Now that you Windows users have heard that there's a beta of Adobe Lightroom for you (a free download from Adobe), you're probably hungry for some Windows specific training. As usual, NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) is right on it. They've updated their Lightroom training page with some new videos that show the Windows version of Lightroom, including Matt Kloskowski's Intro to the Develop Module, Secrets of the Tone Curve, and Magic of Split-Toning. Mac users will benefit from these videos too, because Lightroom's settings are similar across the platforms.

And if you want to see what other users are saying about the Windows beta or post your own impressions, join in on Adobe's Lightroom Beta Windows discussion board.

Last month Adobe released a third beta of Lightroom, and now a Windows version is available for download. It doesn't seem like any major new features or updates have been added, but Windows users can finally stop re-forwarding request emails to the Adobe Labs team and take Lightroom for a spin.

Being that Lightroom has seen three (beta) versions on the Mac, we'd like to hear your thoughts on how well the Windows versions performs and stacks up to its counterpart.

Adobe has released a third beta of Lightroom, their photo management and editing app specifically designed for professional photographers. Check out the release notes (PDF link, since HTML is so 1995) for the full details, but highlights include improvements to import and export options, live comparisons of image adjustments in Before and After previews, an additional straightening tool, as well as a new Web module (apparently heavily influenced by forum feedback - cool) with HTML and Flash export options.

This sounds like a slick new release, and I'll crack open the download sooner or later and give it a look. Unfortunately, there still isn't a version for Windows users, though they are offering a sign-up notification form if you'd like to be on the list.

[via MacNN]

The O'Reilly Network has taken the wraps off of Inside Adobe Lightroom, a new site featuring articles, a blog and a podcast covering Adobe's professional photo management app. Tips on color correction, adding music to slideshows, how to migrate images from iPhoto  and more are all on the menu, so swing by and find out how much you really didn't know about Lightroom.

[via Daring Fireball]

We're a little late on this one, but it appears that the Adobe Lightroom podcast has released its 4th episode (iTMS link). As John Nack summarizes on his blog, this one was recorded at the Greg Gorman digital photography workshop in CA. George and his guests (Martin Evening, Peter Carides and Bryan O'Neil Hughes) discuss digital photography workflows, fashion photography, Lightroom features and archiving strategies.

Check it out in the iTMS podcast directory or grab it at Adobe's RSS feed here.

I was pleasantly surprised today as I went through my podcast playlist in iTunes to find the first two episodes of a new audio podcast about the Adobe Lightroom beta [iTMS link]. The podcast features members of Adobe's Lightroom development team chatting with some of the photographers who offered input into the Shadowland project, which was the development precursor to Lightroom.

Episode 1 features photographer and Photoshop guru Jeff Schewe talking with three key members of the Adobe Lightroom team--product manager George Jardine, lead engineer and "founder of the Lightroom team" Mark Hamburg, and engineer Kevin Tieskoetter. This episode focuses on printing and color management in Lightroom, with some other juicy tidbits (like Jardine's view of the ideal marriage--oh, George) thrown in for good measure.

This podcast is very enlightening on several levels:

• First, it offers fascinating insight into the Lightroom development process and the thinking of the Adobe team.
• Second, it brings home how very receptive the Lightroom team has been to the input and practical viewpoints of its audience, insofar as they are represented by Schewe, Bruce Fraser and other professional photographers.
• Third, I was struck by how transparent the development of this product has been, particularly as compared to the hush-hush nature of prerelease programs for other Adobe software (which shall rename nameless to protect the innocent).

There is lots of eye-opening information about Lightroom in Episode 1. Highlights follow after the jump.

Photoshop Product Manager John Nack spoke about Flash and Photoshop, Adobe/Macromedia integration, and more in an podcast interview with Inside Mac Radio's Scott Sheppard. The interview took place this week at Flash Forward 2006, which was the first Flash conference since the Adobe-Macromedia merger.

You can hear the full interview on the March 2, 2006 episode of Inside Mac Radio [ iTunes Music Store link ]

Here are key excerpts from the Nash interview:

On his own Flash background:

"It's really funny. Flash is really the reason I came to Adobe. I was working for an agency out in New York called agency.com. We were doing Web sites in Flash for Nike, and Gucci, and all these big companies. And I really wanted to build a new experience there and solve some of the problems I was having. So Adobe said, hey we're making a Flash animation tool. Do you want to come work on that. So I said sure. And they were just about to ship their first version. So I came out and joined the Live Motion team in 2000. And worked hard, got a bunch of cool things going. But ultimately we didn't get enough things right fast enough to really make it take off, and the project got canceled. So about four years ago I left that and came over to Photoshop. Well then you can imagine last April I just about dropped my cereal on the floor. I was like, what Adobe and Macromedia are getting together. Totally unbelievable. I couldn't be more excited because a lot of the pain points, the things that just waste people's time and keep them from doing cool stuff, we can now finally fix. And that's really exciting."

