, they are a software, hardware, and of course gadget company. And I'd argue they do all 3 better than companies that only do 1.
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Well said... Apple is as successful as it is because of the software they create. If a 3rd party app isn't as good as it should be, then why shouldn't Apple create a better competing product?

I'm sure Apple has sold a ton of hardware just because of Final Cut Pro.
 
I am very impressed with this software. I have laptops doing most of the on site touch-up work and this screams compared to Aperture on the desktops.
So far so good, great job adobemedia.
-nx
 
*puts on flame-proof suit*

This might be a stupid question, but what does one use Lightroom/Aperture for? I saw the release of Aperture and didn't look much further after seeing the price and system requirements. I've downloaded Lightroom and played around with it a bit out of curiosity. (BTW, it seems to run just fine on my iBook G4 1.42GHz with only 512MB ram -- a few points where it eemed to slow down a bit, but nothing unusable).

I guess the question should have been what does a product like this offer that Photoshop or iPhoto doesn't? Is the strength in Lightroom/Aperture simply the bulk-processing capabilities for adjusting the exposures, etc? What other benefit is there to using this type of product vs. using iPhoto and Photoshop?
 
kugino said:
- there is rotate right and left (in response to an above comment that there wasn't)
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I think that was my comment. I was referring to rotating to an arbitrary angle, not just multiples of 90 degrees. That and cropping are nice features in Aperture (and even iPhoto) that Lightroom does not yet implement. From what I've been reading so far, that's an area they do intend to address.
- loupe view isn't as nice as aperture's (from what i've seen in demos), but works fine.
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The one in Aperture looks cool in demos, buy try it out. The "eyepiece" flips around if you get too close to the screen edge, which can be horribly distracting. It's a little to cutesy for its own good.
- scrolling through grid view is a little sticky, but a faster processor should help load the thumbnails faster (or a faster graphics card?)
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It seems nice and smooth even on the wimpy boxes here. Are you trying this while it's still generating thumbnails? That will bog down everything, and it seems to generate them in the same seemingly random order as Bridge :(
 
iBS23 said:
*puts on flame-proof suit*

This might be a stupid question, but what does one use Lightroom/Aperture for? I saw the release of Aperture and didn't look much further after seeing the price and system requirements. I've downloaded Lightroom and played around with it a bit out of curiosity. (BTW, it seems to run just fine on my iBook G4 1.42GHz with only 512MB ram -- a few points where it eemed to slow down a bit, but nothing unusable).

I guess the question should have been what does a product like this offer that Photoshop or iPhoto doesn't? Is the strength in Lightroom/Aperture simply the bulk-processing capabilities for adjusting the exposures, etc? What other benefit is there to using this type of product vs. using iPhoto and Photoshop?
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Using raw in iPhoto is pretty useless since it is impossible to adjust the raw to jpeg conversion (the point of using raw in the first place is to be able to influence that conversion).

For me as an amateur and to simplify things a lot, Aperture is basically iPhoto on steroids, albeit a lot of steroids.
 
Nothing to get excited about!!!

Adobe's Answer to iPhoto not Aperture.

Downloaded the beta and seriously it's more comparable to iPhoto than Aperture folks. It falls short of providing the working environment that Aperture does and is slightly better than iPhoto in the color and editing controls. The printing options in Aperture and iPhoto are far superior.

Adobe has a lot of work to do if they want this to be on the same level as Aperture.
 
Yeah, I was kind of curious what this stuff actually does. Does it organize (like iPhoto), and give you the ablity to change things like contrast and what not (like Photoshop)?

I think i'm going to download and play, just to see.
 
Lightroom v. Aperture

I have been using Aperture for a few weeks now and have to admit, at first it was a little daunting, but once I figurd out the workflow and the new approach to photo organization, it is like nothing else I have used before. It is revolutionary software. Indeed it has its flaws, but it is verswion one and Final Cur Pro was also problematic when it first came out, now it is the leader in its field.


