Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Upgrade

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Product Features

• Enhance specific areas of a photo, or precisely adjust overall color, exposure, and tonal range nondestructively
• Automatically import, rename, and sort your entire shoot; find your photos quickly with powerful yet flexible sorting, selecting, and organizational tools
• Present your work in dynamic slide shows, interactive web galleries, and a variety of flexible print templates; easily upload your photos to popular online photo-sharing sites
• Configure your workspace to manage image workflow and presentation more efficiently thanks to support for multiple monitors
• Every change you make to an image is automatically tracked, so you can return to any state with a single click

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0018VDJVW
• Item model number: 65007353
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 4, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,228 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #31 in	Software > Graphics > Professional Design
  #63 in	Software > Graphics > Photo Editing

Product Description

Amazon.com

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 software is essential for today's digital photography workflow. Now you can quickly import, process, manage, and showcase your images--from one shot to an entire shoot. Quickly batch process, convert, and apply metadata to your photos on import. Easily make selections with multiple viewing and comparison options. Adjust and enhance color, exposure, and tonal curves nondestructively on more than 190 camera raw file formats, as well as JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files. Every change you make to an image is automatically tracked, so you can return to any state with a single click. With Lightroom 2, you spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, designed for photographers, features an elegant, uncluttered interface that puts just the tools you need at your fingertips.

Enjoy more flexible, accurate enhancements by targeting a specific area for dodging and burning.

Sort and filter large volumes of photos using powerful metadata filters to quickly find just the photo you want.

Enjoy robust support for more than 190 camera raw file formats, and experiment with confidence. Adjustments you make to images in Lightroom won't alter the original data, whether you're working on a JPEG, TIFF, DNG, or camera raw file.

Enjoy tight integration with Adobe Photoshop software for streamlined use of Smart Objects, panorama stitching, high dynamic range (HDR) functionality, multiple layer workflow, and more.

Work with a tool focused on photographers' needs
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is designed expressly for both amateur and professional photographers. From its elegant, uncluttered interface to its carefully tailored tools and features, Lightroom helps you process photographs faster, giving you more time to shoot. With the new and enhanced features in Lightroom 2, you canfind the photos you want faster, make more accurate adjustments, and easily present your work in more ways than ever before.

Accelerate your workflow
Lightroom is a nimble tool that moves you efficiently through every step of your workflow, from image capture to client presentation. Use flexible tools and features to manage the processing of large volumes of photographs. Customize a wide range of importing, renaming, and metadata stamping functions to suit your needs. Keep track of the changes you've made to images, including alternate versions, easily and automatically with the History panel. And when you're ready to present your work to clients, easily assemble and output high-quality printed contact sheets, online web galleries, and slide shows, or upload your photos to popular online photo-sharing sites.

Use it your way
Lightroom is adaptable and compatible with the way you work, most of the hardware you use, and open standards, so you're less likely to be limited by proprietary systems and formats. Lightroom runs on both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Work with more than 190 camera raw file formats, as well as JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files. Convert your images to the universal DNG format without loss of image quality. Store your photographs in the Lightroom Library--even if they're located on offline media. Using Lightroom for developing images, together with Adobe Photoshop for retouching, digital photographers now have the essential photography software toolkit. Take advantage of robust metadata support and advanced keywording capabilities help you tag and find the photographs you need quickly and easily. From developing images to presenting them, Lightroom together with Photoshop provides digital photographers with the essential photography software toolkit.

Who's It For?

Professional photographers
Photographers who shoot large volumes of images in every specialty, from fashion and fine art to portraiture and photojournalism.

Advanced amateur photographers
Photographers who don't earn a living from their images but have a deep passion for photography; take large numbers of photos, typically with a digital SLR camera; and value professional tools and results.

Educators
University and community college instructors who are shooters themselves and who teach the best tools and practices to the next generation of photographers.

The top reasons to buy Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Enhance specific areas of a photo
Enjoy more flexible, accurate enhancements by targeting a specific area for dodging and burning.