On potential integration of Photoshop and Flash:

"Mike Downey, the Flash product manager, put up a survey a week or two on his blog and said, what's the top thing you want to integrate. And I think the top thing was Photoshop and Flash. But of course a lot of folks are using Illustrator, Fireworks, and they want those to integrate as well. Same with After Effects."

"There are just a lot of really obvious basic things we can make work right--bringing in a layered PSD file, bringing in a layered Illustrator file--things that are not creative tasks, but things that just should work better. And it's really great that we can get the teams together and give them access to each others' code and a lot of knowledge, and make that stuff work. . ."

Remember that leaked tutorial video with (an assumed) second version of the Lightroom beta? It seems the rumors were true, as Adobe has officially released Lightroom public beta 2, and you can pick it up from the Adobe Labs site - curiously hosted at labs.macromedia.com.

Domain naming issues aside, the latest Lightroom beta still only runs on a Mac, although it now runs on both PPC and Intel version of Mac OS X (Windows support is still forthcoming). Updates in this version include, but are not limited to: crop and straighten tools included in the Develop module, ability to add music to slideshows, more camera support, Ability to create hierarchical keyword sets, and more. In fact, PhotoshopNews, where I found this, has already delved into the new beta with a whole slew of screenshots and briefs on new features. Head on over and check out their rundown, and don't forget to pick up your own free copy.

Oops. Not only was a Lightroom tutorial movie (QuickTime link) somehow leaked in the Adobe Lightroom Forums, but some clever viewers noticed an as-yet unseen crop button (pictured) in the lower left of the movie, betraying an upcoming second demo of this most excellent of pro photography apps.

Availability of this second beta is yet to be announced.

[via PhotoshopNews]

I finally got around to playing with the Lightroom beta over the last couple of days and I have to say: it's fantastic. I'm running it on the latest version of the 15" PowerBook G4, with a hi-res screen, 1.67 GHz G4 and 1.5 GB RAM, and it runs quick. App startup time is virtually nil, and the whole thing just feels zippy. It offers a great array of features centered around this image comparison/organization paradigm, and some of them are the type of tools where, upon using them, I never even realized I was missing. Some of the toolsets are simply a sort of remixing of the tools and palettes found in Photoshop, offering a very different and handy UI for accomplishing the same kinds of editing, touching up, print preparation and comparison tasks. If you haven't checked out a demo yet, I highly recommend you do (as long as you're on OS X; a Windows demo is still pending).

The differences and similarities of Lightroom to Bridge are very interesting, as I mentioned John Nack covers in one of his posts. First and foremost, I think, is Lightroom's use of an all-encompassing Library (in ~/Pictures/Lightroom) for organization, with not much in the way of a system file browser to be seen. Upon importing images to work with, you have the choice of leaving them in whatever folder structure they are stored, or you can copy/move them into Lightroom's library. This stands quite in contrast to Bridge's more "file browsing and organizing" approach, allowing you to browse the file system and add individual folders to a "favorites" list for easy retrieval. I'm not saying either system is bad or good; I just wanted to point it out for those who might have an organizational preference for one paradigm or the other.

But of course, Lightroom isn't really meant to be a pro version of Bridge - it's an image comparison and touch-up/editing tool, and at those tasks it excels. I think the new and remixed UI of editing tools is a dream to use. I honestly don't want to be gleaming with Lightroom appreciation here, but I haven't really run into any complaints yet. Of course, I'm not a six-figure photographer with gobs and gobs of images from photoshoots to crunch through, so I'm anxious to see more serious run-throughs from those more pro than I.

TUAW has picked up on Macworld Magazine's "Best in Show" announcement, covering all the latest and greatest of the Macworld Expo 06 that's rounding up in San Francisco today. Among the new software, gadgets and gizmos named is Adobe's new Lightroom application, citing its complementary organizational nature to Photoshop and its friendly hardware requirements.

If you haven't checked out the beta of the Mac-only (for now) Lightroom, I'd recommend you grab a copy from Adobe Labs and give it a spin.

PhotoshopNews has the lowdown on Adobe's quick move to release a Lightroom FAQ. The diverse FAQ tries to spearhead a lot of the initial questions that can arise from a new (beta) app like this, such as where Lightroom stands in the face of Bridge and Camera RAW, how Lightroom and Photoshop compare and more. Check out the article for answers to most, if not all, of the questions you have about Lightroom.

So everyone's picked up on Adobe's release of a beta of Lightroom, a new pro app for photography workflows, and you can pick up a copy from Adobe Labs. I caught a rather interesting post on John Nack's blog, however, that goes a bit more into detail and explains what they're really trying to do with Lightroom. Sure, it's admittedly a competitor to Aperture, but would you expect anything less from the king of desktop image editing and publishing?

John delves into who Lightroom is for and what exactly Adobe plans to do with it. He also opens up the door for submitting feedback, emphasizing again the app's main function and the fact that they're not going to build in every little bell, whistle, button and feature they can think of. The post is a good read on Adobe's latest offering, and there's even a Lightroom introductory movie (link to mov file) that's also available as a podcast via iTunes.

[UPDATE: Lightroom, at present, only runs on Mac OS X. A Windows version is in the works.]

[pic via TUAW]