John Beardsworth also looks at the new features in Aperture.

Sean McCormark writes The Gloves are Off? on his blog which comments on the Lightroom -v- Aperture debate, which has begun again with the release of Aperture 3.

The Aperture ‘camp’ has certainly been raving about the new version and as part of the mix has been dishing it out to Lightroom. But there seem to me to be some fundamental issues with the two apps which are less mentioned.

Aperture is Mac only. I am a Mac user through and through, but I recognise that enough photographers use a PC in some way, shape or form to make Lightroom a more useful tool since it is cross-platform.

Aperture and Metadata. Aperture has changed the way metadata is written to files in version 3 and David Riecks of Controlled Vocabulary has written about this issue.

Aperture and Quality. I am not convinced from my use of the trial version that image quality is up to the level of Lightroom 3 Beta, let alone what might be released when Lightroom goes release.

Aperture and updates. This is perhaps the biggest issue for Aperture users; how they are treated. Over the last few months there were rumours of either a new version of Aperture or that the product was going to be canned. Of course, this being Apple, there was no word either way. If it had been the latter, then users would have been left with a decision about sticking with 2.0 or migrating (which is not for the faint hearted). When Aperture was released then it was of distinctly ‘beta’ quality. Users had issues over speed (especially with the Faces feature) and an update had to be made.

This is not to say that Lightroom doesn’t have issue with releases – they have had two or three where there had to be a rushed update, but their policy tends to be to put out a Release Candidate for the wider public to test and check that all is OK.

There is also the issue of camera support. With Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw/DNG Converter there are at least 4 updates a year to cater for new cameras, and mostly these are release promptly either as ’supported’ or ‘final’. Users will always protest that there is a small delay between their getting a new camera and it being supported, but the delay is rarely that long. For Aperture users that is not the case. Camera updates are sporadic, they are system level so it means that the updates have to go through full system grade QA, which takes longer. And many cameras don’t get supported for months at a time. While the general rule of thumb ought to be that you don’t buy a camera which is not supported by your software of choice, that will only wash for a short period.

DNG support is a major advantage for Lightroom users. Support is full, whereas Aperture’s is partial. DNG support allows for backward compatibility for the early adopters who are facing the lack of updates for a new camera with older software.

Sean has written about interface differences and that will always be a personal preference. I am a big fan of Lightroom’s interface, others are not. Use the shortcuts, modify the interface to your preference and I’m sure either one will meet your needs. But you really have to learn those shortcuts in both apps to get the most out of them.

Aperture has done a lot of catching up with 3. But then again it needed to! It does have some features which are the envy of Lightroom users, Books, Places possibly the Light Table (but to me that is from the days of film and not a modern digital metaphor), some aspects of the new Brushes and Backup. But Lightroom’s speed, stability, relative openness, Printing Module, Develop Quality, Graduated filters, Adjustment Brushes, Organisational/Storage capabilities and, in my case, the Interface.

As Sean points out, competiton is good – it will drive the software from all the vendors to new heights (this includes Capture1, Bibble, Nikon Capture and maybe even Canon’s software (!)) and that can only be a good thing.

But a user has to be pretty convinced about a piece of software (or hardware) to make a radical leap especially when the next release (of Lightroom in this case) is coming soon.

Sean McCormack has just released LRB Exhibition a new Web Gallery based on his own website. It is in the form of a Website within a Lightroom Web Gallery. It features:

As Sean says “From the Portfolio family, it allows the user to create home, about, contact and general use pages, along with 6 galleries and 2 external links.”

The main image area in the gallery is based around a single image preview in an enclosed space. Using jQuery, each slide can be navigated to either using the navigation arrows, or numbered links to the relevant slide. LRB Exhibition is far more mature that LRB Portfolio was at version 1.0, in fact it’s almost par with LRB Portfolio 2.51, and probably equal to 2.4. It does however have features not available to LRB Portfolio, such as per page image and text placement and a floating text box.”

A sample is available here. And it is available now for €15

While I have been away a few Lightroom Plug-ins/Galleries have been updated.

Mark Wilson has released Nature Data LR, a Lightroom 2 Plug-in for adding species data fields on your photos.

The fields provide a formal and structured approach to organising your images of natural subjects such as birds and mammals.

The plug-in adds a new metadata panel to the library module, a new dialog to manage the additonal data and an export action to add the data to keywords on exported images. Updates are available through an RSS feed or via Twitter.

Mark’s other Plug-ins are available on his site.

