F/1.0

Of course, with my gushing about the revolutionary aperture 2.1 etc… I was bound to be shown up somehow. Enter Lightroom 2 (beta).

while still a pretty rough beta (there are a number of pretty big known issues) it too adds brush based controls, along with a slew of general interface/usability improvements and dual monitor support, putting it right back in contention for the #1 spot on my mac!

Immediate reactions to the lightroom dodge and burn:

pro: it doesn’t require exporting to to a file to use the brush tools, they are built right into the develop module - meaning they are included in the history panel -HUGE!! (although I said I didn’t *mind* having to do it in aperture, not having to do it is even better!)

con: it doesn’t seem to have brushes for sharpen/blur like aperture
con: I like the overlay mode of aperture better, and the ability to feather the brushstrokes after the fact.

I think I’m going to do a side by side comparison between the 2 tools, and maybe a quick writeup - stay tuned!

One of the things that I really liked about the lightroom 1 betas is that they were really responsive to feedback from the community and testers, which is why it doesn’t bother me that this version is kind of rough- if past indications are anything, I am fully confident that Adobe will have the issues addressed and polished (minus the few inevitable bugs) before the final version goes live. I’m even anticipating a few new features to creep in (blur/sharpen brushes? please?)

Tags: adobe, aperture, lightroom, lightroom 2

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