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The State Of The DAM 2 – Adobe Lightroom

jbourke — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:08:45 +0000

Adobe Lightroom 2

In my previous post on Digital Asset Management, I briefly outlined some of the entry level contenders for DAM software such as Google Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Elements. In the rest of this series, I will look at some of the heavy weights, the professional asset management systems. I will start with the one I use most – Adobe Lightroom. Not sure if this is a good idea as I it is the product that I am most intimate with, knowing its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s get started…

Adobe Lightroom is now the elephant in the room of DAM software. As John Nack (of Adobe) revealed a short while back, Adobe Lightroom pretty much owns the professional market, beating it’s next nearest competitor, Apple Aperture, by a considerable margin. I have been using it since the very early beta’s (and Pixmantic RawShooter before that, which Adobe bought to kick start Adobe Lightroom), and hopefully, am somewhat qualified to give you a non-professionals opinion.

Library / Catalog Tools:

This is the module of Lightroom where I spend 85%+ of my time. I am slowly working through my back catalog of images, and suffering from OCD as I do, I insist on all images being correctly located, named, tagged, etc. Lightroom is very strong here, having the ability to apply extensive keyword tag hierarchies to images. A strong file renaming engine, along with virtual collections (and collections of collections), and numerous methods of catagorizing images (by colour label, by star rating, and by Pick/Reject) are available. Apples’ Aperture was the first major DAM product to be announced in my memory, but immediately there was a lot of critism regarding it’s approach to asset management; namely migrating all managed images INTO it’s database, removing all external access. While this had it’s merits, Adobe chose to go another way, winning lots of friends in the process, allowing the Lightroom user to:

Reference the image file from it’s existing location
Manage the image file by copying it to a managed location, still on the file system and accessible from other tools (I will touch on this again at a later date).
Manage the image file by moving it to a managed location.
Manage the image file by converting it to Adobe’s open DNG RAW standard, and moving it to a managed location.

Image Editing:

The second major module with Adobe Lightroom is the develop module, which is where the real fun starts. Here is where you apply image adjustments such as exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, and a host of other modifications. Version 1.0 of Lightroom restricted these adjustments to the whole of the image, requiring the use of Photoshop for more targeted adjustments such as removing blemishes, or other distractions. Thankfully with version 2, Adobe introduced the adjustment brush and other specific pixel level adjustment tools. Now you can remove spots and blemishes, smooth skin, whiten eyes and teeth, apply graduated filters as well as adjust other settings relating to the entire image. You still need Adobe Photoshop in order to perform more advanced adjustments such as panoramas, collages, HDR, or other major image surgery. I would recommend Martin Evenings’ book if you want to get best value out of the Develop module though…

Altering white balance in Adobe Lightroom

Exports / Sharing:

In some respects this is where Adobe Lightroom has lost ground on the competition, especially Apple Aperture. Out of the box, Lightroom can export images to disk, and to CDROM (not on 64 bit windows), as well as having modules to govern printing, creation of a web gallery, and a slideshow. Doesn’t sound to bad… but Facebook, Flickr, and other online resources are now becoming major marketing tools for photographers, and exporting directly to these locations is a capability now offered by some competitors. Another major gap was the ability to export to a Photo Book creation service. This capability may feel a little consumer orientated, but again, it is offered by Apple Aperture. Yes, export plugins are available, and I use them myself; they are very capable, but the lack of a native ability to export to the major hosting sites feels like an omission.

The X Factor:

What do I mean by the X Factor? Basically, why would I buy this over a competing product when, on paper, the competing product is more capable. And for Adobe Lightroom, the X Factor is this… community. Lightroom has a massive community around it, producing tutorials, presets, blogs, reviews, reports, etc. When you are getting started with a product as advanced as Lightroom, that really helps and can’t be overlooked.

Details:

Link: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/
Cost: US$ 229
Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX
Buy: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

The State Of The DAM, Part 1

jbourke — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:09:43 +0000

So Many Photos...

Ok, I am a geek. I love good software, and I am always chasing the next “Big Thing”. In photography, the “Big Thing” over the last few years has been Digital Asset Management software. With the announcement from Apple of Aperture 3, and the impending arrival of Adobe Lightroom 3, I felt its about time that I updated my previous post on software for Photographers. So below I outline my views on some of the leading contenders, including Google Picasa, Apple iPhoto, and Adobe Photoshop Elements. In part 2, I will cover the more professional orientated offerings (at least in price) such as Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, and some more exotic candidates.

What Is Digital Asset Management?

Before we jump into the overviews, it’s probably not a bad idea to outline very very briefly what we mean by Digital Asset Management. From Wikipedia:

Digital asset management (DAM) consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets. Digital photographs, animations, videos and music are samples of media asset management (a sub-category of DAM). Digital asset management systems includes computer software and/or hardware systems that aid in the process of digital asset management.

