Lightroom-News.com

Source: Lightroom Journal

Lightroom Evangelist George Jardine has written the launch post of the new blog for the Lightroom Team: Lightroom Journal. It promises to be an interesting and useful resource.

“Welcome to the official Adobe Photoshop Lightroom blog! This is the place where you will find all the inside information, tips, techniques, and hidden secrets you need to help you get the most out of Lightroom, made available to you straight from the horse’s mouth: the Lightroom team. Once in a while, you may also find links to web photo galleries posted here, as most of the team members are accomplished photographers in their own right. Knowing this crew, there will also be a healthy dose of random, but related posts about all things digital and photographic. But mostly it will just be a place for you to follow the inner thinking of the team, as we work our way toward making Lightroom better and better with each daily build. Thanks for helping us make it great. And please feel free to leave us a comment or suggestion.”

Source: Bluefire Blog

Bluefire Blog have published a series of tips and tricks on how to customize Web template designs in Lightroom. Click on the links to go directly to the link pages to read more about each tip.

Customizing Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 Flash Galleries with XML
The controls within the Web tab allow you to customize the Lightroom Flash Gallery templates in a lot of ways. However, you can customize them much further by editing the XML files that are generated when you export a gallery. This requires almost no knowledge of Flash or HTML, and can be done with almost any text editor.

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Source: ars technica
Author: Dave Girard

Dave Girard has just published a lengthy review of Lightroom version 1.0 and in this review he has provided test comparisons and observations on how well the raw processing in Lightroom compares to Aperture, Capture One Pro and Bibble Pro.

In search of the perfect workflow

Professional digital photography has been a reality for a while now but the big-name developers have been slow to catch up. With different software like iViewMedia Pro or Photo Mechanic filling in the missing pieces of file organizing and metadata editing workflow and different apps providing the ability to do quality RAW conversion, it’s a relatively new thing to have one program that does it all and does it well

With Apple’s Aperture and now Adobe’s Llghtroom, it seems the big boys are finally ready to fight over who is going to be at the center of the digital creative arena. But Adobe isn’t playing copycat here—and I think their release of a public beta was an attempt to send that message. It was pretty clear when the beta was released that this is not just a slapped-together product—Adobe’s had this in the works for a while.

Adobe Evangelist George Jardine has uploaded Podcast #28 to his iDisk. It features Lightroom UI designer Phil Clevenger, Lightroom Creator Mark Hamburg and User Researcher Grace Kim. It should be available in iTunes soon or via the Lightroom Podcast RSS feed.

From the show notes:
“I think pretty much any software has a personality, but a lot of times it’s something that one sort of stumbles into, and people don’t think about that as part of the design process. When I started the project, I wanted to do something that was more visually interesting, for example, than Photoshop, and tried some directions in that regard. And I did bad KPT imitations.” – Mark Hamburg

The upgrade path from a Beta Library is fraught with peril. Not really, but it does require patience and understanding, especially if you have a large Library.
I’ve prepared a video as I do a jump from Beta 4 to V1. Before you begin your upgrade, please read the Readme and help files. Heed the warnings about upgrading therein. Unhide all image files and Import all Photo Binders into the B4.1 Library before starting. On that note, upgrade previous Libraries to B4.1 also. The process will backup the B4 library, in the event of a failure. To aid you in your upgrade here is the video: Library Upgrade Video.

Tom Hogarty has placed the Pixmantec RawShooter Premium FAQ on the Adobe User to User Forums

“Q: When will Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 be available for RawShooter Premium customers?
A: The Photoshop Lightroom offer email for RawShooter Premium customers will be distributed by February 23rd with instructions on how to obtain a free downloadable copy of Lightroom 1.0.

Lightroom Version 1.0 is now shipping. You can find out more about the product by visiting the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom product page, where you can also purchase Lightroom 1.0 now at a special discount price of $199 US (for local price variations proceed with the purchase via the online store). But if you wish to try out Lightroom first before buying, the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 30 day trial is available now online.

For more information about Lightroom, do check out all the Lightroom tutorials that have been posted so far to this site. On the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom product page there is an FAQ section that will answer most of your questions about this new program. Over on LightroomExtra.com, Sid Jervis has also compiled a comprehensive FAQ page with trouble shooting tips for Lightroom users.

Source: Lightroom Blog
Author: Sean McCormack

As we were painfully aware throughout the Beta cycle, there was no way to add borders or frames to our precious prints in Lightroom, bar a 20 pt stroke. Well through the genius of Andreas Norén, we have found and tested a way. Sid Jervis up at Lightroom Extra has detailed one way of doing it. Here I present a way to do it in Print, without affecting your current ID Plate (that’s the clue!). I’m also including my frame for you to test this.

But what about the 60px limit on Graphical ID Plates I hear you ask. Well this is not an image limit, it a size limit based on the height of the ID Plate in the Module picker. Bigger than this and the ID Plate will not fit. But as we’re not using it this way, the size doesn’t matter.

Side note: I edited this in Garageband, but it threw a hissy fit so I’ve left in my patented ‘Okays’ and left out the new little jingle I wrote :(.
Update: I managed to figure a way to get rid of most of them, but no new jingle :)

The second part of the Since1968.com interview is now online. In this part Mark covers the reason Lightroom started out on the Mac and covers why 40% of the program is written in Lua. “I’m primarily a Mac user, and as it happens a lot of people on the initial team were primarily Mac people. We’ve now got some hardcore Windows users on the team for balance. We started out doing what was much more a research project, though, and it seemed sensible to only focus on doing one platform first.”

Although this part of the interview is more about the development environment of Lightroom, there are still some gems for the average Lightroom user. “One of the really surprising features for me in Lightroom came out of the Print module. It starts with doing the basic grid work, but combining extreme grids with the “zoom to fill” options start to push you toward discovering new way of looking at your images and new layouts that wouldn’t have been expected on our part.”

George Jardine has released a new podcast, with Maki Kawakita. It can be downloaded by searching for Lightroom in the iTunes Music Store or from his iDisk.

“Adobe Lightroom Podcast #27: Maki Kawakita

This podcast was recorded on Friday December 15th, 2006, in New York City. In this podcast, Maki talks about how her background in Japanese dance and theater has inspired the dramatic look of her colorful fashion photography. Maki currently works and lives in New York City. She also shoots assignments and has exhibitions of her artwork in both Europe and Japan.