At the Photoshop World Keynote in Las Vegas yesterday, the guest Adobe representatives actually spent the bulk of their time showing the crowd new, cool features of not Photoshop but the "complementary product" designed particularly for photographers, Adobe Lightroom.
After NAPP President Scott Kelby entertained the crowd with a clever CSI send-up (featuring a nefarious act by our own Deke McClelland), he turned the podium over to Adobe's John Loiacono (Senior Vice President, Creative Solutions Business Unit) who spent a few minutes discussing how Photoshop had become a pervasive brand, community, and world experience (demonstrated with clips of referrals to Photoshop in the TV shows "The West Wing" and "Desperate Housewives.") But "Johnny L" (if you can believe Scott Kelby) fairly quickly introduced Adobe's Sr. Director of Product Development for Digital Imaging, Kevin Connor, to give a sneak peek at Lightroom.
Although Lightroom has been in public beta since January (at least for Mac users), "Kevin C" (OK, I made that one up) gave the audience a glimpse at some of the cool features of Beta 4, which is not yet available to the world. Although I was a little surprised that so much time was spent on Lightroom at Photoshop World Keynote, from a raise-of-hands poll conducted by Kevin Conner, hundreds in the audience had already downloaded the beta.
One of those key features is a flexible, customizable interface which allows photographers to choose which tools and metadata they want to see, and hide panels that they don't. But the intriguing new feature to me was a new highlight/shading feature on the Histogram and Curves displays that show you the area that you are affecting as you move a slider. Seems to me this has great feedback potential for helping users (especially new students of digital photography) really understanding how these tools work.
In order to prove that the next round would have parity across platform, he ran it in Windows. He also used some amazing photographs from the Adobe Lightroom Adventure in Iceland to demo how the new interface worked, and both Conner and Loiacono praised the value of having sent real world photographers out to test this tool for "photographers who want the best results."
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Photography
Comments (13)
Read More Entries by Colleen Wheeler.
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Jani, in answer to your question about metadata, both Kevin Conner (in the Keynote) and George Jardine (in his session on Lightroom) mentioned "Expanded Cells" that contain customizable metadata displays. Basically, this means having more View options in the Library module, beyond the basics that are there now (filename, star rating, etc.)
The "big hype" about the technology preview came straight from Adobe, who issued a press release solely to announce that there'd be a "Sneak Peek of Upcoming Photoshop Technology".
Count me among the disappointed.
Soo, there was some new metadata features! What were they?
(BTW, I wasn't able to go to any of Russell "Mad Doctor" Brown's sessions, but I assure you his hair was hard to miss.)
The new metadata features were still part of the Library module. As far as a Web module for Windows goes, Adobians specifically mentioned that there would be platform parity with the next round.
You did mention one intriguing new feature in beta 4. What more did they show? Was there a Web-module for the windowsbeta, was there a separate module for metadata? Did they mention any speed optimisation?
Tell me more, tell me more!!!
You didn't attend anything by Russell brown there, did you? Sometimes he let people sneak peak a bit.
And Colleen is clearly a developmental editor, not a copyeditor. Thanks, Mike. ;-)
Lightroom is a complementary product to Photoshop, although many of us would like it to be complimentary ;)
Well, it certainly wasn't a bust for the couple of hundred Lightroom "testers" who got to see what was on the way (and what was on the way was pretty cool). In fairness, John Loiacono did come back after the Lightroom presentation to show a Photoshop beta running on a "Mactel." (Lots of emphasis from him and other Adobians about how they really want to optomize the potential of Universal binary with CS3.) But it would have taken someone far more eagle-eyed or Photoshop-intimate than I to have gained much from such a quick glimpse.
"After all the hype recently about a BIG technology preview"
Sounds like it was exactly what it said it was...a technology preview. As with Apple and other events, it was the Web and bloggers that speculated it far out of proportion. Raise your expectations and you'll be disappointed every time.
Thanks. After all the hype recently about a BIG technology preview at the keynote I've been anxiously awaiting any report about it. It sounds like it was essentially a bust -- and that explains why all the Photoshop tech and fan sites have been suspiciously quite about it so far. Leave it to OreillyNet to get the story out first.