With the advent of Digital Cameras, (and now the emergence of Digital cameras shooting video), the number of original photo’s, edits, scans, etc. cluttering up our computers has exploded. Digital Asset Management processes and software products attempt to help us catalog, edit, rearrange, prune, locate and otherwise manage the thousands and thousands of digital photos and videos scattered around our hard disks. For a more indepth examination of Digital Asset Management, I can highly recommend The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers by Peter Krogh.

Initially, DAM software products restricted themselves to simply tracking the location of image files, and perhaps arranging them in virtual collections and albums. Now they offer so much more, and the line between them and Gorilla sized image editing packages such as Adobe Photoshop is blurring more and more. Even Scott Kelby, author of many many photoshop books, admits that he now spends 85% of his time in Adobe Lightroom! The two main criteria I used to select the following products were:

Software performs typical DAM tasks such as cataloging, rating, tagging, creation of virtual collections
Software performs some level of global image adjustment, such as exposure, white balance, or other tonal adjustments

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery

Many people are quiet happy to use the build in image previewing and tagging capabilities of Windows Vista or Windows 7. For those who want a bit more, Microsoft offers Windows Live Photo Gallery as a free download as part of the Windows Live suite. It brings enhanced photo browsing using the capture date embedded in the image, and people tagging. You can make some basic global adjustments to images such as sharpness, though these tend to be automatic with little tuning capability. Uploads to Flickr and Windows Live is supported natively, and Facebook using a plugin.

An interesting feature is support for Windows Live Sync which allows you to sync photo collections between computers.

Pro:

Free
Probably the easiest to use above directories of images
If you are familar with Windows Vista or 7, you will be comfortable here

Con:

RAW image support is limited to that provided by the underlying operating system
No support for virtual collections, except by tags
Limited searching
Limited control over image adjustment

Details:

Link: http://windowslive.com/Desktop/PhotoGallery
Cost: Free
Platforms: Windows
Target: Entry level photographers with compact digital cameras who want a simple to use, yet familiar looking tool to manage their photos.

iPhoto

Apple iPhoto

I must admit that I have never used this iPhoto from Apple in anger, apart from playing with it in the Sydney Apple Store. It is part of the iLife suite of creative products which normally comes preinstalled with any new Mac, and at a cost for those who wish to upgrade. iPhoto is targeted at the compact digital camera wielding home user who just wants to tweak jpeg photos. Some of its organisation tools are strong though,and include the ability to create various types of albums, and use tools such as the automatic face detection, and location tagging using GPS support. Like most applications designed by Apple, the interface looks wonderful, especially the full screen view.

Pro:

Simple to use
Upload to Flickr, Facebook, and MobileMe
Create Slideshows, Photo Books, and other Print Creations

Con:

Mac only
RAW image support is limited to that provided by the underlying operating system
Limited control over image adjustment

Details:

Link: http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/
Cost: US$62.95
Platforms: Mac OSX
Target: Entry level photographers with compact digital cameras
Buy: iLife ‘09 (includes iPhoto)

Picasa

Google Picasa

Picasa from Google has in my impression got nearly everything that someone who loves photos would want. Sure, you don’t have individual pixel editing al a Photoshop, or the fine grained RAW controls present in most of the pro level products outlined below, but it sure is fun! It now has RAW support, virtual albums, can sync automatically up to Google Picasa Web Albums, face taging, geo location, and the wonderful collage tool, for creating collages such as the one at the very toop of this post (great for desktop wallpapers!). And it is available for all the major platforms. It doesn’t natively support Flickr or Facebook to my knowledge, but it is still my go to program for anyone who needs photo management on a budget.

Pro:

Free
Available on most platforms
Very quick
Great fun

Con:

Sometimes the interface can be a little cluttered and confusing, in that there are so many toggle switches, sliders, big buttons all over the screen.
Do not let it index your entire hard disk – unless you want to wade through all sorts of cached image files for internet browsers, and other rubbish
Limited control over image adjustment
RAW support while good, is not a match for PRO products

Details:

Link: http://picasa.google.com/
Cost: Free
Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX, Linux
Target: Entry level, but some aspects are useful and fun for all photographers

Adobe Photoshop Elements

I was a long time Photoshop Elements user, initially for the cheap entry point into the pixel manipulating madness of photoshop. But you end up spending most of your time in the Elements Organiser… sorting, renaming, tagging, etc. that the powerful image editing tools tend to get overlooked. It packs a lot of power into a reasonable cheap package, including Adobe Camera RAW and support for hundreds of professional digital SLR’s. It does have it’s limitations though. When I was using it, it didn’t support layers, non destructive editing, advanced renaming, or automation using Photoshop Actions. It was winning an expensive set of Photoshop Actions that finally made me jump for Lightroom and Photoshop itself.

