My colleague Victoria Bampton reminded me that February 19th marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of Lightroom 1.0. She has a wonderful post that takes a walk down the Lightroom memory lane highlighting some of the significant changes over the years. This got me thinking of what it was like working with Lightroom 1 back in 2007 … so I downloaded and installed Lightroom 1.4.1, grabbed a photo taken in 2007 and gave it a run through Lightroom 1. I decided to grab a less than perfect photo (of which I have many to choose from), one where the lighting was not great, and the ISO was high (well, high for 2007) to see what I could do with Lightroom 1 compared to what we can do now with Lightroom CC.
Importing
Well, the Import screen we have today may not be perfect, but it definitely is an improvement over the original version. Back then it was more of a dialog box, but it did the basic job of introducing photos to the catalog and providing the option to copy photos to a new location of our choosing. We could apply metadata and develop presets, keywords, and that was about it.
Library Module
Wow, the Library module has changed quite a bit. I had forgotten about the Find and Metadata Browser panels, whose functionality evolved into the Library Filter we have now. The Keywords Tags panel on the left morphed into the Keyword List panel now on the right. The Library panel is now known as the Catalog panel. No Publish Services yet, and no Map module either.
Develop Module
The Develop module doesn’t have the Collections panel yet, and the Crop, Red Eye, and Spot Removal tools only existed in the Toolbar, as opposed to the Tool Strip we have now under the Histogram. That also means no local adjustments like Adjustment Brush, Graduated Filter, or Radial Filter. Sad!
Basic Panel
Expanding the Basic panel reveals the old controls of the original process version, with Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks, Brightness, and Contrast. The original process version didn’t do as good a job of recovering detail in the highlights and shadows, or at handling high ISO (only 800 in this image). Back then there was no such thing as negative Clarity either.
My son’s face was mostly in shadow, so I wanted to try to brighten that up, but with the high ISO I have to be careful about bringing out too much noise when brightening the image.
Detail Panel
Moving on to the Detail panel I find that I don’t have as many adjustments as we do now, and the algorithm wasn’t as good as it is now either. Even with a lot of Luminance noise reduction there is still a fair bit of noise visible and I’ve really smoothed out the detail. Not a great combo, but the best I can do with these tools. At least there is the Masking slider so that I can avoid sharpening noise as much as possible.
Lens Corrections
We didn’t have profile corrections in the Lens Corrections panel back then, so only manual corrections are possible. This image didn’t really need much, but it was a reminder of something I take for granted these days.
Camera Calibration
The Camera Calibration panel lacked all of the camera style emulating options that we have now, so there isn’t anything I can choose here to attempt to mimic any in-camera style choices.
Crop tool
Selecting the Crop tool from the Toolbar, I cropped away some of the unnecessary black pixels in the background. Back then there wasn’t an easy way to flip the orientation of the crop rectangle (like switching from portrait to landscape orientation). Lot’s of little tweaks and changes like that have been very welcome.
Export
After doing what I could do for this photo it was time to export a JPEG copy. The Export dialog hasn’t changed much at all in these last 10 years (hint to Adobe).
Back to the Present
Once I finished there, I re-edited that same photo in Lightroom CC, and what a relief it was to have all of the tools I depend on back at my disposal! The improved process version coupled with a portrait camera profile gave me a much better starting place. The much improved noise reduction and sharpening did a better job on that luminance noise and detail, but the big difference came from using the Radial Filter to selectively brighten my son’s face while simultaneously applying a little negative clarity as well as a little more positive noise reduction.
Looking at the two exported JPGs side-by-side in Photoshop shows a much smoother and even skin tone with brighter features and better detail. It still isn’t the best photo I ever took, but with all the progress Lightroom has made in the last 10 years it’s like it upgraded my camera from 2007 as well.
Happy birthday Lightroom. You’ve made a huge difference in my photographic workflow these last 10 years. Here’s to the next 10!
Wow, it’s easy to forget how much the raw processing has improved over the years. Great post!
This article is a reminder of one of the main reasons I have contempt for Lightroom and Adobe in general. Adobe has been taking subscription money from myself and many others, with no new value to users to show for it. The supposedly premiere graphics software brand, yet this is software that in 10 years, has the same ugly interface and minimal improvement to anything substantive. It did what it intended, by copying Apple’s approach to photos and then forcing them out of the space by nickel and diming. And all users are the poorer for it.
Hector, I have to respectfully disagree if you think there is no new value to users in the last 10 years. Whether the interface is ugly or not is irrelevant to me since it is so easy to hide most of it and just use the tools you need, but looks are a matter of personal preference. I believe the most substantive updates have been to the algorithms used for processing raw data, dealing with noise, and improving sharpening, which is hardly minimal. The local adjustment tools, HDR and Panos combined into DNG files, and the integration with mobile devices… Read more »
Hector – I understand where you’re coming from. I recently (and very reluctantly) joined Adobe CC. I did so only because I started shooting video, and need Premiere, After Effects, and Audition. If I was only shooting stills I would use the Perpetual License versions of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS6 for many years to come. My issue with the subscription (Perpetual Payment) model, is that it benefits Adobe (and its stockholders) more than it does the end users. Here’s why I think so: In the past, Adobe was forced to compete with its previous successes. If you didn’t see… Read more »
One benefit that you might miss is that apps update a lot faster. Now that Adobe can see WHICH apps are getting used most, you’ll see benefits. I can tell you the Premiere gets a LOT more love now and frequent/big updates.
They can brag every year about their huge profits off of Creative Cloud, but what I don’t see is the users and the software getting to celebrate in kind. Their only innovation is getting more money out of users for the same product. When we were on the CS cycle, they had to actually provide something to entice users to move to the new suite and shell out more money. This incentive is gone, and I see it in their software. For all that Lightroom does well, I think its a disgrace how little effort has gone into it since… Read more »
Adobe aren’t taking your money because you aren’t forced to use the software. It’s a simple enough matter to click on “Cancel Subscription” et voila, you’re FREE :)
Incidentally, to put things into perspective, in ten years Adobe released 5 paid for versions of LR and 5 paid for versions of PS. To purchase each new version of both pieces of software over 10 years would be about $4500.
$4500 is the equivalent of over 45 YEARS worth of LR/PS subscription fees.
Fact of the matter is Adobe CC is an absolute bargain.
You might need to help us out a little with the math on this one.
Still waiting for Lightroom to “allow” us to export PNG images.
I can see how that would be useful, and logical since we can import PNG files. In the meantime, if you have a PNG file selected (and not edited in Lightroom), you can choose Original as the file type on export and it will save a PNG copy of it. Alternatively, and a little more complex, you can create a Photoshop action that saves a photo as a PNG, then create a droplet from the action, and finally, attach the droplet as a Post Processing step on the Export dialog to have Lightroom pass the exported copies through the droplet… Read more »