I downloaded Lighroom from the Macromedia website and opened it up. Yeah it opens fast, and has a simple interface, but is miles behind what you can do with Aperture. The first thing I noticed was that I could find no stacking feature, one of the Aperture essentials. Secondly, the so called Loupe feature in lightroom is basically just a zoom tool, with less control. Compare two pics with lightroom and try to run a loupe over them and you will get my point. Try the same thing in Aperture ans see why they introduced the Loupe tool in the first place.

I stopped using Lightroom at this point. Seems to me like it miust have been a Macromedia program designed to compete with Adobe Bridge that was scrapped when the company got into trouble and was bought by Adobe. It is nowhere near as full featured as Aperture and looks like it was hortwn together in about two hours. I know it is a public beta but I suggest Adobe is worried about Pros switching to Apple for Photography and don't like i one bit. This seems like a half baked frantic reaction by Adobe to try to block Aperture from being successful.



my 2 cents


Matt
 
bretm said:
Let's not be so dense here. If you hadn't noticed, Apple is one of the major competitors in Multimedia Creation software. With FCP being second in the marketplace only to Avid (if they're not first actually) and they probably lead the pack in DVD with DVD Studio Pro.

They have always made software because they were always the underdog to Windows based machines. In the last 5 years or so they had to truly become a software company BECAUSE they are a hardware company that software developers were quickly not fully supporting. Companies like Avid, which used to only run on Apple, were fully switching to Windows and actually toying with the idea of leaving Apple. Apples chip manufacturers were doing squat, and Apple had to create reasons for loyalty.
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Hmm. I'll try not to be so dense in the future. I did happen to notice that Apple is a major competitor in the Multimedia Creation software arena because I may be "dense" but I don't live in a cave. However, what you failed to notice in my post - as demonstrated by your line "In the last 5 years or so they had to truly become a software company BECAUSE they are a hardware company that software developers were quickly not fully supporting." is that I acknowledged Apple's need to fill holes that it's software developers were not willing/able to fix. I was specifically stating that if Adobe had plans to support this, it should have been left to them.

Adobe doesn't have huge quantities of profits coming in from hardware sales to support it's software division like Apple does. Do we really want to live in a world where all of our software comes only from Apple? Would that truly lend itself to marketshare growth? If Apple and it's developers agree (like Adobe killing Premiere for the Mac in light of FCP or Microsoft killing IE in light of Safari) then fine. But it doesn't seem like this was the case this time and I don't think it's too healthy for a company with multiple revenue streams to undercut the development of one of it's vendors with two. It happened before... When Microsoft cut Netscape's throat.

How long before Adobe, Quark, and Microsoft all suddenly say, "Fine Apple. You make it. We can no longer justify the cost to support the development for your platform."

Sean
 
mdriftmeyer said:
My instincts tell me this is an ObjC++ wrapped in Cocoa interfaces to leverage the minimum necessary Cocoa qualified label and their graphics routines are just C++ so they can port it to Windows with C# Interfaces for Vista. Makes sense for their markets.
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Or, maybe, Adobe knows something about Apple relaunching the yellow box - i.e. Cocoa for Windows.

A man can dream, anyway. :)

-vga4life
 
iBS23 said:
This might be a stupid question, but what does one use Lightroom/Aperture for?
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It will depend on who uses it, but from my point of view they're for "auditioning." 8,493 photos are dumped in my lap, and I need 4 or 5. A few of them might be just right if only they were a little more (fill in the blank). Programs like this offer a faster way to flip through the mess, check out the interesting ones, twiddle the knobs to see if they can be just right, and put them into a package so that we have more free time to waste in meetings debating details that no one in the real world will ever notice.
 
dansgil said:
Why didn't Adobe make it Universal Binary? If they're making a new app with the Intel Transition so close, why not make it compatible with current and future macs?
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Maybe that's why it's still in Beta. They wanted to rush a product out so we'll consider this over Aperature. With the official release, it'll be a universal binary one.
 
