Filed under: Photo, Windows, Macintosh, Adobe, Commercial
Get Adobe Lightroom 3 for free! (kinda)
by Sebastian Anthony Oct 27th 2009 at 12:00PM
In the last week there's been a lot of news regarding Lightroom 3's advanced feature, and now here's your chance to actually give it a whirl!
Lightroom is great for every kind of photographer -- casual, avid snapper or professional. It's not a full-featured editing suite like Photoshop, but it does have most functionality that photographers (note: not 'digital artists') might require -- but if you're the kind of artist or photographer that likes to airbrush his works into submission, Lightroom isn't for you. It is a 'digital darkroom and presentation' tool -- so from downloading photos, to sorting through them and producing pretty presentations/contact sheets, Lightroom's the program to use.
For those of you that have used it before, and are wondering why it might be a good time to upgrade (or at least try the beta), here are the new or enhanced features that Adobe are touting:
- Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
- State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
- Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
- Portable sharable slideshows with audio-designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
- Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
- Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
- New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
- More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*
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I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sodapop said 2:54PM on 10-27-2009
I wonder how this compares to the image editing features in iPhoto...
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Sebastian Anthony said 3:43PM on 10-27-2009
Hm, it's far superior, but a different market I guess -- I don't think anyone other than point-and-shoot photographers use iPhoto.
But also, iPhoto is free... if you can afford an Apple, of course :)
sodapop said 4:50PM on 10-27-2009
Well, having just used iPhoto 6 (older version) to edit a mess of photos this weekend, its not just for point-n-shoot. It has some Photoshop comparable eding tools: crop, rotate, constrain (resize).... Batch change...
Plus the sliders: brightness, contrast, saturation, temperature, tint, sharpness, straighten, exposure, levels...
It also has 8 preset effects, red-eye fix, enhance image preset, and retouch (finger blur).
These are the features I know of.. plus there are plugins for such things as watermarks etc.
I'ved used Photoshop for 17 years and I was amazed at how much iPhoto can edit images. Since Lightroom is also not for 'digital artists' (like me), I am not sure a person would need much more.
sodapop said 4:53PM on 10-27-2009
LOL if you can afford a $300 picture correcting app, you better be able to afford an Apple. If you are broke, you could always use the online version of Photoshop - or Flickr.
Sebastian Anthony said 4:56PM on 10-27-2009
Last I checked, PC users don't buy a PC for just one application... I know Mac users have a tendency to do that, but not PC.
Lightroom isn't about correction. It's a digital 'light box' basically. It's for photographers (though 'serious' ones are likely to get more use out of it).
It sounds like iPhoto is pretty neat! I guess it is Lightroom's equivalent for the Mac, assuming Photoshop still takes the 'top' spot.
Sebastian Anthony said 5:01PM on 10-27-2009
Oops, didn't finish my sentence in the middle there.
It's for photographers to arrange collections of photos, to sort, to batch-apply changes/white balance/etc.
But as you say, iPhoto seems to cover most of that!
sodapop said 5:10PM on 10-27-2009
Lightroom started out on the Mac... and is described as "an image management application database which helps in viewing, editing, and managing digital photos" on Wikipedia. That's the same exact thing as iPhoto - especially as the Features are described on WP. Although Aperture would be it's direct competitor.
corfmanj said 4:13PM on 10-27-2009
This is a great idea! Sucker a bunch of people into trying it for several months, hope they get so hooked on the software that they can't live without it, and then make them pay $300 to continue using it.
Any drug dealer will tell you that the concept works perfectly.
Um, pass.
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Arlo said 11:08PM on 10-27-2009
Anyone else find it ironic that the new features include tools to both get *rid* of noise, as well as *add* it.
(Yes, I understand one is garbage and one is artistic, but still...)
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ellen said 11:03PM on 12-08-2009
I am wondering and hoping that this version will be able to incorporate photoshop actions!
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Sebastian Anthony said 8:20AM on 12-09-2009
I think that might almost defeat the point of Photoshop itself... but we can remain hopeful :P