But even when they did create a photography “package” (Picture It) it failed to gain wide acceptance and his since been discontinued. I never used that application so I really can’t say if it was any good or not. However, when it comes to photography software Microsoft is not the first name that comes to mind.

If you’ve ever used Lightroom I’m sure you’ll agree Microsoft has a long to way to go before they can even claim they will have a competitive product.

Microsoft still working on an Adobe Lightroom competitor
Microsoft discontinues Picture It

I guess I will have to download it and check it out.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/

Free

Irfanview – Nearly a staple in graphics software. Small and powerful, not only can this program view dozens of file formats and media types, it can take screenshots, crop images, adjust colors, bulk rename and convert files, grayscale, works with red eye, reads EXIF data and even works as a thumbnail viewer. And best of all, the power and usability won’t cost you anything; it’s free
www.irfanview.com

FastStone Image Viewer – Until recently I’ve been using the free version of Firehand Ember as my thumbnail viewer of choice. However, that program is no longer supported and the features in the free version are pretty anemic. FastStone Image Viewer has all the functions of the full version of Ember but still remains free. It’s a fast image viewer that does a lot more. It can crop, rotate, remove red eye, adjust colors, resize, sharpen and load your image into an external editor. This is my new choice for scanning through my images. It’s fast, efficient and loaded with features.
www.faststone.org

FastStone Photo Resizer – Another free tool from FastStone that allows you to resize and watermark your photos en masse. Very handy for scaling images for use on a website, blog, or photo hosting site. I first used this last year at the Porsche Parade to resize and watermark the images before they got uploaded to the site. We marked each photo with the event the picture was taken from, the photographers name and the year. You can use it as a simple way to get your name and website on all your photos. It’s easy to use and very fast.
www.faststone.org

Low Cost

Paint Shop Pro – While it isn’t free, this is my choice in editing software. Yes there are free programs like Gimp and Paint.NET but I haven’t worked with those. GIMP actually confused me when I did give it a try.

I’ve been using Paint Shop since the 2.0 days. I actually remember the 3.x upgrade which swapped out DLL’s to make it a 32-bit application. It’s always been easy to use and full of features. It supports layers, sharpening, masks, palettes and dozens of drawing tools. I use it for all my web editing because of it’s ease. It’s not Photoshop, but at $40-50 (if you wait for a special) it’s cheaper than Elements and in my opinion just as good.

The only real drawback is the RAW support, which in actually is pretty non-existent. The serious amateur will find this a pretty glaring limitation. However, I counteract this with Lightroom which handles the job nicely.
www.corel.com

Adobe Lightroom – Probably the next generation in photo editing. Adobe took all the power of Photoshop and actually made it easy to use. Using the simple sliders you can see exactly how your adjustments are going to look in real time. I’ve been able to drastically correct images that were too dark, overexposed, and had clipped highlights. It can’t work miracles but it does a fantastic job or tweaking images. Plus, it’s probably the best choice in RAW converters on the market today. Additionally it’s a great image catalog program that can find, sort and organize those thousands of images you have. It’s not cheap, but it’s far less than Photoshop and so much easier to use. Plus if you shop around you can find quite a few deals online.
www.adobe.com

Probably Not

DxO Optics Pro – I still have mixed feelings about this program. On the one hand it does a great job with restoring highlights and correcting images. And it has a good RAW importer. On the other, the lens support for many models is totally lacking; only two of the Sigma lenses I use are actually supported even though they have been on the market for years and are supported for previous models of Canon cameras. I also don’t like the anti-piracy measures used which makes bogus registry keys and fake files all over the drive. I think this shows a complete disregard for a user’s machine.

I reloaded this program after the upgrade because I still use it, but I haven’t upgraded to the latest version and I have doubts I will. Looking forward, this is probably the only version of this program I’ll buy. Lightroom will take over these duties and will be my main RAW converter and image enhancement tool. Maybe later versions of DxO will be better, and if they are I would be happy to look at it again and consider the upgrade. But for now, there is too much lacking for my model of camera and many of the features can be found in other apps.

Adobe’s Lightroom 2.0, which launched today represents a major breakthrough in the field of digital photo processing. I’ve only just begun to play with the software today, but it is clear that Lightroom 2.0 will be my new imaging software of choice. Prior to using Lightroom 2.0 I did my photo processing using Adobe’s Bridge and Photoshop. Lightroom represents a significant leap forward in the power of processing digital photographs. I thought I’d write up a post documenting my 10 new favorite processing tools that Lightroom 2.0 brings to the table.

Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection: The 10 Best Things About the New Adobe Lightroom 2.0

Adobe has officially released Photoshop Lightroom 2, following three months of beta testing for the photo management software. It is Adobe’s first product supporting 64-bit Windows Vista and OS X.

Lightroom 2 is available now for $299 USD, or $99 USD as an upgrade from the previous release. This workflow enhancing software is billed as “the professional photographer’s essential toolbox,” and is geared toward users working with large volumes of photos.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 brings 64-bit compatibility

“I can’t imagine doing serious imaging anywhere other than Adobe, but, I needed to do something other than imaging for a while.”

If you were hired by Microsoft to make the Windows experience less annoying, what would be on your to-do list?

Mark Hamburg, the Adobe Photoshop/LightRoom guru recently hired by Microsoft, is tasked with figuring out how to improve the way Microsoft’s operating system works.

Hamburg didn’t recently join Microsoft to work on SmartFlow, Microsoft’s alleged competitor to LightRoom, as I guessed yesterday. Instead, he’s working on future OS interface concepts, according to a posting on the ProPhotoHome blog that a reader forwarded to me. According to the post:

What would you change (first) about Windows’ look and feel?

What’s Microsoft want with Adobe Photoshop guru Mark Hamburg, who recently joined the Redmond juggernaut?

Hamburg a programmer who has been part of the Adobe Photoshop team since version 2.0 and helped lead the Photoshop Lightroom one, is now a Softie, as News.com’s Stephen Shankland reported on April 28.

The official word from Microsoft is Hamburg will be working on unnamed “user experience” efforts. My bet is Hamburg will be instrumental in helping Microsoft bring to market its Photoshop Lightroom competitor, which is codenamed “SmartFlow.”

Microsoft’s competitor to Adobe LightRoom gets another champion

Adobe today released a beta version of Lightroom 2.0, the company’s photo management and editing toolkit, which adds non-destructive localized editing and a slew of other new features.

Photographers have had a lot of updates to deal with in recent weeks, with Apple’s Aperture receiving the ability to employ third-party plug-ins, Adobe releasing its Web-based version of Photoshop, after having to pull the Lightroom 1.4 update due to EXIF Timestamp Errors, DNG conversion errors in Windows, and Olympus JPEG conversion errors.

Adobe releases beta of Lightroom 2.0 photo editing tool

Adobe has released another update to the incredibly popular and one of my personal favorites, Adobe Lightroom.

Updates includes issues encountered with FTP, some module errors, corrections when importing RAW files and Canon 1Ds Mark III, Nikon D3, Nikon D300, Olympus E-3.

More detailed information can be found at: http://www.adobe.com/special/photoshop/Lightroom131ReadMe.pdf

We didn’t quite hit the 1.5 version as I had predicted, but we aren’t too far off. Adobe has developed a pretty solid user base with this new version and I’m sure Christmas will bring quite a few new users on board. I expect Adobe is busy putting version 2.0 together which I think we will see in the not too distant future.

As I mentioned previously I am becoming more of a fan each time I use Lightroom. I still think DxO has a place in my workflow, but with the excellent tools Lightroom has to offer I wonder how much longer DxO will be in my toolbox. I can’t say it will be completely replaced, but without any real lens support it really only has the shadow/highlight recovery and RAW import features. Lightroom is well on its way to being a full featured replacement.

While I am truly impressed with the features and capabilities of DxO and process most of images with this tool, I have been very disappointed with the support my camera has received from this version. The Rebel XTI has been available for just over a year now and while lenses are supported under when using the Rebel XT they aren’t supported when using the Rebel XTI. I find it remarkable and frustrating that my new software doesn’t fully support my new camera. And even after a year the list of support lens is anemic at best. We aren’t talking about lenses that came out within the last couple of months like the Simga 18-200mm DC OS lens, but a standard lens like the Sigma 70-200mm, which is completely supported on the Rebel XT.

I bought version 4 because it supported the new camera model. My hope was all those lens models they had tested with other cameras would quickly make it to the list, but they never did. As I said, it’s been a year and the only lens I have that DxO supports is the kit lens. Thanks for nothing guys…

If I really want to take advantage of this program I guess I have to buy Canon lenses, they seem to be the only ones DxO is working on.

Make no mistake, I like DxO and will continue to use it. The highlight recovery and sharpening are great tools, but I have found myself using Lightroom more and more. Its ability to import and correct images is quite impressive. Since I’m spending a lot more time in another application do I really need DxO?

So right now I’m torn. DxO is offering a pretty decent upgrade price of $95. Not quite the 50% they are offering on the DxO film pack, but still not bad. However, why spend another $95 on a program that probably isn’t going to do any more for me than what I have now?