Why I buy this one ?
- One easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs
- Automated features help speed the downloading, importing, and renaming of files
- Fine-tune your photographs with precise, easy-to-use tools
- Efficient image viewing, evaluation, and comparison
- Elegant, uncluttered interface

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What our customer's say!

"Rather Steep Learning Curve....", From reading some of the other reviews this product is one that you either love or hate. Yes the 300 USD. is rather steep as is the learning curve, it has helped me to arrange over 25,000 photos stored rather easily. Tagging and date arrangements, the powerful find function will let you sort by specific exif data like type of lens used or aperture or speed photo was shot as well as all the common find functions. Even incorporates geotagging, although because documentation is skimpy if you download the product from adobe, most knowledge breakthroughs come from the internet, where many people have made more gallery settings, web site settings, develop settings that you can add into Lightroom. Once the keyboard shortcuts are learned, cropping, straightening and so many other features become quite easy.

As an owner of photoshop cs3, find myself seldom opening photoshop, tweaking pictures within the develop module with great results with post processing. Buyers should be aware that Lightroom 2.0 beta is out and adds even more features and fine tunes many of the existing features from Lightroom 1.4. Lightroom 2.0 should be out in August of September of this year.

For me, the non-destructive editing is a space saver and picture file conserver of space, not ending up with multiple copies of the same picture each with their own adjustments.

Bottom line if you are willing to read the help columns and blogs and discussion groups on the internet as well as look at the help files on Adobe for learning and try and learn just a couple of things each day, there isn't much that this program will not do for you in categorizing, postprocessing, publishing via ftp for a web site. The only thing that stopped me from 5 stars is the 300 USD price tag, but i guess that is to cover all of the lost revenue to all the bootleg copies floating around.

If you are into photography, have a lot of photos that need organizing and tuning up, this program works very well. Converting raw files to most other image formats and allowing batch exporting, file renaming in a few clicks the task s done..


"Nearly $300 for THIS!? Shame on Adobe!", This program is definitely NOT worth the nearly $300 price tag! It is full of bugs, and lacks functionality and flexibility. I'm really shocked that Adobe priced it this high. Because, the bottom line is that it does very little that any free or low cost photo organizer can't do, and it does nothing well, with the possible exception of providing the ability to save different revisions of a photo, without having to make a copy. (Is that function, alone, worth $300? -- It isn't, to me.

Besides the basic lack of usefullness, the program has some major flaws. For example:

There is no "undo" button. There is an Undo function in the Edit Menu, but the undo history is global, instead of having a separate undo history for each individual photo.

There are only two ways to save a slideshow: You can export to PDF; or you can have the program ftp it to your web site. There is no option to save it to your local drive, as html, so you can rename files and tweak it with your own html editor before sending it to your website. Also, even if you do send it to your web server, the software does not provide a blog capable option that is easy to implement.

Also, I went to a lot of trouble to create a preset in Develop mode, and applied it to a lot of photos in a collection. After I had all the photos the way I wanted them, I decided to try out the slide show creation tool, which, by the way, was not particularly impressive, with its very small number of templates, none of which was appealing to my eye. (There are plenty of "FREE" programs and online applications that will do a much better job at slideshow creation.

Anyway, after trying the 4 or 5 slide show types, I went back to Develop mode, and the preset I had created in Develop mode earlier was GONE! It simply disappeared! Then, to make matters worse, as soon as I returned to the collection where I had applied that preset earlier, it reverted all of the photos to a previous preset, right before my eyes! -- An obvious bug had wiped out 3 hours of work in 2 seconds! With no ability to "undo", since I didn't do it!

There was another bug, where the scrolling photo strip at the bottom would start scrolling really fast when you drap the slider with your mouse, but as soon as you let go of the mouse, it would jump back to where you started, kind of like a rubber band was attached. So, you ended up having to move the filmstrip to the left, one photo at a time, until the scroll bar worked again.

I wish I had listened to the previous reviewer who said this software was not worth the money. They were SOOO right! This software is not in the same class with other programs in this price range, and you do expect a LOT more out of software, when you pay this much for it!

If this software had been $40 or $50, I'd have said it was 'maybe' worth it. Don't these software companies realize that to most people $300 is a LOT of money!? I swear Adobe has got dollar signs tattoo'ed to the insides of their eyelids! Don't they realize that they've priced their software so high that the average consumer can't afford it? You'd think those geniouses would be better at math. They would make a much bigger profit, by pricing their software afordably, because they'd sell a lot more of it. I wish they would quit taking advantage of people the way Microsoft does! I mean, you gotta have an Operating System, so Microsoft kind of has the average consumer bent over a barrel, and they can and do charge exorbatent prices and get away with it, (I guess Gates can never have enough money!)

Well, take my word for it! You can definitely do without this over priced, buggy, not-ready-for-Prime-Time piece of software! Shame on Adobe for pricing it so high!

I wish I could return the product and get my money back! I feel like I was conned, because I expected more from the Adobe name, especially at this price!

If you need a reasonably priced photo editor, for Windows, check out Xara!

