Adobe Lightroom

[Alan Schofield]

Hi All

As a wedding photographer who uses a couple of programmes ( Comupic & CS2 ) to alter each image, can anybody help me with a question about Adobe Lightroom

How will it benefit me if I was to purchase it

Thanks for your help

Alan

[videosean]

Do you make the same or very similar adjustments to every image you shoot?
Do you make the same or very similar adjustments to large groups of images?

I'm going to assume that you shoot 1000 images for a given wedding and I'm going to assume that at least 90% of them need to be tweaked in some way whether it be a color adjustment, things like the white balance not quite right, skin tones could be better, lighten for some more shadow detail, etc.

How long would it take for you to make those kinds of adjustments using CS2? I have no idea what comupic is. Given a decent Core2Duo machine I can confidently say I could burn through at least 300 images (making those kinds of adjustments to that many images will take MUCH longer using CS2 or CS3 on any hardware IMO) an hour using Lightroom... and I've only briefly played with it. I'm not a photographer but I like to know what's what with certain applications because I work with photographers (mostly event/wedding with a minimum of 800 images per shoot) all the time and I can easily see how it will benefit any pro photographer.

I haven't even gotten to how awesome the importing and sorting/management parts of Lightroom are - mainly because I haven't had a chance to really test it multiple times - but from what I've seen just looking at the settings and watching videos of people showing off how it works I'd pick it up in a heartbeat. I just don't NEED it at this time for what I'm doing.

http://www.photoshopuser.com/?page=lightroom/videos - start watching the videos there

LR does lag on the AMD 1800+ and P4 2.4GHz machines I've tried it on... which is where I get my opinion on wanting a new system for it. I get by with Picasa on my old hardware for now but Lightroom is MUCH more than an expensive version of Picasa.

[Doug Nelson]

That's a huge question. Your best bet is to download it and try it for a month:
http://www.adobe.com/go/trylightroom

Lightroom isn't about retouching individual photos. It's about sorting through 1000 RAW images, picking the best 100, adjusting the tone and balance of all 100 at the same time, tweaking a few spots here and there, then printing out the presentation for client review, all before lunch.

[Alan Schofield]

Thanks for your help guys

I will download a copy early next week & have a play, Then come back and ask more questions !

Alan