Adobe Lightroom - Free public beta

Adobe has released a free public "beta" (probably should be called an alpha, but hey...) of their answer to Aperture, a workflow program called "Lightroom"

At this time, this is Macintosh OS X software only, but Windows versions will arrive eventually.

Mac OS X users dowload here...

I am running it at the moment on my 1 GHz G4 laptop with 1GB memory (IE very much not an Aperture class machine), and so far it has been fun.

So it seems that Aperture is going to face some competition pretty damn soon.

Oh yes, Herb, it has a curves tool

That's an interesting move. It's obviously aimed at Apple since they have the mac version out first. Aperture must have been a wake up call for Adobe. Hope this is better than Bridge.

Does the Lightroom tools support 16bit formats?

Yes, in so far as when I exported an image to photoshop from Lightroom it arrived as a 16 bit Adobe RGB TIFF file. At the moment the software can not export to .psd, and does not like layers. It can export to DNG though... which Aperture "cant" (in other words it "can", but not well).

The raw conversion is not quite up to ACR standards, and I saw some phenomenal moire in clothing that I don't recall from ACR, but otherwise it looks quite promising.

I agree, the launch of the Mac public beta without a Windows version is a definite and highly deliberate broadside against Aperture. I can see people (like me ) deciding not to buy Aperture right now and instead waiting to see where Lightroom goes.

And it is hard to argue with free (at the moment).

Personally, I expect the delay in the Windows product to be 64bit related. I look forward to running it on Longhorn as soon as they get it out to us. Sure would be nice to have a native 64 bit photo app!

In the meantime, I think the MAC version is very promising, as long as the missing features are added soon. Crop tool and horizon leveling HAVE to be there.

Looks like I was correct...

Spoke to the Adobe folks about this today at Mac World. They confirmed that both the Mac/Intel and 64Bit PC versions are coming along nicely.

Also, the Crop and Horizon Leveling tools, as well as PSD output are coming soon.

They were very clear that the beta feedback is a heavy force in the development of this product, and the same will occur for the Windows version.

Pricing is expected to be somewhere between Element and Photoshop, and below Aperture.

Another awesome feature I missed... the Import command has a "Copy and Convert to DNG" function!!