| Developer(s) | Adobe Systems |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 3.6 / December 13, 2011 |
| Operating system | Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Photo post-production |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Homepage |
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a photography software program developed by Adobe Systems for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, designed to assist Adobe Photoshop users in managing large quantities of digital images and doing post production work. It is not a file browser like Adobe Bridge, but rather an image management application database which helps in viewing, editing, and managing digital photos, the same way photographers used to do in the non-digital world.
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In 2002, veteran Photoshop developer Mark Hamburg began a new project, code-named "Shadowland". Hamburg reached out to Andrei Herasimchuk, former interface designer for the Adobe Creative Suite, to get the project off the ground.[1] The new project was a deliberate departure from many of Adobe's established conventions. 40% of Photoshop Lightroom is written using the Lua scripting language. After a few years of research by Hamburg, Herasimchuk, Sandy Alves, the former interface designer on the Photoshop team, and Grace Kim, a product researcher at Adobe, the Shadowland project got momentum around 2004. Herasimchuk chose to leave Adobe Systems at that time to start a design company in the Valley, and then Hamburg chose Phil Clevenger, a former associate of Kai Krause's, to create a new look for the application.[1]
Photoshop Lightroom's (LR) engineering talent is based largely in Minnesota, comprising the team that had already created Adobe's ImageReady application. Troy Gaul, Melissa Gaul, and the rest of their crew (reportedly known as the "Minnesota Phats"[2]), along with Hamburg, developed the architecture behind the application. George Jardine, a skilled photographer and previous Adobe evangelist, rounded out the early team, filling the Product Manager role.[1]
On January 9, 2006, an early version of Photoshop Lightroom, previously just called Lightroom, was released to the public as a Macintosh-only public Beta, on the Adobe Labs website. This was the first Adobe product released to the general public for feedback during its development. This method was then later used in the development of Adobe Photoshop CS3.
On June 26, 2006, Adobe announced that it had acquired the technology assets of Pixmantec, developers of the Rawshooter image processing software.[3]
Further Beta releases followed. Notable releases included Beta 3 on July 18, 2006, which added support for Microsoft Windows systems. On September 25, 2006, Beta 4 was released, which saw the program merged into the Photoshop product range, followed by a minor update on October 19, which was released as Beta 4.1.
On January 29, 2007, Adobe announced that Lightroom would be shipping on February 19, 2007. US list pricing was set at $299. The UK retail price was £199.
Lightroom v1.x is not updated when an upgrade to v2 is installed; a new serial number is required, too.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Beta was advertised in official emails from Adobe in April 2008. New features include:
The official release of Lightroom v2 was on July 29, 2008, along with the release of Adobe Camera Raw v4.5 and DNG Converter 4.5. Adobe has added DNG Camera Profiling to both releases. This technology allows custom camera colour profiles, or looks, to be created by the user and saved. It also allows profiles matching the creative styles built in to cameras to be replicated. Adobe released a complete set of such Camera Profiles for Nikon and Canon models, in addition to basic Standard Profiles for all supported makes and models, through Adobe Labs, at the same time as the Lightroom v2 release. This technology is open to all programs compliant with the DNG file format standard.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 beta was released on October 22, 2009. New features include:[4]
On March 23, 2010, Adobe released a second beta, which added the following features:
Although not included in any beta release, version 3 also contains built-in lens correction and perspective control.[5]
The final version was released on June 8, 2010 with no major new functionality added. It had all the features included in the betas, added the lens corrections and perspective transformations and a few more improvements and performance optimizations.
Unlike traditional image editing software, Photoshop Lightroom is focused on the following workflow steps:
The Develop module has a number of standard presets for colour correction or effects and supports the sharing of custom presets online. Another often used feature in the Develop module is the ability to synchronize the edits from one particular photo to the whole selection.
According to 2009 statistics from research company InfoTrends, released by Adobe Systems product manager John Nack, of all the 1,045 North American professional photographers who were interviewed, 37.0% used Lightroom and 6.3% used Aperture while 57.9% used the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in. Of the Mac users, 44.4% used Lightroom and 12.5% used Aperture.[7]
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