"Fantastic for prolific amateur photographers", The several-day learning curve is worth it, even if you aren't a professional. Lightroom cut the time I spend sorting photos in a third.

It's well worth spending some time learning the keyboard shortcuts - check out the video tutorials on Adobe's site (even before you buy). They'll give you a sense of how you can speed up your workflow, and spend your time actually *taking* pictures, rather than fiddling with them after the fact.

"Almost Pointless", If you're a professional photographer who needs to adjust multiple, similar photographs in terms of brightness, contrast, and hue- then this software is a gift from the gods.
For anyone else- people who want to edit one-off photos you took of your family during the last holiday, this software is pretty much pointless and FAR over-priced.
Thankfully we were smart enough to download the latest trial version from adobe before dropping hundreds of dollars on this dud. We stared at it for a while trying to figure out how to do a very simple edit and then gave up (BTW: I have 25 years in the IT industry and am pretty proficient with Photoshop).
Instead, I found a demo of a Photoshop-like program pre-installed on our computer (which costs only $60 to register) and tried to perform the same operation on the same photo. It took about 90 seconds.

Guess which one we'll be buying?

Just before trying both demo programs, I had a chat with a pro photographer (whose name I'll withhold because any decent pro photographer would know who he is, immediately), and he did not have anything positive to say about lightroom, suggesting Photoshop instead.

"Its quite nice but....", I am sorry to rain on the parade of adulations for lightroom but..

I have been trialing this software for 26days to date and i simply cannot (and yet also can) understand the hype and adulations this s/w has received to date..

On the plus side..
1. Its a gorgeous user interface
2. It is a great library & catalog program
3. Sorry, there isnt a 3..thats it.

On the negative side..
1. At best it is a so-so image EDITOR.. it recommends you go pay $600 for CS3 to do image editing?.. Luckily you can get Corel Paint shop Pro for $79 and launch it from Lightroom.
2. Its claim to be "all you need" is as false as you get.. unless sending unedited images to the web is all you plan to do.

I have canon equipment and so can use DPP for RAW conversion (free), zoombrowser (free) or Corel photo album @ $39 for organising then honestly is an extra $260 worth it?

In summary,
Look, i am sorry, but for $300 i would expect something more than Elements on steroids, and when you still need an external editor and an external print manager such as Qimage this fails way way short on value for money except for professionals with huge volumes of images.

I am disappointed. I had hoped for a single solution (as claimed) to my workflow...yet i have gone back to using DPP for RAW light management, and i still have to use Paint shop pro for those 5-10% of images that need editing, so in essence lightroom has substituted a prettier interface than corel photo album for image management. For the hobbyist and serious amateur i feel this $299 is more of an ego trip rather than a necessary product.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Not there yet.....", Overview of review:

Pros:
1. Pretty interface,
2. Nice options to organize and rate photos

Cons:
1. Poor support for multiple monitors, does not span screens well,
2. Printing required someone really special to get it right, I gave up,
3. Vertical scroll required to reach required tools all the time,
4. Poor interface, seems that a lot of time is wasted switching in out of library view...
5. Slow rendering of large Raw files, needs to pre-build the thumbnails in the background to make it bearable,
6. Uses a database to track modifications and rate photos making you tied to a single machine, never figured out how to move the db to another machine and not loose all the changes/from Laptop to primary workstation/ to portable workstation at photo sessions/to main file server for backup....hate re-doing same thing over again....don't you.

Adobe in its classical style has created a comprehensive product in Lightroom that can do just about anything you want if you take the time to learn the product inside and out. Unfortunately, you will need to spend considerable amount of time on each photo to get the results you want. After spending several weeks working on just 1800 photos from one wedding and reception I was getting tired of the pretty interface and went looking for something better; especially when working with Raw files; lightroom was just too slow even on my heavy duty multiprocessor workstation with tons of Ram, dedicated storage and multiple monitors.

I tried out Bibble and was pleasantly surprised; not only did they provide support for my new Canon 40D at the time it came out; their interface is dead simple and gave great results with just a couple clicks; wow, if only the guys at Adobe had some good interface people who could think out of there tried and true complex interface mentality; and provide a simple one that works. Don't get me wrong; they did give a simpler interface in Library mode; but the results are simply terrible using their auto tone; did they really try out this stuff on real pictures before they sell it? Also Bibble uses a file named the same as the photo with .bib extension to track the changes; you can copy the photos from one machine to another and open it and see the same changes you just made on the other machine; wow, someone was really thinking.

Considering I have 20 years software development/QA background I can understand how hard it is for Adobe to shake off their old ways. I use to direct a group of Graphics artists who made a living because of the complexity of the Photoshop interface, so it has its advocates. The last two years doing freelance photo work on the side have made me test the market for a solution to the digital photo overload I am experiencing. Unfortunately, none of the big software companies are spending enough time on testing before they sell their products; guess that is what they think the customers are for. I think smaller companies produce more innovative products that lead the innovation; and Bibble is an example; I am sure the Adobe guys will get there eventually by following the others no doubt.

Adobe does stand out for organizing the photos, but I find that for processing large numbers of photos with the least effort and getting great results; Bibble Pro has it beat hands down. Honestly, I would much rather be out taking photos then sitting in front of the computer working on them; fortunately now I don't have too. Thanks Bibble Pro.


