Adobe announces pricing, availability for Lightroom

Adobe announces pricing, availability for Lightroom

Good news.

"Lightroom will be sold for $299 (not coincidentally the same price as Aperture), and you can preorder it now. Those looking for a deal can get it at an introductory price of $199 until April 30, and a free trial will also be available for download as of the 19th. People who?ve already built libraries around the the beta will be relieved to know that it doesn?t expire until February 28 and existing libraries will be updated for use by the 1.0 app.

But that's enough of the exciting retail info; here are some of the things you can expect to see added or updated in Lightroom since the last public beta version:

* Snapshots and multiple settings for same RAW file
* Improvements to Develop, Slideshow, Printing and Web output
* New Key Metadata Browser for quick tagging and rating
* Beefed-up labeling and rating
* Curves show more range information for selected areas
* More connection between actual disk structure and what you see within the application
* Clone and heal nondestructively
* Full cross-compatibility with Photoshop Camera RAW 3.7, which will be a downloadable upgrade released at the same time. This will add support for Lightroom?s advanced edits as well as RAW support for the Nikon D40, Nikon D80, Canon EOS 400D Rebel XTi, EOS Kiss D"

The best part is the SDK that will soon be released and goes way beyond Aperture's simple export modules. I'll be first in line for both Aperture and a Flickr module.

I love the Flickr export module for Aperture, but I don't like Aperture. The loupe seems like such a backwards way to work. I much prefer hitting the space bar in Lightroom to zoom into actual pixels (very efficient use of your screen) and then panning around. It's more like what I do in Photoshop every day. I like the Lightroom raw processing tools much better too. I find a lot of flaws with the interfaces of both Lightroom and Aperture though.

At $200, I expect Adobe to eat Apple's lunch on this.

An interesting comparison:
James Duncan Davidson: Aperture vs. Lightroom: Interface Design: Metadata Panel