In case you're one of those who want Lightroom and don't have it yet, Amazon's Gold Box deal of the Day today (May 30th) [link removed—deal is over now —MJ, May 31] is Adobe Lightroom 3 (for Windows Vista / 7 / XP or Mac OS X) for only $119. That's almost as cheap as Photoshop Elements. If you need it but have been waiting for the right deal, now would appear to be the time.
And if you're looking for a very good way to spend the money you save, Michael Tapes has an excellent downloadable tutorial video called "Raw Without FUD" ("FUD" is "fear, uncertainty, and doubt") that also serves as a tutorial for Lightroom. It's not specific to Lightroom 3, but the approach is holistic and still relevant.
I don't think it's widely enough known that "RAW Without FUD" will help you with Lightroom too. And of course as we know from Ctein's column this past week, there's no virtue in cleaving to the JPEG your camera gives you—everyone should learn RAW, even those who elect not to use it.
Mike
FD (full disclosure) Dept.: Michael T. is an advertiser here. But I wouldn't recommend his video just because of that. He has a nice knack for explaining software, IMHO.
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In rip off Britain Lightroom 3 costs over $330 from Amazon grrrr
Posted by: Andy | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 11:51 AM
Lightroom is an extraordinary piece of software that will make you faster and more creative (because it doesn't get in the way), once you've learned how it works, and help you get more out of your images. You won't even know you're working with RAW; you'll think you're working with magic.
Video tutorials are the best way to learn new software. An hour spent with a video tutorial is a few days saved with self-learning frustration, at least. And I say that as a software developer.
Posted by: Friedrich | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 12:06 PM
Mike,
Thanks for the LR3 tip! Now I can break out of my "Aperture rut" . . . ;-)
Posted by: h.linton | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 12:35 PM
Well, unfortunately, these super deals never apply to Canada... Is there any way to get around that???
Posted by: Eric Morin | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 01:09 PM
("FUD" is "fear, uncertainty, and doubt")
All I could think of was "Elmer FUDD.
Ironically suspect that fear uncertainty and doubt would also be Elmer's watchwords.
Haven't tried however suspect that reduced price offer probably applies only to the United States and not Canada or elsewhere.
Posted by: Bryce Lee | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 02:56 PM
Oh to be in the USA. Here in little old UK the only current Adobe offer is 10% discount on purchases over £350 ($570); Lightroom3 costs £237.60 ($390).
No wonder they call us Treasure Island.
Posted by: David Paterson | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 05:11 PM
Just upgraded my 6 year old iMac G5 for an I7 so just yesterday I upgraded from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3. I also have CS5 Creative Suite but with the 'new broom' of a new machine I am going to favour Lightroom 3. It is such an incredibly powerful tool.
I guess it follows then that today's task is to seek out this tutorial from Meastro Tapes.
Cheers,
Walter
Posted by: Walter Glover | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 05:45 PM
LR for $119. is a really good deal. I just upgraded to LR 3 from 2.7 last week for $99. Getting a fresh copy for ten bucks more than the upgrade is unbeatable. Is this a blowout in anticipation of v4.0?
Posted by: Ken White | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 06:15 PM
Grr, not available outside the US it seems. Here in Australia a download from Adobe is about USD390...
Posted by: Murray Lord | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 08:15 PM
Dear Folks,
And, if your are new to Lightroom, I cannot recommend Mikkel Aaland's books too highly:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/06/by-mikkel-alland-from-oreilly.html
pax / Ctein
Posted by: Ctein | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 09:13 PM
Adobe's absolutely criminal pricing structure is why I don't have PS or LR. I work hard for my money and don't like contributing to faceless corporations. But if my plans come to pass, I'll have to get PS and learn it, sadly. I know there's lots of options, but really, PS is the standard.
Posted by: RobG | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 09:13 PM
Well, FWIW, I'm a full Lightroom convert, and I'd say it's worth paying full price for it. Or put another way, it's not worth putting off switching to LR for the sake of a couple of hundred bucks.
LR has really changed the way I do things (for the better). I'm much more organized, have a much better workflow, and my post-processing has improved immensely (or so sez I).
But it is a commitment -- a commitment to changing your workflow and how you conceptualize your organization. It's also a commitment to a single product, which worries me a bit. After all, I have this LR catalog now, full of tags, ratings, virtual copies, etc., but what happens if a future version of LR goes off the rails and I hate it? What if for some reason I decide to boycott Adobe?
In for a penny, in for a pound.
Posted by: Ed Hawco | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 09:19 PM
NOT sold by Amazon but by a "LJ Distributor". Buyer beware.
and, for Mac users, Aperture is only $80 from the Mac App store everyday. So be sure to try them both out before you buy one. Both have advantages and disadvantages but fundamentally, in Aperture, you can edit at any place or point in time in the program. LR is less flexible? or more specific (explicit?) in that regard. Both programs are awesome though. You can move from Aperture to PS or LR and back to Aperture very easily too. I go to PS and back with edits. Usually for PS only plug ins I sometimes use or for treatments I need for specific design jobs I am working on.
Posted by: Joe | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 09:27 PM
Like Murray Lord I'm also an Aussie, and at that price I've just bought one (through Mike's link, of course) and had it sent to an American mate.
Hopefully all he'll need to do is open the box and email me the serial number, and I can simply apply that to a trial download from the Adobe site.
At almost a quarter of the Australian price I figure it's worth a punt. Surely if I was holidaying in the US and bought boxed software Adobe could have no objection or means to prevent me using it in Australia?