Pro:

Very powerful image editing tools, 95% of what Photoshop offers for a fraction of the price
Great organisational features, that were only matched with Adobe Lightroom appeared
Superb RAW support through Adobe Camera RAW

Con:

Seemed like there was a new version every year, with some useful features, but a lot of filler
Enough of the tools from Photoshop to tempt you, before tripping you up with some gotchya

Details:

Link: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/
Cost: US$74.99 (Windows), US$85.49 (Mac OSX)
Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX
Buy: Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 (Windows), Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 (Mac OSX)
Target: Advanced Amateur, should be included with every DSLR

Software for Beginner, Improver, and Advanced Photographers

jbourke — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:24:44 +0000

Which Photo Software? What photo software you need, when, and why...

I recently discussed the must haves / don’t needs of buying a digital camera, depending on the stage of your photography obsession . I would imagine that most of the time photo’s come straight out of the camera and onto paper, if at all. If you want to take your photo’s that little bit further, here are some software tools which can smooth the way…

I don’t know how many times I have had to rebuild my PC due to a glut of software. I must have tried nearly every photography related software or utility on the market. Don’t waste time like I did… here are the winners:

First Steps

So you use a compact digital camera, and you shoot exclusively JPEG files (though it may not mean much to you). Nothing beats Google Picasa for ease of use, power, and price… Free!

Google Picasa - Did I mention it was free?

Pluses:

Picasa can produce some amazing effects, which would take many steps in either Photoshop Elements or CS3. It’s photo organising capabilities are not bad either. And, did I mention it was free!

Minuses:

It currently does not support RAW files, and it’s edits are limited to the entire picture, so any advanced digital editing is out.

Brisk Walk

You are using an advanced compact digital camera, and you are beginning to tinker with the RAW format. Additionally you see all these tutorials about digital editing, mostly referring to Adobe Photoshop, but the cost is out of your league. Give Photoshop Elements a whirl. It has most of the tools that it’s big brother has for Digital Photographers, and has continuously updated RAW file support due to Adobe Camera Raw.

Adobe Photoshop Elements - Better than you would imagine!

I have used Adobe Photoshop Elements for years, and in many ways it is more powerful than many professionals give it credit for.

Pluses:

For example, it’s integrated organisation capabilities have only recently been matched by Adobe Lightroom, supporting keyword tagging, collections, versioning, tight integration with the editor.

Minuses:

Doesn’t support layers, non destructive editing, advanced renaming, automation.

In fact, in my opinion, you really need a good reason to buy Photoshop CS3 over Photoshop Elements, especially since you can expand it’s capabilities with Photoshop Compatible plugins.

Jogging

You are using an entry level SLR, and shoot nearly exclusively in RAW. You have amassed a large image library, and are beginning to poke around in the murky world of digital noise. Here are some additional tools which I have found useful:

NeatImage - Very easy to use, intelligent noise reduction in your images.
PTLens – Great at “straightening” out the photo’s produced by imperfect lenses.
Hamrick Vuescan - Got a scanner? Get this!
Adobe DNG converter – When you start adding tags, and other metadata to images, you will begin to see additional “XMP” files appear. These files store the additional data when Adobe does not know how to write back to a particular image file, such as a proprietary RAW file. Converting all your RAW files to DNG has many advantages, one of which is the ability to store extensive metadata.
Flickr Uploadr – The best photo sharing community.

I will leave the pluses and minuses of these as an exercise to the reader .

Sprinting

Ok the big kahuna! Despite it’s outrageous price, you have decided that you absolutely need Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Lightroom. That said, if you are a professional photographer, and utilise any third party studio management, colour management, or any software, it is certain to work with these. Tutorials in industry press – you guessed it, Adobe Photoshop CS3. Many open source fans mention “The Gimp” as an alternative… but as good as it may be, it will never be taken seriously in the Photographic industry as long as it is called “The Gimp”.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - the professional choice for Digital Asset Management

Adobe Photoshop CS3 - The Big Kahuna!

I know I recently upgraded… so what do these give me:

Complex file renaming in Lightroom
Advanced metadata capabilities, such as templates, in Lightroom
Advanced colour management
Automating Photoshop with Actions

Pluses:

Extremely powerful, and pretty much the industry standard.

Minuses:

Bloody expensive, and in Europe, it’s a rip off with prices which bear no relation to sales tax, importation duties, currency exchange etc. Buy a boxed product in the US and bring it home.