Dear members: This week Adobe announced the release of Lightroom beta 4 for download. I have followed Adobe's development of Lightroom since its beta version 1 and have found the application quite interesting. Adobe seems to have embraced some of the design concepts behind Apple's Aperture but improve upon them to create a truly interesting application. In my opinion Lightroom is a step in the right direction. I don't know how many of your noticed it but with version 4 Adobe seems to be finally displaying a little more about its intentions in regards to Lightroom - it calls the program "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom beta 4" this time. So it becomes clear (or does it?) that Adobe intends Lightroom to be the new Photoshop CS3 scheduled to be released on fall of the next year. There are a few things that puzzle me. First I don't see all of the numerous image editing tools we have access to in Photoshop. This could be because this is a beta version and Adobe doesn't want users to have access to all the editing tools without paying for them. They may plan to add them later once the full paid version is released for sale. I hope this to be the case. Otherwise, Lightroom would be a watered-down version of the current Photoshop CS2. Second it seems performance leaves a little to be desired. One would think that the newer version would take advantage of the processing power provided by the latest machines, but I noticed that Lightroom is slower than Photoshop CS2 is on almost all tasks. Again, it is hard to judge since this is a beta release and work still in progress. My first impression of Lightroom was that it as intended to be a replacement for bridge. My view was that Lightroom would work as both an image browser improving upon some of the weaknesses of bridge and also as a cataloging application a la iView Media Pro. This would make it a terrific application. An application with as Jazzy an interface as Lightroom or Aperture, incorporating both browsing and cataloging features would be a huge benefit to any photographer. Lightroom would obviously offer seamless integration with Photoshop for a perfect image editing suite. So at this point I am not sure where this is going. Is Adobe planning to introduce Lightroom as the next Photoshop CS3 or has it been planned to be a replacement for bridge as the next generation of image browser and cataloger ? Any ideas ? Best regards, Joseph Chamberlain, D.D.S.
