a while ago, I purchased Pixmantec Raw Shooter premium.
It didn't take long until I got a message from this company that they had been acquired by Adobe and would not continue to develop their product (I wrote about this here in July).
They also told me that I was entitled to the new Lightroom when it becomes available.
I somehow doubt that Adobe would offer this if Lightroom included all the features of Photoshop - the difference in price is just too big.
Also, Raw Shooter mainly is a sophosticated conversion tools for raw files (which I still use more than my photo editing software) and to me the Lightroom beta seems to be going into the same direction - although it offers much more output options.
On the other hand, Raw shooter was much less resource-hungry and some tools were much more efficient, for example the way you could directly manipulate the histogramme.
On the other hand, Raw shooter was much less resource-hungry and some tools were much more efficient, for example the way you could directly manipulate the histogramme.
Lightroom now also features the option to change "vibrance", amd has a "fill light" but the separate "shadow contrast" and "highlight contrast" features have not made it into Lightroom so far.
The same goes for the "detail extraction", "noise suppression" and "colour noise suppression".
My personal guess is that these (and all the poerful Photoshop tools) are not included because the intention is to keep these as separate products: lightroom as an archiving and "workflow" tool and PS as an image editor for more sophisticated needs.
From the generous offer of a free lightroom I'd also deduct that this software will be much cheaper than a full-fledged Photoshop.
By the way, I still use my Raw Shooter installation much more often than lightroom...
Laurenz
Ps from the Pixmantec mail:
"...Lightroom is being built from the ground up to address the unique challenges of a photography-centric workflow. Not only will it offer what we believe will be second-to-none raw processing, but it is designed to provide a start-to-finish workflow solution for photographers. We encourage you to learn about Adobe Lightroom:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom
For those concerned about the transition to Lightroom or the acquisition in general please visit this FAQ that addresses many of the topics discussed in the Pixmantec forums recently. Please continue to let us know how we can ease this product transition for you.
Now that we've joined the Adobe family, we must emphasize that RawShooter users also are now Adobe customers, regardless of whether you ever purchase another Adobe product. Your satisfaction matters to us. Specifically, Adobe will do the following:
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Offer a free download version of Lightroom 1.0 for customers who bought RawShooter | premium prior to July 12th 2006, 12 noon European Standard Time. Given that Lightroom 1.0 will serve a much broader range of functionality and will be priced at a higher price point than RawShooter | premium, we believe this represents a great value for our customers. | |
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Adobe will investigate to what extent your image corrections made within RawShooter can be transferred to Lightroom. " |
2006/9/29, Joseph Chamberlain, D.D.S. <drjchamberlain@xxxxxxxxx>:
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.