Quickly find any photo
Sort and filter large volumes of photos using powerful metadata filters to quickly find just the photo you want.

Automatically import and process your way
Import and process large volumes of photos according to your customized settings. Rename files, organize them into folders, add metadata, and convert file formats for an entire shoot simultaneously.

Native 64-bit architecture
Utilize the advanced memory-handling capabilities on the latest Mac OS and Windows systems.

Work smoothly with Adobe Photoshop software (sold separately)
Enjoy tight integration with Adobe Photoshop software for streamlined use of Smart Objects, panorama stitching, high dynamic range (HDR) functionality, multiple layer workflow, and more. See your edits automatically updated in Lightroom.

Multiple monitor support
Add a second monitor and enjoy more room to work. Support for multiple monitors allows you to configure your workspace to manage image workflow and presentation more efficiently.

Be productive quickly
Ease your learning curve with task-oriented modules that speed you through typical workflow tasks by placing just the tools you need at your fingertips.

Edit nondestructively
Enjoy robust support for more than 190 camera raw file formats, and experiment with confidence. Adjustments you make to images in Lightroom won't alter the original data, whether you're working on a JPEG, TIFF, DNG, or camera raw file.

Easily show off your photos online
Create dynamic web galleries based on Adobe Flash technology without programming. In a few clicks, you can assemble and upload an interactive gallery to your website. Or easily upload your images to popular photo-sharing sites directly from Lightroom.

Product Description

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software is the professional photographer's essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens. Product Description: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - ( v. 2 ) - upgrade package Category: Creativity application Subcategory: Creativity - graphics & image editing Version: 2 License Type: Upgrade package License Qty: 1 user License Pricing: Standard Language(s): Universal English Platform: Windows, MacOS Distribution Media: CD-ROM OS Required: Microsoft Windows XP SP2, Apple MacOS X 10.4, Microsoft Windows Vista, Apple MacOS X 10.5

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Worth While Upgrade, September 11, 2008

By	E Seg (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

When Adobe first released the public beta of the original Lightroom, it seemed like a desperate attempt to compete with Apple's Aperture which Apple seemed to be using to target Adobe's flagship creative tool, Photoshop.

Upon using the beta, however, it became apparent that this was a tool that Adobe had been putting a lot of thought into and while the decision to offer the free public beta may have been an attempt to stave off possible Aperture defectees, the development of the software itself clearly was more than that.

Adobe's new tool would come to herald in a nondestructive editing and organizational workflow that simply would never be possible in the full version of Photoshop without seriously jeopardizing functionality and workflows for existing users.

Today, Lightroom 2 takes that original concept to the next level. Boasting even more powerful non-destructive editing, tighter integration with the full version of Photoshop and a revised and even more streamlined interface (Adobe listened), it is well worth the upgrade price.

If you don't have Lightroom yet and are wondering why you would buy it when you already have Photoshop, ask yourself this: Do you have a digital camera and do you take a lot of pictures with it? If so, does taking them all into Photoshop for adjustments seem time consuming? Does the added storage for saving originals and adjusted copies seem excessive? Do you wish that Bridge acted more like a database than a browser and maybe had the ability to keep track of files even when they weren't available (external or networked hard drive that aren't always available for instance)?

If so, Lightroom may be the tool for you. Will it replace Photoshop? No, but an easy way to think of it is as a tool for dealing with many images that need global adjustments with a few touch-ups where as Photoshop is the tool you'll turn to for composite images and major touch-up/cleanup.

Can you do what you need to in Photoshop without Lightroom? Of course - Photoshop is the top of the line Swiss Army Knife of image editing. Will you be able to work as quickly and efficiently in it as you would Lightroom? Seriously doubtful.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full Featured Workflow, September 26, 2008

By	Nikon131 "Nikon131" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

I am not a professional but I have alot of photos I need to keep organized. I used iPhoto, but between it and Photoshop, there were some steps that just slowed down the process. Basically Lightroom is a combination of an organizational application with basic photo editing capabilities. It integrates well with Photoshop for more advanced editing. For my family snapshots though I rarely have to edit outside of Lightroom.

