With film-based cameras nearly all but extinct, thanks to the rise of digital cameras, the auxiliary industry of film developing, once a major commercial venture is now just a blip on the business scene. Where film-developing labs once could be found on every other block, nowadays you have to drive kilometers out of your way in many places to find one.

 

 

 

But take bad pictures they do, and when it comes to "developing" those photos - i.e. printing them on a home inkjet printer - many camera-users just fall apart. What looks good on the camera's viewfinder or the computer screen sometimes looks washed out, too bright, or extra-red on paper. And really, being able to edit the photo, by adjusting the color or cropping out something that doesn't belong in a book of treasured family memories is one of the great advantages the switch to digital cameras was supposed to give the average camera fan. Otherwise, what was the point of chucking the 35mm that worked perfectly well?

 

 

 

Photoshop isn't just a program - it's an industry! Thousands of books and training programs have been developed for it, all designed to help digital photo developers get the best results possible out of their photos. It is very clearly aimed at professionals - and even pros who aren't used to the program require a lot of time and effort to figure it out. As essentially an "old style" program, built in the days when the chief interface between user and computer was the printed word, Photoshop's commands are often hidden away on esoteric menus and windows. Not user-friendly, by any means.

 

Lightroom (it's actually called Photoshop Lightroom), on the other hand, wants to be your best digital friend right out of the gate - and shows it! Instead of musty old menus, the program - a complete redesign of some of the most powerful picture editing elements of Photoshop - has been rewritten from the ground up, in consultation with real-life photographers who let Adobe know what they needed and what they didnt. Lightroom could in fact be called the first anti-bloatware advanced edition of an already wildly successful piece of software.

 

Howso? All of Lightroom's controls are on the right or left of a loaded image, so instead of clicking on a menu, you click on an editing category organized under titles including Library (organizing and labeling), Develop (editing), Slideshow, Print (separations, layout), and Web (uploading to a site, Flash productions). Detailed manual controls and settings are on the right side of the screen, while presets and templates you can apply to photos are on the left side (left brain vs. right brain?). You also get an automatic thumbnail preview of any change you propose to make before committing, and if you do make manual adjustments, you can save them as a preset for future use with one click. It's also clear that Lightroom was developed with the multi-media generation in mind; instead of menus there are icons, tabs, arrows, buttons and adjustment bars. It's worth the download (about 20 MB without the sample files) just to say what software could be look, if companies put their mind to it..

 

 

Apparently there are enough people seeking to develop and print their digital pictures on their own, and who seek a higher quality picture than they can get from Picasa et al. Of course, Picasa, which is free and very simple to use, isn't going anywhere (because it's free etc.). But there is without question a growing class of digital camera owners who would be willing to plunk down some money (I figure about $100 at street prices for the basic program, without the inevitable add-on modules) for a program that will give them Photoshop-level results without the excess baggage. And of course, the program will appeal to professionals as well, especially those who work with Photoshop's basic plug-ins (like the ever popular Gaussian Blur) or whose major forays into the Photoshop menus is to enable the histogram or curve tool to adjust their pictures. They don't the rest of the fancy stuff - and Lightroom supplies the goods for photos, so it will appeal to those with photo-retouching experience as well.

 

So, it's not just a Photoshop killer - it's a Picasa killer as well, and what will really be interesting is whether Google will try to advance Picasa's capabilities to more resemble Lightrooms, if indeed market research shows users eschewing the Google freebie in favor of the Adobe payware.