John Beardsworth has just updated BeardyReplace to a Release Candidate which Searches and replaces metadata text; appends text to metadata fields and transfers text between metadata fields

Sean McCormack’s LRB Portfolio has now been updated to version 2.51. There are a lot of plumbing changes which should help efficiency. Some new features include:

• A Text Width slider that allows the user to set the width of the text in the Home, About, Contact and Blank pages.
• An ID Plate Offset Slider that allows the user to nudge the ID Plate for better alignment
• The non Gallery pages now use a separate header file to prevent an error in IE.
• The code is now W3C valid. For the record, it’s possible to have useless valid code, but as some people are bothered by this, it’s done.
• Fixed an IE bug where the ID plate could be hidden by the menu

Adobe have released a minor update to Lightroom containing one important fix that is only relevant for Leica M9 users which caused Lightroom 2.6 to crash when processing certain M9 images

There is no need to update to 2.6.1 if you aren’t a Leica M9 user.

Lightroom 2.6, Mac and Win and Adobe Camera Raw 5.6 Mac and Win have been released after spending some time as public betas on Adobe Labs.

The following new cameras are supported in this release:

Canon
Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, Canon EOS 7D, Canon PowerShot G11, Canon PowerShot S90

Medium Format
Leaf Aptus-II 5, Mamiya DM22, Mamiya DM28, Mamiya DM33, Mamiya DM56, Mamiya M18, Mamiya M22, Mamiya M31

Nikon
Nikon D3s

Olympus
Olympus E-P2

Panasonic
Panasonic DMC-FZ38

Pentax
Pentax K-x

Sigma
Sigma DP1s

Sony
Sony A500, Sony A550, Sony A850

Release Notes
1) Camera Raw 5.6 and Lightroom 2.6 provide a fix for an issue affecting PowerPC customers using the final Lightroom 2.5, Camera Raw 5.5 and DNG Converter 5.5 updates on the Mac. The issue, introduced in the demosaic change to address sensors with unequal green response, has the potential to create artifacts in highlight areas when processing raw files from Sony, Olympus, Panasonic and various medium format digital camera backs.

2) The Lightroom 3 beta has not been updated with this new camera support. If you’re working with one of these newer cameras and the Lightroom 3 beta, please use the DNG Converter 5.6 to convert proprietary formats to DNG files that can be used in the Lightroom 3 beta.

3) This release includes improved camera profiles for the Leica M9 and Ricoh GXR.

The X-Rite ColorChecker Passport offers a stand-alone camera DNG profiling and RAW workflow solution for use within a RAW file editor. It consists of a pack of Creative Enhancement Targets, Classic Targets and White Balance Targets.

It comes with a Lightroom plug-in. The process allows you to shoot a color target, convert/save as a DNG, drop it on to the ColorChecker Passport software and create a DNG profile. This can then be applied to an image, a preset created and then applied to many images within Lightroom. (That is the quickest and simplest description of it!)

This seriously useful piece of kit has already been reviewed by Michael Reichmann on both his Luminous Landscape site and in the latest Luminous Landscape Video Journal and a video is available on the X-Rite site describing how to use it.

What is really nice is that you can register for, download the software and use it with existing Gretag Macbeth charts all for free. You will, of course, benefit from far more by buying the whole package, but as a try before you buy it is well worth it.

Lightroom 3 Beta help is now available on the Adobe Community Help AIR viewer. As a moderator this should prove a useful addition, and hopefully of benefit to you the users!
Commenting is now available on the forum and via the AIR viewer as well.

For more info check out the Adobe Phosphors blog.

BragIt HTML Slideshow Plug-in for Lightroom is a Lightroom plug-in that makes it possible to publish a slideshow-like collection of photos directly from Lightroom to the web. The resulting slideshow has a scrolling index page of all photo thumbnails, an identity plate, an introductory description, and annotations with each large photo. The slideshows do not require Flash or any browser plug-ins for viewing. HTML Slideshow is 10 Euro for Mac OS X or Windows with Adobe Lightroom 2 or later.

Adobe Labs is now hosting Lightroom 2.6 and Camera Raw 5.6 for you to try out before they are officially released.

The following new cameras are supported:

• Canon EOS 7D
• Canon PowerShot G11
• Canon PowerShot S90
• Leaf Aptus II 5
• Mamiya DM22, DM28, DM33, DM56, M18, M22, M31
• Nikon D3s
• Olympus E-P2
• Pentax K-x
• Panasonic FZ38
• Sigma DP1s
• Sony A500,  A550,  A850

There are extra release notes which can be found on Lightroom Journal.