Navigating:
==========
Basic key commands:
G - Grid view, thumbnails of your photos
E - Loupe, highlighted photo fullscreen
D - Single photo in Develop mode
C - Compare, see two photos side by side, nice when you are looking for the perfect shot.
Command+Option+5 - Web module, I use this frequently to upload behind my site, via Lightroom's ftp upload option.
Command [ or ] - rotates image CW and CCW


Organization:
==========
I am an organization obsessive, especially about my family photos. I have all of my photos on an external drive and LR is pointed to them. There are basically two types of "folders" in LR Folders and Collections.

-Folders
are just that, they refer to the physical folders/subfolders on your hard-drive and reflect the same structure in LR. If you have a folder named 2008>January>01 on your hard-drive, it will be so within LR. When you import into LR you can choose to 1. add photos without moving. 2. copy them to a new location. or 3. move them to a new location.

-Collections
are "virtual folders" within LR and these actually do not move the photo physically on your hard-drive. This is nice because you may have some photos you want to print, you just drag the thumbnails into a collection folder and you don't have to worry about it floating around somewhere on your computer. (when you actually delete a photo in LR it gives you the option of removing from Lightroom only or remove it from completely from your hard-drive) A new feature of LR 2 is the addition of smart collections. There are many options of smart collections, I use them to collect top rated photos. Here is how. You add a new smart collection which takes you into a little sub menu, where you can set how this folder collects photos. I have one called "top rated" which any photo from my folders rated 4 or 5 stars goes into this collection. So where you can drag and drop your favorite photos into collections you can also set these parameters and LR will do the organization for you. Love this feature. You can set smart folders my rating (0-5 stars) color label, dates... and a couple more options I haven't explored yet. As you can imagine there are countless different ways of making these...

-Importing
I basically plug my memory card into my computer and LR asks if I want to import. I have it set to create a physical folder on my hard-drive and import there. So my photos are organized on import. At this time there are options of renaming the whole set of photos with a custom name for example "las vegas 2008 vacation_etc......jpg"

Editing:
==========
This is basically the photoshop part of Lightroom, you have basic editing tools in the Loupe (E) but you need to go to Develop Mode/Module (D) for more advanced editing. You basically have control of color in LR, for example, white balance, hue, temperature, tint, brightness, saturation, curve...etc There is also allowances for Lens correction, noise reduction, sharpening, etc. You can do cropping in develop mode as well, which is very simple.

A couple of new tools in LR 2.0, I have only started to play around with are Spot Removal and Adjustment Brush. Spot removal tool comes up like the stamp tool in photoshop, where if you have a spot of dust or a pixel you want to get rid of. This is a two step tool, where you first choose the spot you want to remove, (say a dark spot on someone's cheek) next you choose the area of the photo you want to replace the spot with (a clean area of the person's cheek) and voila the spot is gone. The adjustment brush is nice to have because you can overexpose, underexpose, adjust the contrast, brightness, saturation with a brush tool. This is something I didn't expect out of LR so I will definitely be exploring this tool.

You can also edit in Photoshop pretty seamlessly out of LR. You can edit the original (100.jpg will be the one you will be editing in PS) and see the effects back in LR. Edit a copy in PS (100-edit.jpg will be created in your hard-drive and see it next to the original in LR. Also Edit in PS with LR adjustments, any edits in LR will be exported out into PS.

One thing to keep in mind is that any edit done in LR are NOT HARD EDITS. Meaning, you do not affect the original image until you export that image out of LR. The edits are stored in LR until you do an export out into PS or into a folder on your desktop. Until then all photos can be restored back to their original state.

-Presets:
This is a fun part of LR. Lightroom comes already with some basic presets, which instead of remembering all the steps you took to edit one photo, you can save these steps into "presets". So in Develop mode you adjust the, hue, curve, temperature, detail, saturation..etc. of a photo, and you can save it as a preset, call it "preset outdoor" or something and then you can apply this preset to one or dozens of photos at once. Voila. There are lots of free presets already out there. (do a google search. the flickr lightroom group is a good source for learning) You can also cut and paste the edits of a particular photo and paste in onto a group of photos as well.

