the new darkroom

Read an interesting blog post over lunch on the design goals for Adobe Lightroom. The majority of my image processing is now done in Lightroom. I occasionally pop in to Photoshop when I'm doing more complex bit pushing but Lightroom has all the features I need for 80% or more of the images I produce.

I like the unified and streamlined workflow. I love being able to select and sift images quickly (perhaps because I shoot so much) and quickly get to the keepers. Then being able to switch gears and work directly on the image is a joy. Particularly, the combination of using a large graphics tablet and the lightroom click and drag colour adjustments works very intuitively. I can switch Lightroom into select mode, point at a colour with the pen and push it in the direction I want to go. This extends to creating black and white images too, find a tone in the image I want to change and drag it to be lighter or darker. Really powerful, yet a very elegant, simple interface.

The slideshow features finish out the product letting me show the images quickly and easily, or then export them straight out for flickr upload or printing. All painless and quick. I think Adobe did well in meeting their goals for this product and incidentally making something useful for photography. It doesn't get in the way and that's the best praise I have for a software package.