

ADOBE LIGHTROOM SOFTWARE WINDOWS
Microsoft Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise.Per Adobe, minimum system requirements are as follows:

ADOBE LIGHTROOM SOFTWARE INSTALL
To that end, the majority of my evaluation was performed using the 64-bit Windows install of Lightroom 2 on a well provisioned Lenovo ThinkPad W700 graphics notebook, and all screen shots used for this review were produced from this setup. In short, Lightroom can be demanding, and having a system that well exceeds the minimum specs is the key to having a good experience – as processes like the Localized Adjustments tool can tax even high-end graphics machines. Drive speed also plays a role in laying down certain edits and handling cataloging tasks smoothly. Lightroom’s background processes do take an appreciable toll on system resources, and having 2 GB of memory on either platform is almost a necessity for some processing tasks. Performance Impact and System Requirementsįor this test, I looked at both the Macintosh and Windows versions of Lightroom 2, and found both to provide a stable, responsive user experience on an appropriately speced machine. On the flip side, however, having even a thumbnail file browser or image detail viewer on a second monitor to minimized back-and-forth between panes or modules on a single screen is certainly better than nothing. Even with this new function, Lightroom still lacks the display-spanning ease of programs like Photoshop. Click the Second Window icon just above the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen and, intuitively, a second moveable pop-up window appears, which can then be dragged over to (and even resized or maximized on) a second monitor’s desktop space.Ī limited number of options within the window curtail what you can do with this auxiliary space, a fact that some will no doubt dislike. In one noteworthy operational change, however, Adobe has provided a solution – ableit not always an elegant one – to the lack of dual monitor support in the first edition of Lightroom. In the Library module, for instance, you’ll find sort/catalog options for getting your images organized on the left panel, and Quick Develop (more on this feature a little later) controls in the right-side space.įinally, the Filmstrip area at the bottom of the screen shows you thumbnails of all of the images in a given collection, letting you quickly jump between shots for sorting or editing.Īs I’ll remark throughout this analysis, much of the interface in Lightroom 2 remains the same as what we’re used to from the previous version. Left-hand and right-hand panes (Lightroom calls them “panels”) supply the basic control information for each module. In the top right corner, you’ll find the Module Picker – the heart of Lightroom’s control interface, providing access to the program’s five large-level functions. Lightroom’s basic information layout, which segregates controls by type on different portions of the screen, has remained basically unchanged in the update.
