Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a photography software program developed by Adobe Systems for Mac OS Xand Microsoft Windows, designed to assist users in managing large quantities of digital images and doing post production work. Lightroom combines photo management and editing in one interface. [1]
It is not a file browser like Adobe Bridge, but rather an image management application database which helps in viewing, editing, and managing digital photos. Lightroom's closest competitor is Apple's Aperture program which similarly provides photo management and non-destructive editing capabilities.
Beta development
On January 9, 2006, an early version of Photoshop Lightroom, previously just called Lightroom, was released to the public as a Macintosh-only public Beta, on the Adobe Labs website. This was the first Adobe product released to the general public for feedback during its development. This method was then later used in the development of Adobe Photoshop CS3.
On June 26, 2006, Adobe announced that it had acquired the technology assets of Pixmantec, developers of the Rawshooter image processing software.[4]
Further Beta releases followed. Notable releases included Beta 3 on July 18, 2006, which added support for Microsoft Windows systems. On September 25, 2006, Beta 4 was released, which saw the program merged into the Photoshop product range, followed by a minor update on October 19, which was released as Beta 4.1.
[edit]Version 1.0
On January 29, 2007, Adobe announced that Lightroom would be shipping on February 19, 2007. The US list price was $299 and the UK retail price was £199.
Lightroom v1.x is not updated when an upgrade to v2 is installed; a new serial number is required.
[edit]Version 2.0
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Beta was advertised in official emails from Adobe in April 2008. New features included:
- Localized corrections (edit specific parts of an image)
- Improved organization tools
- Multiple monitor support
- Flexible printing options
- 64-bit support
The official release of Lightroom v2 was on July 29, 2008, along with the release of Adobe Camera Raw v4.5 and DNG Converter 4.5. Adobe added DNG Camera Profiling to both releases. This technology allows custom camera colour profiles, or looks, to be created and saved by the user. It also allows profiles matching the creative styles built in to cameras to be replicated. Adobe released a complete set of such Camera Profiles for Nikon and Canon models, in addition to basic Standard Profiles for all supported makes and models, through Adobe Labs, at the same time as the Lightroom v2 release. This technology is open to all programs compliant with the DNG file format standard.
[edit]Version 3.0
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 beta was released on October 22, 2009. New features included:[5]
- New chroma noise reduction
- Improved sharpening tool
- New import pseudo module
- Watermarking
- Grain
- Publish services
- Custom package for print
On March 23, 2010, Adobe released a second beta, which added the following features:
- New luminance noise reduction
- Tethered shooting for selected Nikon and Canon cameras
- Basic video file support
- Point curve
Although not included in any beta release, version 3 also contains built-in lens correction and perspective control.[6]
The final version was released on June 8, 2010 with no major new functionality added. It had all the features included in the betas, added the lens corrections and perspective transformations and a few more improvements and performance optimizations.
[edit]Version 4.0
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.0 was released on March 5, 2012. It does not support Windows XP. New features included:
- Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.
- Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.[7]
- Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.
- White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.
- Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.
- Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.
- Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr.
- Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
- Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.
[edit]Features
Unlike traditional image editing software, Photoshop Lightroom is focused on the following workflow steps:
- Library – image collection review and organization - similar in concept to the 'Organizer' in Adobe Photoshop Elements
- Develop – non-destructive RAW and JPEG file editing
- Slideshow – tools and export features
- Print – layout options and preferences
- Web – automatic gallery creation and upload
- Tethered Capture Support for many popular Nikon and Canon DSLRs[8]
The Develop module has a number of standard presets for colour correction or effects and supports the sharing of custom presets online. Another often used feature in the Develop module is the ability to synchronize the edits from one particular photo to the whole selection.