Lightroom 1.0: First Thoughts

I haven't written about the arrival of my copy of Lightroom at all, in part, because of the presence of the public beta which I've been using for the past number of months and from watching all the videos NAPP has available in their Lightroom Learning Center. Even with all of the new bells and whistles in 1.0, Lightroom has been a part of my workflow for quite some time. I'm glad to finally have the full version in my arsenal but it's a touch anticlimactic. There's usually a bit of excitement that comes with opening a new piece of software and discovering all the new features and envisioning how it will enable you to do what you've never been able to before. And it doesn't feel like I'm getting that this time around; I'm already well acquainted with the program.

With all of that said, so far after having gotten my feet wet in 1.0, my new favorite feature is the Target Adjustment Tool. Instead of moving sliders back and forth to adjust the HSL of your photo, you simply select the tool and click on the area you would like to adjust in your image and drag up and down to adjust the values. I've also done a little playing around with stacking and I think the idea of having Virtual Copies is just great.

One of the things I really like about Lightroom is that it just works well. It's a solid program and, in many ways, it's hard to imagine my workflow without it.