Ripoff!

I LOVE Adobe but this is just a straight ripoff of Aperture, it even looks and works the same, except not nearly as good. I don't care that they built a competing product but come up with something unique. It's obvious that they threw and early beta out there just to get the word out to the photo community so they didn't rush out and buy Aperture.

Many of you get mad at Microsoft when they ripoff Apples technology, I hope you get as mad at Adobe.

The thing that bugs me about Adobe is that they will put any product on the market that they think will make them money without much thought to how their products work together or where there's overlaps. Wasn't Bridge supposed to be their file management tool?
 
Captain Canuck said:
Adobe's Answer to iPhoto not Aperture.

Downloaded the beta and seriously it's more comparable to iPhoto than Aperture folks. It falls short of providing the working environment that Aperture does and is slightly better than iPhoto in the color and editing controls. The printing options in Aperture and iPhoto are far superior.

Adobe has a lot of work to do if they want this to be on the same level as Aperture.
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I guess this is the point of my question re what do you use it for. In the brief playing I did with Lightroom, it seems like a more limited version of iPhoto (limitied in that some features are missing like red eye removal) that is really designed to organize your RAW files effectively while adding the ability to make "exposure" type adjustments. For every other type of adjustment, you need to go to photoshop.

How is Aperture different? Is it essentially iPhoto with support for RAW? I assume you "professional" users still go to Photoshop for some adjustments (blemish removal for example)?
 
Curious

Does anyone else find it curious that on the day that Apple announced Aperture, there were some blogs about it but not much else? Compare that to the first day of Lightroom, and there are videos and tutorials and full reviews all over the place!

So, while Adobe's spies knew Aperture was coming, they probably didn't know the details until very close to the announcement date. OTOH, Apple's spies probably knew a lot about Lightroom long before it was released. This gives Apple an ample opportunity to respond to the threat.

To get to my point:

Does anyone think Apple's response tomorrow will be one or the other (or both) of:

1. Aperture 1.1/1.5 with better performance, more raw files (OS X 10.4.4), and more features

2. iPhoto '06 with significantly more power

??
 
Having been terrified by the shortcomings of aperture when i got it, i'm quite relieved to see that there is at least some competiton. i was starting to regret switching from iView Pro 3.

To those saying that this is a lame attempt to copy apple, you've clearly not been paying attention to adobe for very long. Look how many years it took them to get indesign to it's current state...they couldn't have "just whipped this out" when they heard rumors of Aperture.

Apple, on the other hand, seems quite capable of doing massive, ground-breaking projects in months where other company's take years...which tells me that it's more likely the timeline was thus:

• Adobe aquires macromedia, along with an alpha version of a program that is now known as Lightroom.
• a little birdy mentions the concept of this program to someone on Infinity Loop, some time in the last year or so.
• Apple decides to beat adobe to launch, starts the Aperture project and decides to put a lot into making it a "big deal" pro app.
• Adobe first finds out about Aperture only this fall, probably right before the public found out. They put a big rush on the Lightroom project to try and control the damage.
• Aperture ships. With bugs. (what's up with the crappy RAW conversions, by the way?) No Curves. Fake histogram (google it). No RGB point values. No zooming beyond actual pixels. I could go on.
• Adobe decides to release a beta for free and let the community have come control over what happens with development.
 
bikertwin said:
... Does anyone think Apple's response tomorrow will be one or the other (or both) of:

1. Aperture 1.1/1.5 with better performance, more raw files (OS X 10.4.4), and more features

2. iPhoto '06 with significantly more power

??
Click to expand...

iLife'06 is "expected", I think it means iPhoto'06 with it.

I really like iPhoto, but for 1) its slowness sometimes and 2) a couple of bugs (like the thumbnails not always changing to the edited photo, or twisted, or also the software crashing a little too often).

