On Tuesday, Adobe released the fourth revision of their popular Lightroom product for photo editing and organizing. For $149 (only $79 if you’re a student or purchasing an upgrade from a previous version), Lightroom 4 adds basic video editing capabilities and an improved photo editing interface. Sliders default to the zero position in the middle, as opposed to arbitrary points, and the shadow and highlight adjustments are improved to allow recovery of lost detail in over or underexposed images. New brush tools allow manipulating only selected areas and a basic email client is built in, making photo sharing an easier process. Video clips are cataloged right beside still photos, and frames can be lifted from saved videos. Below are examples of a photo of the Golden Gate bridge before and after details were recovered in Lightroom.
Not to leave out the growing number of Apple iPad users, Adobe also released Photoshop Touch at the end of last month. The app is currently limited to editing photos in a resolution no larger than 1600 x 1600, so it isn’t intended to be a true Photoshop substitute. But priced at only $9.95, it packs a nice collection of favorite tools from its big brother. To fit all of the controls on the iPad’s display, Adobe went with a three-panel design. A panel on the left contains the tools and their settings. A panel on the right displays layers. Everything else is found in a top panel, including cut and paste operations. All three panels retract when touched, if you need to see an unobstructed view of the image. Unfortunately, this program won’t run on the original iPad and the touchscreen interface is inferior to drawing tablets attached to a computers for pixel level editing.
Obviously, Adobe isn’t the only game in town for photo editing or organizing, but both of these offerings carry reasonable price tags and offer options for the Windows user, the Mac user and the iOS user. It’s a good time to be a digital photographer.
What’s the difference between Lightroom and PhotoShop?