Adobe Lightroom: a non-review
The title pokes a little fun at Michael Reichmann's 'Non-review' of Apple's Aperture conducted in 2005. At that time Aperture was in its Version 1.0 form, and Adobe Lightroom did not exist, although Michael announced that he was on a team testing a Lightroom prototype. It is no secret that Lightroom was a hastily prepared answer to Aperture, and even though Lightroom has recently limped out of beta form 2 years after Aperture's release it still feels like software that is not ready for prime time. To underscore all this we've got the 2 day old and much ballyhooed announcement of Lightroom v1.1. The embarrassing part is, of course, that they could have just as easily announced it as, "we've just finished copying some of Aperture's features, so Lightroom should be slightly less lame". The update's biggest claim to fame is that you can now add metadata to multiple images using a 'spray-can'. There have been some other improvements, especially in the UI department. There is a new function in the 'develop module' known as a 'clarity' tool. It is a special sharpening tool which gives a more 3D effect to images. The demonstration was quite impressive.
The main problem that I have with Lightroom is that it cannot handle files with dimensions of larger than 10,000 pixels across. Trinidad Dreamscape's 8x10 inch transparency scans easily exceed this limit by a factor of 4. And we're talking about a flatbed scan here. Essentially, Lightroom's database can't even handle a high resolution 35mm scan! There was also a problem of importing .PSD files into Lightroom. We had a number of "non-compatible file format" protests. Excuse me? ADOBE Lightroom has compatibility problems with ADOBE Photoshop files?! The files in question were created in Photoshop 7.0.
Lightroom is easier to use than Aperture. Aperture has a steep learning curve, and has a very advanced file-catalogueing and metadata system. Woe unto you if you try Aperture without reading the manual. Lightroom's 'develop' module is excellent, and quite intuitive to use. Aperture, on the other hand, has a just as advanced a system but many functions are buried in submenus, and it takes some experimentation to figure out what some controls actually do. Lightroom locks the user into a sequential editing sequence divided up into modules. In Aperture, the editing can occur in any view, at any time.
At the end of the day, for digital shooters, 'Aperture' vs. 'Lightroom' is turning out to be more of a 'Canon' vs. 'Nikon' debate rather than anything else. That is, too similar to waste time quibbling about. Oh, and in case you were not clear, both Lightroom and Aperture are NOT replacements for a competent image editor like Photoshop.
- June 2007.