Adobe Lightroom -aargh !

I would recommend that anyone of a nervous disposition or who has heart disease to avoid trying out the beta version of lightroom.

I have downloaded it to an AMD 3000+ based XP home computer & it not only has no effective help but it also appear to have a mind of its own !

There is nothing intuitive about the interface & you have to guess at what might work. When I eventually find a file - it starts to display but when I attempt to work on it - it then disappears & the program hangs up.

I know that beta versions are for testing purposes but it seems that it has been released too soon. When I try to run the help videos on the parent Adobe site they crash as well - I think that they are only designed to work on Broadband. Why can't they have a set of simple instructions that anyone could follow - is this to make the program appear sophisticated in order to justify a high initial price ?

If anyone can tell me what I am doing wrong I would be grateful.

Keith-C

Hi Keith, this is a shame.

I'm currently going through a woeful time with Nikon's latest Capture NX program. It was getting to the stage that I was considering switching to Lightrooom, now the beta's out.

At least Adobe have the honesty to call the Lightroom release a beta. Nikon actually want you to pay for NX, after a 30 day evaluation period!!!

--
Colin Malsingh
-------------------
http://www.pbase.com/cmalsingh

Go to the Adobe labs site and watch the instructional video's They are immensely helpful.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

--
Chris

yeah I have seen those videos. but they are no help to this new windows release. To many bugs...my first install attempt was unsuccessful (progam wasnt even launching). And now it is installed properly, and it continuously hangs and does other wild things as the OP suggested. This is a mess, and not proper (IMO) on adobe's part to release even a beta at this point. I think I am going to uninstall now and just wait until a better working versions comes out. After all I have bibble in the mean time...and I dont even know if I will get used to lightroom.

I have to disagree. Although it wasn't very intuitive for finding how to open your photos, once I got past that, I found the interface very intuitive and easy to work with.

I really liked how they implemented the before and after side by side options.

And the interface has almost everything you need right there, not hidden away.

My biggest complaint is that it's quite a load on my P4 2.4 GHz processor, hopefully that will get better in the final release.

Alan

aaaaaakash said:

yeah I have seen those videos. but they are no help to this new
windows release. To many bugs...my first install attempt was
unsuccessful (progam wasnt even launching). And now it is installed
properly, and it continuously hangs and does other wild things as
the OP suggested. This is a mess, and not proper (IMO) on adobe's
part to release even a beta at this point. I think I am going to
uninstall now and just wait until a better working versions comes
out. After all I have bibble in the mean time...and I dont even
know if I will get used to lightroom.

Click to expand...

Sorry. I've not had any of those problems. Good luck with your efforts!

--
Chris

alanwarp said:

I have to disagree. Although it wasn't very intuitive for finding
how to open your photos, once I got past that, I found the
interface very intuitive and easy to work with.

I really liked how they implemented the before and after side by
side options.

And the interface has almost everything you need right there, not
hidden away.

My biggest complaint is that it's quite a load on my P4 2.4 GHz
processor, hopefully that will get better in the final release.

Alan

Click to expand...

It's certainly a different operational mindset than I'm used to, but I don;t think that's bad.

It is very SLOW though. Unfortunately so is Capture NX to which I comparing it.

--
Chris

The whole concept of exporting your images to JPG’s indicates to me that this app wasn’t initially intended to be a raw workflow application.

It is beta, so there is still hope.

Chris Dubea said:

Go to the Adobe labs site and watch the instructional video's They
are immensely helpful.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

Click to expand...

I may have just been unlucky but it took me several attempts to get to the beta download site & so far I haven't got any tutorial video to run which of course may explain my operating difficulties.

I used to be a laboratory based Scientist & I always thought that any scientific instrument should be able to be used by an experienced person without days of study of operating manuals if it has been designed well.

Keith-C

you should read the Adobe bashing that occured in the Lightroom forum on Adobe's site for them having the nerve to release betas for the Mac and not Windows. It got pretty ridiculous when a poster was disapointed when on June 21st, no beta was released when Adobe had promised a release this summer!

