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• February 8, 2012

5 Responses to “ Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 ”

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1. 

   Linnaeus Fog on June 2, 2010 at 12:09 am

   This software would be worth about $50.00 if there were adequate instructions on how to use it, unfortunately Adobe does not provide any beyond marketing hype . I suppose they think you should spend even more than the inflated price they are asking and buy a book to learn how to use the features they say it has. Good luck.
2. 

   Aldus Huxley on June 2, 2010 at 1:03 am

   I have always been a fan of Adobe products, but I have to say the CS4 line is buggy, very buggy. As to tech support, Adobe has gone the route of every other large corporation in the United States. Namely, they are not in the United States. Gone are the days of communicating with someone whose name you can pronounce or that you can actually understand when you talk to them.

   It seems whenever you do attempt to get help, their people go down the prescribed checklist. It doesn’t matter how stupid the suggestions are, you have to follow them. This would be okay if you actually ended up with a solution. In my case, Adobe says Microsoft is at fault, and Microsoft says Adobe is at fault – sound familiar?

   Adobe products certainly don’t sell at shareware prices, but based on how buggy they are, they should.

   Running Adobe products on a Microsoft operating system is my idea of Hell.
3. 

   John Brookes on June 2, 2010 at 3:55 am

   I bought LR 2.3 and noticed that it produced a stretched picture in the vertical axis. I tried everything I could for a week, read online docs, read the manual, made sure the driver color handling was turned off, etc, etc. It definitely is not WYSIWIG: I can get a reasonable picture on the screen, but the print out on my Epson 3800 bears no relation to it: It has one dimension stretched enough to make a face look like a fun house mirror.
   
   I am running vista 64 bit, because Adobe brags that the program is 64 bit native. I determined that LR is at fault here, because my windows media picture printer produces ok results, much better than LR.
   
   So I called Adobe support. I got an Indian man whose accent was so bad it was near impossible to understand him. I don’t have a prejudice against Indians, I’ve had many as friends when I was in India, but I wonder why Adobe is so contemtuous of the american worker, that it goes half way around the world to seek out a low quality solution. Anyway, the kicker was that the man told me I need tech support and oh yes, I have to pay for it. (I think $100) This is for a faulty product that does not work. Obviously Adobe is so smug it doesn’t think it has to support its products.
   
   At this point, I am going to convert my machine back to 32-bit, on the theory that Adobe’s driver is faulty for 64 bit. If that doesn’t work, Maybe I can use my photoshop to print out. Another idea is to ditch the program and buy some alternative from Nikon or elsewhere. How do I get my money back? I’m not sure. I don’t feel right about selling someone this crippled program. Maybe I can dispute it on the credit card.
   
   That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.

   -progress report several weeks later
   
   I deduced that LR2 does not run under 64 bit vista correctly. (deduced by noticing that windows media player prints out to my printer OK in 64 bit, but LR no)
   
   So I changed my computer back to 32 bit, and the stretch image problem went away. Color so so. But another problem croppd up. When I cropped image, result showed up on printer OK. BUT when I adjust temperature, exposure, etc., the printer just prints the original image qualities. I could not puzzle out how to save the changes I was making. Nowhere in the help sites or books does it say that you have to save your changes in order to print them. I suspect you don’t, and that this is another bug in this program.
   
   Let me relate an experience I just had. I downloaded free Picasa, Google’s version of lightroom. It is wonderful! I was reviewing, printing, and editing my photos within 5 minutes of installing it. I still hope I can use Lightroom because of its compatibility with photoshop, but I have my limits. A telling aspect of lightroom is the raft of books, websites, workshops, classes in a book, seminars, forums, blogs, magazines, training DVDs, internet tv shows, all focused on a trivial piece of software. It’s amazing the 5 star reviews here: I can only conclude that these people are getting influenced by the hype and Adobe-funded celebrity endorsements. Picasa rocks! It’s no photoshop, but archives and prints beautfully! I was using its full features within 5 minutes of install! (I have tens of thousands of pictures, shoot with a Nikon D300 plus extras, so I am at the high end of amateur photographers. If picasa is good enough for me, it will be for the majority, IMO)
   
   -for now
   
   Note added 7/25/09
   
   Today I imported a photo into LR 2. When I went to print it, the option to “print one” was greyed out. So I went to the File menu on the top menu bar and hit “print.” It would only save to a file when I hit the print button. It just does not print. Why? Who knows? I am stopped, because there is not a thing I can think to do to fix this. LR seems to leave you hanging with its user interface. So I imported same photo into picasa – no problem, prints like it should.
   
   At this point, I still have a program that fundamentally, basically does not work. I am interested in LR because it integrates into photoshop, is lauded by photo gurus like Kelby, and has a bit more editing features than Picasa. Now, I have a twenty year career doing computer software, so I am not a computer newbie.
   
   I am frankly puzzled by the good reviews here about LR. Is this mass delusion? Weird!
   
   This is useful, since I can get a chance to think about debugging this mess. The main thing I can think of at this point is that I changed my OS to Microsoft 7. The change was supposed to transfer programs. Maybe it affected LR?
   
   At this stage I have put maybe 30 hours into trying to get LR to work. It remains a terribly flawed product in my hands. The next thing I can think to do is to read the book about lightroom by scott kelby (I have several) and see if I can duplicate the workflow. If LR does not function, I can try to download the latest update again. (I have 2.3)
   
   I suspect Adobe did not do the minimum quality control on this product. I wonder who is doing their software engineering and whether they have a QC process involving non-programmers and bug databases…
   
   See you in photo-land.
   
   John
   
   Update 7/27:
   
   I have been puzzled over the disparity in reviews here, and I must reluctantly voice my suspicions that the reviews are being “loaded” by Adobe employees. They are too unreal and uncritically positive. Not a pretty picture.
   
   JB

   Update 11/29/2009
   
   Un fortunately the LR 2 I paid for remains unusable. It will not print out. I think it will save files after I “develop” them, but then I save them and go to Picasa for printing. A session with LR turns into a frustrating head-scratching, rather than anything productive.

   update 11/30
   
   I fnally got on phone with Adobe about LR issues. I was on phone about 21/2 hours. I did talk with an agent, but we were cut off. He had me create a new user account, and LR does seem to be able to print in that account, but LR has no access to the picture library. We got cut off, and I called back and spent about 11/2 hours on hold, listening to Adobe’s elevator music. At this point I may try to csll back sometime. Currently, my picture library has limited access. I can see the library in one account, but can’t print it there. I wonder if there is a way to create a backup on a usb drive from LR. I think there is. However, when I tried to import into the LR in the new account, LR would not let me, saying something like “Can’t import from another active library.” So I will try to backup from the account that sees the library (but can’t print) to a usb drive, which can hopefully be imported by the LR in the account that can print. Of course, I can just abandon ability to print from LR by exporting the files after developing and pulling them into Photoshop for printing. This will also depend on ability to save the image file as is, rather than “exporting” it as a compressed jpeg. Hope springs eternal. Onward through the fog.
   
4. 

   Charlie Putnam on June 2, 2010 at 6:49 am

   I don’t know how the old lightroom was but this one works great. Especially if you shoot in raw, but it also works with jepg pics.
5. 

   Lake Region Healthcare on June 2, 2010 at 8:16 am

   This is ‘the’ book to best understand Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. Scott Kelby has a fresh approach to instructing, and it makes the product understandable, usable, and practical. He offers extra insights, and does so in an enthusiastic way so ‘learning’ does not become drole. Instead the reader can’t help but dive right into the software following the education provided by Scott. Great book; a must for optimizing Lightroom 2!