Adobe targets Aperture with Lightroom

My theory is that Adobe never really intended to release Lightroom. Mac only Cocoa code base, Lua scripting, and overlaps with Photoshop, it all points in that direction. It was only after Adobe got wind of Aperture that it got the green light. I've written a bit more about this on my blog:

http://www.hinkty.com/blogger/2006/01/lightroom-photoshop-and-adobe.html

Phil

Zon, please see my post. This application has been in development for years; it's not a direct response to Aperture. And you say it's unique in being the only Adobe app that is Mac-only, but it's also unique in being the only public beta Adobe has done in recent memory. So I would guess the Mac-only part is due to it being unfinished. There will be a Windows version at release-time.

doesn't it seem weird that there is only a mac version at right now? as far as I know this is currently the only adobe app thats mac only at the moment, so I would guess thats saying it is directly targeting aperture.

Aperture feels a lot faster on a Dual G5 (2GHz) but Lightroom will be a pretty nice application not only because I can open my Pentax RAW Files. As Greg mentioned I can also keep my folder structure and link the files to lightroom. The UI is strange, but its beta.

Not bad for an app that takes something like 9 MB on my hard disk and that's all it needs to run!
Running it on 12" iBook with 512 RAM, is pretty OK.

Not too many features though (or I couldn't find them?), I think Aperture offers a lot more, such as Lift&Stamp and so on.
Have not tested with RAW files yet.

It has one H-U-G-E advantage over Aperture: you can have only links to your images and doesn't force you to copy them into its own hidden library. You can work with external files.

But the UI is far behind any Apple product, it's just too Adobe-ish, lots of buttons everywhere. Will see.

I only got 256MB of ram, how do I tick it into thinking I have enough ram?

It's definitely got more bells and whistles that iPhoto5 but If found it fairly slow on my G4 iBook 1.33 GHz 1gig ram. I didn't spend much time playing with it however. Seemed to handle the 285 photos (jpegs) that I imported really smoothly, but the previews don't seem all that crisp to me. I imagine that on a wide screen display the experience would be a lot more enjoyable than on my 12 inch screen.

This is a serious blow to Apple's Apperature.

Apperature 1.0 has so many bugs, it might as well be called a beta. The real problem here is who wants to spend $499.99 for a beta?

Adobe takes the right road and chooses not to have their customers pay to debug their product. Good for you Adobe!! Shame on you Apple.

Working with it for about an hour. So far, so good. Offers many edits within the program, many like Photoshop CS. Certainly faster, smoother than Aperture on a PB 1.33 1g ram. 1g because like many others lower ram slot has stopped functioning on my PB. Imports RAW from Canon 20d without problems. More later for those interested. Aloha

The 111MB beta is the one with the sample content; there is an 8MB download without it.

Also, Lightroom is apparently not a knee-jerk reaction to Aperture and has been in development for years. See the link below:

http://photoshopnews.com/2006/01/09/the-shadowlandlightroom-development-story/