No matter where we are in the world, Adobe, it's just a series of ones and zeros – even Apple stopped ripping Australians off years ago now.
Assuming I don't have any problems initally it will be intriguing to see what happens when it comes time to upgrade…
Posted by: Michael Fink | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 10:59 PM
Now if only they will run on deal on CS5, we'll all be in business. This is an insanely low price for an awe-inspiring piece of software.
Posted by: Chase Palmer | Monday, 30 May 2011 at 11:28 PM
For Pentax readers, LR3.4 has lens profiles for most current Pentax lenses. Good to see Pentax keeping up with the others in this respect. Works very nicely with the Pentax DA Limited pancakes, where I'm thinking that maybe things like distortion have taken second place in the juggling game with resolution and compactness.That's not a technically considered judgement - just a hunch I have from using them.
Posted by: LM | Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 02:02 AM
The only way around Adobe's overseas pricing if you live outside the US is if you know someone there who you can have it sent to and then send you the serial number which is all you need. Sooner or later I am sure they will find a way to stop that too. I guess Adobe customer service makes up for the extra pricing. Or maybe not.
@joe: Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean, but LR allows nondestructive edits to raw files at any point at any time. If in Library mode you can make basic edits, and if more is needed a simple click to switch to Develop takes about a second.
Posted by: David H. | Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 02:18 AM
I've been using Lightroom for about a year now and find it indispensable. The best Lightroom tutorials are from George Jardine who worked at Adobe for many years. http://mulita.com/blog/?p=967
What sets his tutorials above the rest is the in-depth knowledge he has of the design of each function — George not only tells you what each control does, but he also explains some of the thinking that went into its design. He demonstrates each tool by showing the adjustments to his own photographs– too much adjustment, too little and just right. When you know the underlying functional logic this really improves your understanding and decsion-making with the tools. Balancing the technical knowledge is George’s constant refrain throughout the series that you just have to use your own eyes to make individual decisions with each photograph. In more than one place he cautions that there are no formulas or fixed rules for adjusting the Lightroom controls. There is a sample tutorial on the Hue, Saturation and Luminance controls here http://mulita.com/training/sample-dev3/
I think this series is a bargain.
I don't have any vested interest in these videos, I'm just really impressed with the quality.
Posted by: John King | Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 06:24 AM
I have only used Aperture so cannot directly compare it to Lightroom, but there seems to be lots of commentary on the web to indicate that the two products go toe-to-toe on most features, and support for one over the other seems to be about evenly spread.
The price differential though is huge, in Aperture's favour. Promotions such as the Lightroom one just ended indicate that Adobe are very aware of Apple's pricing policy, and are trying a limited marketing exercise to evaluate what the effect would be of moving permanently to a new pricing structure. It's a very common tactic in the world of marketing, the data is reasonably simple to interpret, and to even run the promotion, a serious amount of modelling and discussion will have already been done in Adobe.
So, if the results are "positive" (ie greater potential sales, market share propped up) a corporate decision to lower the price of Lightroom 3 could be only a couple of months away.
All very long-winded from me (sorry), but if I was a prospective purchaser of Lightroom, I'd wait for a couple of months if I could.
Posted by: James | Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 07:51 AM
Ed Haven "It's also a commitment to a single product, which worries me a bit."
I work entirely with DNG files amd this removes a lot of dependance on the software if you embed your meta-data. You don't even need to use DNG files, but I find it much easier. In large part your archive becomes your catalogue. There are some Lightroom features (virtual copies, collections etc) that are proprietary, but in general I only use these for workflow related things. Once the organisation and manipulation is complete, I can rely entirely on embedded tags and meta-data.
And if I shift to something else, I should just be able to import my archive.
Posted by: LM | Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 08:05 AM
A competing product, Bibble Pro, is what got me into using RAW routinely. It's also somewhat cheaper ($200 full price) and not from Adobe, which is of interest to some people including me.
Both support non-destructive editing workflows. Lightroom insists on "organizing" your files, as I understand it; Bibble will work that way if you want, but is perfectly happy to simply access them out of your directory tree (which is how I use it). It works very nicely for "batch editing" -- adjusting a group of photos together, then maybe a sub-set of those, until everything is good enough. And then processing into files of any size you configure in the background, or printing. Very very fast.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 09:42 AM
DDB: Lightroom doesn't impose any organization on you. It will if you want it to. I have all my images in one folder and use things like the metadata browser to select and find images. Sophisticated batch synchronization as well.
Posted by: LM | Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 11:08 AM
What, exactly, is Lightroom, and why would I want to learn it?
I don't make many pictures, certainly less than a couple hundred a year, of which maybe 10-20 are worth printing (in a good year).
I'm really tired of all the software programs which are supposed to help me, but only seem to be interested in bringing out a new edition ($$$$$) every year. I don't know one from another.
Basically I use Photoshop Elements 2 (although I have PE9 and PS CS5 in my new MacBook Pro, which I am trying to learn after 10 years with Windows).
Please do/don't excuse the rant!
Posted by: Bill Mitchell | Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 07:42 PM
Bill - sure, in your case you don't need it.
Posted by: LM | Wednesday, 01 June 2011 at 12:57 PM
I LOVE Lightroom (LR)! I bought raw shooter essentials (RSE) years ago and got LR when Adobe bought RSE. With 50k+ photos in my LR catalog I find LR essential for organizing and viewing my photos.
Posted by: James Gaston | Thursday, 02 June 2011 at 02:40 AM