Month: September 2009

Important Note Regarding Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5 for those using PowerPC

Several photographers have found a bug in the final Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5 releases that affects customers who are currently using a Mac computer with a PowerPC processor. The bug, introduced with our recent demosaic change to address sensors with unequal green response, affects raw files from Sony, Olympus, Panasonic and various medium format digital camera backs. The bug has the potential to create artifacts in the highlight area while using the highlight recovery tool. An example has been posted to Flickr here. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/carnivillain/3938260239/)

We apologize for the inconvenience but recommend that customers who have PowerPC hardware and process raw files from those manufacturers uninstall Lightroom 2.5 or Camera Raw 5.5 and install Lightroom 2.4 or Camera Raw 5.4. (Camera Raw 5.5 can be uninstalled by deleting the existing plug-in from the directory indicated in the Manual Installation instructions )

Customers converting their proprietary raw formats from Sony, Olympus, Panasonic and various medium format digital cameras should also not use the DNG Converter 5.5 with the compatibility setting lower than “Camera Raw 5.4 and later.” Again, we apologize for this inconvenience while we prepare a new update.

*Update(5:30PM PT, 9/26): Comments are not currently available on the Lightroom Journal so please comment in the Camera Raw Discussion Forum or the Lightroom Discussion Forum.

Lightroom Exposed

Last year Lightroom’s lead engineer, Troy Gaul(@tgaul) presented at the C4 Mac Developer conference in Chicago. Over the course of the hour long presentation Troy provided a background on the project, dove into the details of Lightroom’s technology platform, provided a demonstration of the development environment, discussed the plug-in APIs and explained Lightroom’s path to 64-bit. The presentation is clearly targeted at developers but if you ever wanted to peek behind the curtain it’s a great opportunity. The presentation is available here: http://www.viddler.com/explore/rentzsch/videos/37

Update on Pro Photographers and Lightroom

Every year InfoTrends surveys professional photographers in North America on a wide variety of topics. As the Lightroom and Camera Raw product manager the results of one question always interest me more than the others: “What raw conversion software does your company use. (Check all that apply)” Photoshop product manager John Nack has been kind enough to post the 2007 and 2008 results to his popular blog. This year is no exception and the 2009 results of the pro photography survey show that Lightroom’s popularity continues to grow. Check out the details here: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/09/lightroom_vs_aperture_09.html

A big thanks to all the professional photographers who have picked Lightroom for their photographic workflow. We’ll continue to do our best to provide you with software that lets you focus on your photography, not your computer.

Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5 Now Available

Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5 are now available as final releases on Adobe.com and through the update mechanisms available in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2. These updates include camera support for the following models:

  • Nikon D300s
  • Nikon D3000
  • Olympus E-P1
  • Panasonic DMC-FZ35**
  • Panasonic DMC-GF1

**Note that in Europe and Japan this model is marketed as the DMC-FZ38. Unfortunately, due to a metadata difference between these cameras, files from the DMC-FZ38 will *not* be supported until the next Camera Raw and Lightroom updates.

Release Notes:

  • Camera Raw 5.5 and Lightroom 2.5 include a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Bayer sensor cameras with unequal green response. Olympus, Panasonic and Sony are among the more popular camera manufacturers affected by this change. But the demosaic correction provides only a subtle visual improvement to the processing of those raw files.
  • Lightroom 2.5 corrects for the following problem in Lightroom 2.4. Lightroom 2.4 on Windows continued to display the import dialog when a memory card was detected regardless of the preference setting “Show import dialog when a memory card is detected.”

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on our Camera Raw 5.5 Release Candidate.

Adobe TV Site Updated

I’ve always been a big fan of the Adobe TV site where we host tons of great Lightroom tutorials. One of the challenges however was searching or navigating the site. Well, the Adobe TV team has done a great job updating the architecture of the site and providing a new search engine. Check it out! http://tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/

Here are some additional notes directly from the Adobe TV Team:

The brand new Adobe TV website has been architected and designed based on substantial input from the community. It’s the first website in the world to deploy a video player built with the Adobe Open Source Media Framework, and one of the first sites built using Adobe ColdFusion 9.

The site has a brand-new look & feel, and many new features including:
• User-customizable homepage
• Vastly improved navigation & search
• Save your favorite episodes to “My Library”
• Share videos on social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg, and StumbleUpon
• Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite shows
• Pop-out video player to view videos at any size
• Commenting & Rating
• Tags

Installing Lightroom, Leave the CD in the Box

When a new operating system arrives like Snow Leopard or Windows 7 the opportunity to start fresh can be irresistible. The slightly more tech-oriented among us can wipe a drive clean and install only the essentials from scratch eliminating all of the detritus that accrues on our computers over time in a virtual spring cleaning. Over the weekend a number of our friends in the photography community did just that with Snow Leopard. Apparently, the overwhelming behavior was to reach for the box of Lightroom 2 on the shelf and insert that shiny hybrid CD-ROM into the drive and start fresh. Unfortunately, due to an issue with our Lightroom 2.0 installer the installation fails to complete on Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. We caught and fixed this problem with a little help from Apple in our Lightroom 2.1 update. (We also updated the CD-ROM in the box to Lightroom 2.3 when it was released in March of this year)

The basic lesson is that whenever you’re performing a “clean install” of Lightroom on a new system the only reason to reach for the box is to retrieve your serial number. It’s typically faster to download our latest update from Adobe.com.(http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/) Each version of Lightroom we provide(2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc) is a complete version of the product updated with the latest bug fixes and camera support. We’ve tried to keep these installation files small for quick downloads. The Mac version weighs in at ~69MB and the Windows at ~135MB. Some products may require you to install the “dot-O” version before patching it repeatedly with updates but Lightroom is *not* that kind of application.

Good luck with your fresh start on Snow Leopard or Windows 7.