If it is properly fixed in iPhoto'06, and there's a couple of goodies more (but not to the level of Aperture, of course), I'll be happy :)

Maybe that's the real threat for Adobe, more than Aperture ?
Isn't it all a matter of how-expensive this Lightroom would be in the end ?
 
Arnaud said:
iLife'06 is "expected", I think it means iPhoto'06 with it.

Maybe that's the real threat for Adobe, more than Aperture ?
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Yeah, when I said "iPhoto 06 with significantly more power," I really meant significantly more power. But not to the extent of Aperture, which will only get more powerful over time.

iPhoto '05 was a pretty wimpy upgrade. Here's hoping iPhoto '06 will be a significant upgrade.
 
iMeowbot said:
A little more information from Adobe's John Nack on why they are doing what they are doing.
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Thanks for the link.

Gives good insight (maybe just corporate-speak) as to the reasoning on a public beta. Just look at some of the negative comments about Aperture 1.0, and saying wait till you see the improved versions down the road.

Here it seems that Adobe is giving us the core that it feels is needed. And they want to hear from us as to what we really feel is missing from Lightroom, before giving us bloat-ware.

From Nack's comments, it looks like they are looking at a $400 price tag.

Q. What will it cost?
A. We believe there's a sweet spot between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop, and we expect Lightroom to come in between those tools.
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This Thing Is Amazing

For the pro photographer this thing is amazing, a near perfect application that integrates PERFECTLY with Photoshop. It does all that Aperture does, and what it doesnt do, you do in Photoshop, which most people will do in Photoshop anyway. Its fast, easy to use and works great. I played with Aperture at the Apple store for about an hour, almost bought it, but the RAW conversion is inferior to anything out there, so professionally I can't use it yet, I have been using the Nikon software, then importing to Photoshop. If Apple does not fix a few things, like the RAW conversion, and the library, then I will be using this as my RAW convertor.
 
iBS23 said:
I guess this is the point of my question re what do you use it for. In the brief playing I did with Lightroom, it seems like a more limited version of iPhoto (limitied in that some features are missing like red eye removal) that is really designed to organize your RAW files effectively while adding the ability to make "exposure" type adjustments. For every other type of adjustment, you need to go to photoshop.

How is Aperture different? Is it essentially iPhoto with support for RAW? I assume you "professional" users still go to Photoshop for some adjustments (blemish removal for example)?
Click to expand...

For photos shot in RAW format, which you do to get the best results, you need a GOOD RAW converter. So the first step after transfering files from the card is to sort through them, pick out the winning shots, and convert them to a usable format, PSD, TIFF, JPG, etc. The best time to do exposure , color, and white balance adjustments is at this step when you are working with the most data and dynamic range. iPhoto is awful at this. Slow, clumsy, not a very good RAW conversion. Aperture looks amazing and does a ton of stuff, but its RAW converter is still not up to par witrh Nikon, Capture One, and Adobe Camera Raw (which is the RAW converter in Lightshop). I just did a shoot and faster than I have ever done, I did all my adjustments and selections. Now from here you import into Photoshop and do your major adjustments, blemish removal, etc....But in any case you NEED a good RAW converter as a first step. Up to now, there has not been a universal first step, you usually used the siftware theat came with your camera, but the usually had its shortcomings....Lightroom is as close to the perfect solution as there is. Aperture does more, because it adds some of the editing functions of Photoshop, but if you use Photoshop, Lightroom is the perfect companion at this point. The ball is in Apple's court now.
 
Not a patch on Aperture

I've been using aperture since release and initially put the time in learning all the new tools. Trying out lightroom this evening illustrates to me just how 'right' apple have got it with aperture. Adobe have got a really hard task ahead of them if they want to come anywhere close to the excellent tool that is aperture.

Lightroom has the potential to be a great product. In it's current extremely basic form it doesn't even come close to aperture's highly polished GUI, ease of use and performance. I suspect adobe will have a great product but aperture will have the edge and be the discerning choice among pro's.

My 2pence worth...
 
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