You want to just reach across the internet and strangle someone sometimes. Or nominate them for the Darwin Award....

--

'The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.'

Quotation from Brooks Atkinson
US Drama Critic, Journalist

there are more video tutorials here:

http://www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom/index.html

(at the bottom of the page-ish)
--
Al
Blackwood, Wales, UK

Chris Dubea said:

It is very SLOW though. Unfortunately so is Capture NX to which I
comparing it.

Click to expand...

Hi Chris, apart from speed, have you found NX reliable?

I am starting to like it (haven't tried Lightroom - too much excitement with NX). However I find it too unreliable to rely on on.

Nikon's support just suggest uninstalling, plus various Nikon regsweepers. They didn't help.

Has NX run without crashing at all for you?

--
Colin Malsingh
-------------------
http://www.pbase.com/cmalsingh

I have tried LightRoom and I am not quite convinced that it will be any advantage over what I can do with CS2, but everything changes whether we do or not. Granted that the thought of learning another editing program is not high on my list of priorities, I will still monitor its development.
Here is a link for you concerning LighRoom.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

That site was useful - I managed to get the first video to download & discovered that my copy of lightroom beta is defective,

I don't have the import/export buttons ! Unless there is some way of revealing them ? This in part explains why I couldn't get any images although 3 did appear off my CF card by randomly pressing every button.

Should i try to re-download the beta program ?

Keith-C

update - I have begun to appreciate that there may be differences between the two versions ,Mac & Windows. I have found the import button on the File menu - i guess that at some stage I must have tried it without realising.

The instuctional videos that I have seen so far are geared towards the Mac version so Windows user may have to be a little wary over the differences.

Keith-C

Can someone actually tell me where the Lightroom download for windows is?

I keep getting to the Adobe Download page which takes an eternity to load, then locks up, then when it finally decides to let me scroll, I can't find the bl* dy link!
Never mind if Lightroom is any good, I can't even get the thing to download!!!

(I'm now going to bang my head against a wall for 10 minutes just to see if that is more productive!)

Sorry, but I cannot agree ...

I installed Lightroom beta on an AMD-based desktop and a Pentium 4 based laptop, both running standard Windows XP Pro SP2, and on both it installed easily and quickly and runs problem free. I have only had one crash so far (which occurred on the desktop when switching back to 'Library' from 'Develop' whilst the application was still working on an image).

As a user of Capture One Pro and Rawshooter Premium and as someone who hates using the clunky Photoshop + ACR + Bridge, I was all set to dislike Lightroom, but I don't! In fact, quite the opposite, it is far better than I had expected. Yes, it is too slow and some features are missing (as expected for beta software), but overall I find it really nice to use and the results look really good, especially colour and detail.

I find the interface to be reasonably intuitive and certainly easy to navigate and use. There is quite a nice little introductory overview at:
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lightroom_win/lr_win.htm

I need to experiment further, but my initial thoughts are that Lightroom will become my raw converter of choice, although until Adobe make it run faster I will continue to use Rawshooter Premium for previewing and initial image assessment.

Terry.

I had a lot of problems with the download as well - I think that they are very busy with requests. You need to be a registered user. Use your E-mail address as ID & create a password if you don't have one.

Go to http://www.adobe.com

Start linking by clicking on the 5th announcement on the opening page.'DOWNLOAD the BETA'

Keith-C

Some of the buttons and stuff in the videos must have comes from either the Mac version or they were moved in the beta 3. I have seen several things that aren't in the right place in beta 3 but are still in the program. I guess they are still moving things around and I am guessing that the videos were done with either an earlier beta 3 or an earlier beta altogether.

Robert

but mostly because it is a RAW converter with a nice organizer front end and I use RAW converter most of the time. I do hope that Adobe improves the RAW side of it with some of the RSP/RSE elements. Need to get the speed up too.

Until then, I'll stick to RSP.

RG