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Lightroom2 (BETA) — First look (by Brian Vincent)
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As my review on LIGHTROOM went to press, I noticed that Adobe had just released
version 2 (beta). According to Adobe, the new version adds :-
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Localised corrections — Enhance specific areas of an image for unsurpassed
nondestructive flexibility and control, reminiscent of the traditional darkroom
dodge and burn experience.
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Improved organizational tools — Find the images you need quickly and easily.
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Multiple monitor support — Add an additional monitor to efficiently manage
photographic workflow and presentation.
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Flexible print package functionality — Create custom layouts containing
multiple sizes of a photograph on a single page.
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64-bit support — Lightroom 2.0 now takes advantage of the latest
hardware architectures, with improved memory handling and performance.
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The new feature which most catches my attention is the additional tools
for performing localised corrections. Without doubt, dodge and burn
makes Lightroom 2 far more useful, by potentially reducing the necessity to
switch to an external editor for simple photo enhancements.
A small cosmetic change
is that the tools for localised correction have been moved to the right hand
side panel, which was formerly the exclusive preserve of the entire-photo
editing tools. A disadvantage is that this requires even more scrolling
activity (and collapsing of the editing tool panels) to access the editing tools,
particularly on small monitors. Anticipating that Adobe would have recognised
this, I was hoping that the new multiple monitor support would provide
an option to configure one monitor to display all of the editing options at one go,
i.e. without having to scroll. Unless I'm badly mistaken, this has not been
provided. Indeed, looking at the discussion forum, there seems to be a raging
debate about a lack of "tear-off panels", which presumably is getting at much
the same thing.
What the multiple monitor support does provide, is four alternative
viewing options for the central viewing area, which operate independently
of the main screen. The viewing options are
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Grid — which displays thumbnails to the full size of the screen.
Also provides filter options.
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Loupe — which shows one selected image
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Compare —which allows two different images to be compared side by side
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Survey — which I don't yet fully understand !
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And, as you would expect from a Beta, Lightroom 2 also crashes from time to time !
I now need to break away from "first impressions", and study this new version more
seriously. This review will be updated as soon as possible, with a target
date of mid-April.
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