I just upgraded my Photoshop and tossed in Adobe Lightroom to boot. My progression through the Photoshop Family has been…
- Elements 3.0 (PC) – I started with this and it did most everything I needed for a P&S camera.
- Elements 4.0 (Mac) – Got an iMac, upgraded the software, still using a P&S.
- CS2 (Mac) – Started shooting with Nikon DSLRs and thought I needed a bigger bang. Luckily I got PS CS2 at half price (legally through a coupon because I owned Elements).
- And now…CS3 – also at a discount on the upgrade through NAPP.
- …and Lightroom since it was $100 bucks off also through NAPP.
The big problem is now I want a new Mac to go along with all of this (as well as a new lens). Ah me, it never stops.
The good news is it seems that all this stuff works. PS CS3 was a natural and I do prefer it to CS2, but the real story is Lightroom. I had a copy of the beta, but I never really cared for it at the time. It was never quite what I wanted and I was still getting used to a number of different things. Now, with the commercial release, I think Lightroom has made it to prime time.
I used it last night to import, catalog, and improve the images I made of Melvin’s watches. That link goes to the older versions of the images, but I’ll be loading the nicer ones soon. The album is about 60 images which all needed a bit of something. Lightroom made it easy. Most of the images are pretty similar, so getting one tweaked right should make it easier to do the next. In Lightroom it’s easy as pie. I simply used the “copy settings” and “paste settings” tools to move through the entire album. I’m sure there’s a lot to learn, but it wasn’t hard to make things better quickly. I’m impressed.
I’m not sure this is really better, but here are two watches, the first was simply cropped (and is the same as the watch in another posting), the second was done in Lightroom in about a minute. It seems to be an improvement, but that is, of course, up to the viewer.
Admittedly the lower image is probably a bit over the top but I’m sure you get the idea. So, assuming this is what you want, it’s a simple matter to paste these settings into other images in the series that are similar. I think I went through all 60+ images using about six or seven settings and tweaking just one or two images a bit more.
It’s true I could have done this in CS3 without a bit of trouble and probably would/should have done so. Lightroom, however, made it very simple.
Aloha!