"Photoshop for photographers!", They say, if Ansel Adams was around he'd be snapping away with a digital camera. Maybe so, but I doubt he would be adding type to his images or cutting, pasting and warping. What for? My point is that from the beginning, Photoshop has had very little to do with photography.

So Adobe got together with some photographers and ended up with something that leaves the emphasis on taking and fine-tuning a great photo--not altering, retouching or salvaging a poor one (although it can do all that). And what a program it is! Fast, intuitive and surprisingly easy to use. Reasonably priced, too.

Lightroom also adapts to different ways of working. If you take pictures the old fashioned way and spend a day making 3 or 4 really memorable images, no problem. Or, if you want to take hundreds of shots and edit, in the hope that a few will be good, Lightroom is even better for that.

Really great software and such a pleasure to see Adobe "gets it".

"Printing a deal breaker", Lot's of nice stuff in Lightroom, but you have to be a Photoshop expert to print properly. Unless you have the Color Management set just right you prints are going to look horrible and there is no, I repeat, no useful instructions on how to do this - only the vaguest of explanations that leave you looking for more explanations. The entire help text on Printer Color Management is less than 400 words and none of it actually tells you how to do anything. It tells you what Lightroom can do, but not how to do it. Any question you ask about Color Management on Adobe's website simply refer you back to Lightroom's Help/User Guide which, as I've said, has only the vaguest of explanations.

I'm sure all this stuff is covered in Photoshop because Photoshop people who move to Lightroom don't seem to have any problem printing, but I'm not buying Photoshop.

I'm really glad I used the 30 day trial. I'd be very upset if I'd spent any money on this product.


"Fills a niche", I echo the other reviewers on Lightroom's capabilities, and highly recommend this software. I use Adobe's Creative Suite Premium CS3, and I'm a little miffed that Lightroom isn't included. Lightroom doesn't replace Photoshop by any means, and it doesn't have the overall photo/file review capabilities of Bridge, but it fills a much needed niche for Adobe. It's a must have for sorting large volumes of digital images, for reviewing directly from your digital camera, (be careful if your using it for B & W, i.e., TIF images scanned from negatives). Lightroom is terrific for creating web galleries, and probably indispensable for many digital photography tasks ... still left to explore/discover. I strongly recommend getting the free 30 trial before you buy.

"If you need a nice efficient workflow this is it.", Adobe Lightroom does exactly what I was looking for. Photo editing and organizing (keywords, ratings, renaming) this is a robust package.

I currently use Photoshop CS2 and iPhoto. I never really like iPhotos method of organizing or trust it's editing capabilities. So I relied on Photoshop and then reimporting a copy of the image back into iPhoto. which all seemed like to many steps. Lightroom has changed my workflow and the way I work, eliminating 3 or 4 steps in the process.

Pros:
-Interface is beautiful to work in.
-Simple switching view modes. (switch from G: Grid (thumbnails), E: Loupe (single image))
-Menus Toggle (Tab)
-Develop Mode D: Editing, Presets, Exposure, Curves, HSL, Crop, etc... This is the editing mode of Lightroom. Color edits only of the image. You need Photoshop to actually edit pixels, I.E. delete people from image and fill with background...etc.
-Presets, think Actions in Photoshop, presaved and default image editing. Do a google search for free presets. there seem to be quite a few out there.
-Copy Settings, once you edit an image, you can cut and paste those settings and apply them to another image or group of images. Very helpful.
-Edit multiple images at once. grab like 50 images, brighten, white balance, etc. (simple things you can go into Develop mode with more than one image at a time, but again you can cut and paste edits.)
-At any point you can "reset" edits to an image as the original is not actually edited until you export a file out. I have reset images from a month ago to their original.
-Organizing there are two ways I have tried so far, 1) import directly from camera, create folders (in the finder) name folders, 2) import into finder, syncronize folders from Lightroom, new images will be updated in your Lightroom library as they exist in your finder folders. (this is awesome for me because I need to know exactly where they are and named)
-Naming, while importing you can import as they are named by the camera, add dates to images, custom name (xxxxx-1234.jpg), add date, add sequence number... etc. again, I am an organization nut so this was a big plus for me.
-Identity Plate, top left corner of the interface by default says, "Adobe Lightroom...." you can change this to a custom name, like John Smith Phothography, this is nice for presenting to clients.
-Collections, quick folders created by drag and dropping images.

Cons:
-Could be faster, but I have about 30K images of all different sizes. Going from Grid to Loupe takes a few seconds for the image to redraw. I might need more ram.
-No two monitor set up possible. The toggled menus slide out from left right and bottom and dissapear leaving a tiny arrow to indicate hiding. There is no way to drag and drop the menus to another location. This is find for one monitors as the menus hide rather quickly and i have gotten used to the quick keys, but I have two monitors and could use the extra space.

besides all this, well I am sure there is more for me to learn but after the one month free trial I am happy I got this program, saved me many steps and feels like a smooth interface to show off images to clients and friends. Cheers.