Adobe's Project Lightroom by Andrew Rodney

This is an exciting time for digital photographers as many software companies introduce new products aimed at this emerging market. While image processing applications like Adobe Elements and Photoshop have been around for years, the recent development of software products designed from the ground up for digital photography will forever change how you process your digital photographs. One example is a product from Adobe called Lightroom that was recently introduced as a public beta. You can download Lightroom for free and assist in shaping the development of what will eventually be a commercial product. If you’ve ever used Adobe Photoshop’s RAW processing plug-in, Camera RAW and Adobe’s browser, Bridge, you’ll have an idea of what Lightroom is all about. Lightroom is a small, relatively fast browser and RAW processing converter that can be used to keep track of all your images, correct them and output them in one application. Lightroom has five different modules that provide differing functionality for handling your digital images: Library, Develop, Slideshow, Web and Print. Each is used for a different task and generally, you’ll work in the order provided as you import, color correct and output your files.

The Library module is in some ways similar to Adobe Bridge (see figure 1). Here you can import your images, place them into folders (known as “shoots”), add keywords and use the browser to edit your best pics. Think of this as a digital light table where you can view your images, compare them to others, apply ratings, and select those images you may wish to correct and ultimately output. The Library module is used to find and organize all your images once imported and placed in the Lightroom library. While in the Library module, you can apply what are called Quick Develop settings; simple tone and color corrections to one or more images you select in the browser.

Figure 1. Here is the develop module which has resizable thumbnails in the center of the screen and a filmstrip at the bottom. The Quick Develop pane is seen to the right. To the left is where you can create as many “shoots” as you wish in order to organize your images. You can place the same image in multiple folders, however, Lightroom will keeps track and uses one original source file.

The Develop module is where you can do the heavy lifting with respect to image correction. There are a number of tools for controlling tone, color, B&W conversions, noise reduction and sharpening. While Lightroom can handle what are known as rendered images (files in TIFF, JPEG or PSD), at its heart, Lightroom is a RAW converter (see side bar). All corrections are global, meaning you apply tone, color and other corrections over the entire image. Unlike Photoshop, there are no selection tools to allow you to edit a potion of the image. Therefore, you would conduct all major tone and color corrections in Lightroom, render out a TIFF, or JPEG and then do the fine-tuning in Photoshop. In this respect, Lightroom is not a Photoshop replacement!

As the name suggests, the Sideshow module is where you can select any image in the library and create a slideshow. You have control over how long each image will appear in the slideshow and many options over how the images appear during the slideshow, such as the background color, the use of a drop shadow on each image and so forth. You can show your slideshow in Lightroom or export it as a PDF. The Web module is similar expect you can create a web page rather than a slideshow from any selected image in your library. Numerous options and templates are provided to control how you layout this web page.

The Print module is the location where you can select any image in your library and output the file (see figure 2). Note that you do not have to render the RAW files prior to printing but rather simply select the images and a template, which define the size and number of images to print. Lightroom will process the RAW data and print the image at the same time. This is a huge time saver. Additionally a Draft mode is ideal for printing large number of RAW files to a contact sheet or for small prints. With today’s high resolution digital cameras, there’s no reason to process a 30mb file simply to print thumbnails or contact sheets. With Draft mode, Lightroom can access multiple RAW data files and quickly render them to the ideal size for output. You could assign a different set of processing instructions and output the images many different ways without ever having to worry about degrading the original (RAW) data.

Figure 2. Here is the Print module. Using the filmstrip below, you can select as many images you wish to print and they will be inserted into a template you select to the left.

Lightroom is currently a public beta, meaning its feature incomplete and most certainly has bugs that need to be found and fixed. However, if you’re adventurous and wish to also aid in the development of this product, you should consider downloading the beta and supplying feedback to Adobe. A forum has been setup where you can tell Adobe what you’d like to see as the product evolves. To download the beta, go to http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/.

More information about RAW files
RAW files are essentially Grayscale data that represent the purest digital capture your camera can produce; the sensor dump, not the in-camera conversion that results when you ask for a JPEG. RAW files need to be converted from this unique format to what is known as a rendered image; a full color, full resolution file that can be saved as a TIFF, JPEG or other such file type. Working with RAW files has many advantages, namely a tremendous degree of control over the rendering of your images and the ability to make multiple iterations from the same data. Think of a RAW file like a color negative rather than a color transparency. When you use a RAW converter, you’re never actually altering the RAW data just as when you print from a color negative, you’re not altering a piece of film. This is quite different from editing a rendered file in Photoshop where all edits do alter the exiting pixels. RAW converters like Lightroom create an edit list, usually a small text file, which describes the corrections you wish to make to the RAW data when you render a full resolution image and save that version to disk. One advantage of instruction based editing is speed. You are not working on a full resolution pixel based file but rather a preview of the RAW data. Only when you ask the converter to render the file does the big processing task take place. Suppose you have a dozen similar images that all need the same tone and color correction. You can work with a single low-resolution thumbnail and apply corrections to your liking. You’re simply creating a small text file that contains the processing instructions after which you could select the other 11 images and apply identical correction instructions to each. This happens in an instant and the other thumbnails will update showing the corrections on screen. You could then decide to batch process all 12 files using this one instruction set and ask the converter to render all to disk as a TIFF file. You can walk away or work on other files as the converter renders and saves your images to disk. You could then create a totally new set of instructions, say a color to B&W conversion and process a new set of files from the original RAW data. Rather than opening a dozen high resolution files and editing each one by hand in Photoshop, this kind of instruction based editing is fast, flexible and it never damages or touches your original RAW data. This is the wave of the future of image processing.