Adobe Lightroom

[eric_darling]

Adobe's answer to Apple's Aperture is now in public Beta:

Adobe Lightroom Beta is a new, exciting product built from the ground up for professional photographers. It is an efficient, powerful way to import, select, develop and showcase large volumes of digital images.

http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/

[Corey]

I agree that it seems likely this was released earlier than normal for the purposes of "answering" the competition. I hope this isn't the start of a trend where people are trying to influence markets by releasing a bunch of betaware. That would be terrible. Anyhow much thanks for the link Eric, might be a neat app for photographers. I hadn't heard of this one.

For myself I never worked with a lightbox in real life so I have no desire to learn a new metaphor. I've always found the combo of irfanview, Photoshop, and windows explorer adept enough to handle all my photo management needs. Then again, I'm not sorting photos for a living...

[eric_darling]

I am sure that Adobe is thinking the target audience for Lightbox is slightly larger than just people who sort photos for a living (sounds like the life of an intern - yikes).

I think management of huge amounts of photos is part of a lot of jobs. I work with various marketing departments who struggle with media management on a daily basis. This kind of software would speak to them. However, I know what you mean, too. Aperture and now Lightbox are both limited in their scope compared to Photoshop. They are much more specific tools.