Web Module:
==========
This is also fun too. Basically you enter in your web ftp info into LR and tell it to point to a subfolder on your site. (www.website.com/gallery1) and this is where you upload the galleries too. LR comes with a few prepackaged galleries and flash galleries, you select your photos, choose the web template, edit the template (background color, type etc. and upload. and it's really that simple you have uploaded a gallery behind your site. Obviously you need to learn the basics, but before I had to upload with a ftp client, create the html etc.

All in all, Lightroom really is a fantastic tool. I am still learning alot about it. And I know there are people who prefer Aperture and I will try it out to compare, but LR just felt right for me. Try out the 30 day free trial, test out as much as you can, It is not a cheap program but if you are as excited about this stuff it really is a great tool. Cheers.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-designed versatile productivity tool for digital photographers, September 14, 2008

By	Rudy "pain-doc" (Columbia, SC USA) - See all my reviews

Version 2 of 'Adobe Photoshop Lightroom' (LR2) is a worthwhile expansion of last year's successful introduction -- in particular, the welcome capability of enhancing selected regional portions of an image (as against the prior more restrictive global tweaks); a Finder bar that consolidates previously separate searches for dates, keywords and metadata (eg: capture date, camera make, location, etc) into one accessible central location; capacity for huge files (up to 512 MB); as well as dual-monitor support. The option for 64-bit execution in both Mac and Vista will further speed processing (but nowhere near the doubling you'd anticipate) for users having more than 4MB RAM memory.

LR2 is a combination photo cataloging and processing application geared to high-quality high-volume workflow in the wide-gamut photoRGB color space -- the platform-neutral CD installs either the Win or Mac version with minimal hassle; whether Win or Mac, the LR2 screen has a virtually identical look and feel.

If you just want to spruce up family and travel snapshots, LR2 isn't for you; PSE6 autofix would be all you'd need and want -- saving time, space and yet another steep learning curve. If, on the other hand, you want the very best you can squeeze out of your digital camera, and don't mind investing a bit more time and effort, then LR2 comes as close as you can to high-volume production.

At one C-note in the US (shamefully higher elsewhere) the upgrade is well worth the fare in enhancing productivity -- were it not for a little known bug that prevents proper importing of keywords when converting ver 1 catalogs to version 2. [see LR 'User Forum' for Adobe's fix]; one would have expected Adobe Update to have that ironed out some 2 months later or, at the very least, have placed a warning sticker on the outside of upgrade boxes. Even so, that issue does not affect purchasers of the full version 2 release. Otherwise, bug reports seem remarkably mild for such a major overhaul.

If you use the RAW ('digital negative') capability of a DSLR, nothing else beats LR2 which 'develops' the RAW file as it imports the file into the catalog, and retains its 12- or 14-bit per color channel precision throughout ... without ever altering the original 'negative'. This is a far faster process than either Photoshop or PSE6 can deliver. In fact, LR2 has pretty much become the standard for those professional photographers who favor RAW capture. This feature will become all the more meaningful as camera development relentlessly moves towards 16-bit pixels on a full-frame sensor (recall LR2's 512 MP capacity!).

While the great majority of your photos will be print-ready after LR2 'development' a few images might still need some targeted touchups from a dedicated application. Adobe would dearly love for you to use their flagship Photoshop cash cow. But, for most of us using photo inkjet printers, Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 (either Win or Mac) should prove more than adequate, a heck of a lot cheaper, and far easier to use. Conversely, if your photography demands heavy-duty professional CMYK press printing, then Photoshop (or similar) still is the big gorilla. Otherwise: healing, cloning, retouching and even adjustment layering are much the same in PSE6 as in Photoshop; because LR2 has already squeezed out most of the benefits of 16-bit color processing, the PSE6 8-bit/channel RGB limitation is no great handicap.