Adobe Lightroom - A competitor to XnView?

Xip · Post by **Xip** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:37 am

Obviously not a commercial competitor since Xnview is free and Lightroom will almost certainly cost several hundred dollars. But Lightroom seems to have similar functions, like organizing photos, minor editing, slideshow, and so on. Adobe is a big company. It may well in the not so distant future dominate this market, like it is doing with Photoshop, at least for professionals. Thoughts?

ckit · Post by **ckit** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 2:27 am

XnView will win it over solely on the basis of XnView being free. I don't see how Adobe can see such a product being profitable with others like XnView and IrfanView being freeware.

HandsOff! · Post by **HandsOff!** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 6:56 pm

Why does Adobe think they will sell this product?

Well for one thing, Photoshop CS2 doe not create embedded thumbnail images. Versions prior to CS2 did, which meant that PSD files created with photoshop could display thumbnail views in explorer. Now they can't.

I've only recently installed CS2, and I uninstalled XnView temporarily just to make the process smoother, since I had listed my old Photoshop later as default application...so I don't know if thumbnails for CS2 will be created in XnView yet.

But even if they are, a lot of frustrated users will probably turn to adobe first, and that is where I guess adobe will get some business.

BTW - there is a way to bring the preview (thumbnail) creation back in CS2. I haven't tried it yet though. I thought it would be interesting to see how this change effects XnView before fixing the CS2 thing. I just stopped by to pick up the latest XnView version!

-HandsOff

JohnFredC · Post by **JohnFredC** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 2:22 pm

There is (or will be) a LOT more to LightRoom than just photo organization!

Watch the video:

http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies ... /overview/

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat May 06, 2006 7:54 am

I'm not trying to be saracastic, well, maybe a little...I am one of the last people who still prefer reading articles to watching videos. I can read faster, save data, and so on. Plus, I feel that animation of any kind serves mainly to distract, therefore I do not have my browser enabled for flash, hacktive-x, animated gifts, or videos of any kind.

The fact that adobe removed thumbnail functionality at the very same time they are introducing new products is a bit too much of a coincidence for my liking. I understand that XnView is developing dual pane windows and cache optimation. At that point I am hoping to designate XnView as my default browser replacing windows explorer, then I will be able to open and close files within photoshop with XnView and have one less annoyance in life.

That said, I will keep my eyes open for information on Lightroom. Always good to know what things are instore for us in the future.

-HandsOff

JohnLakkas · Post by **JohnLakkas** » Sat May 20, 2006 6:13 am

For saying the truth Adobe lightroom would be able to A LOT MORE than XnView (in some aspects)! Not only because it’s Adobe and would cost few hundreds bucks. It’s because Adobe lightroom is actually a RAW workflow program (probably can organize photos too), so it will be able to adjust several stuff in RAW files (with sophisticated tools like curves, white balance, exposure, sharpness, noise, chromatic aberration corrector, like the ones in Adobe Camera Raw) and convert them. In a way than you would be able to do them in a fast and efficient way. So it is a lot different (in amateur photography) from XnView which it can just convert RAW files. I really like XnView considering it’s both free and generally good (for non color managed photography). These programs actually intend to be used by different type of users.