It’s been a while since LR 2 came about, and I’m increasingly fond of the new gradient and brush tool for local correction, but it’s definitely not for everything. Like with everything that is new, I have used this tool maybe a little too much lately, making it a bit difficult for myself. The thing is, even if it is local adjustments, they are not as precise as in Photoshop. First of all, unless you have one hell of a computer, the time you wait for the spinning beach ball (hour glass in Windows) will limit how much tweaking you do to a mask. My computer, an 8 core mac pro, really kick ass, so this isn’t that much of an issue for me, but I have tried to use it on a 2.16GHz iMac and it was not that fun. The second thing that limits the precision is that you have to paint the mask by hand. Ok, you can get some help, but the vast number of methods for creating masks in Photoshop is unbeatable. As a side note, the lack of precision when creating masks was my main issue against LightZone. This was even more annoying than LightRoom since the masks were made by creating vector drawings. Anyway, it seems like it is very important to not get stuck in LightRoom when Photoshop can do a much better job, even now when LightRoom has become this versatile.
I’ve been using Lightroom 2 for about 10 days, now. I just downloaded the 2.1 update this morning and it reset my counter to 30 days! Cool. I think that I’ll end up buying it anyway.
I’ve become fond of the gradient tool, not so much of the adjustment brush, but then again, I’d rather go into CS2 and use my pen and pad to do fine adjustments. The sharpening is better, but no where near CS2 capabilities, nor is the noise reduction. I like the way they have changed a few things around, too.
Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with it as a ‘first stop’ in my work flow.
i too use the gradient more than the brush. The brush can be pretty useful for doing coarse dodging and burning, especially for areas that needs a soft edge, but I wouldn’t recommend spending more than 3-4 minutes on it before turning to PS.
I actually think the input sharpening is quite powerful. I know that I would have to do quite many steps in Photoshop to achieve the same result. Lots of fancy masks and black magic. LR gives me the result I want very fast in 99% of the cases. Before LR2, I used to do this in PS with Photokit sharpening. As I understand it, LR2 magic is now the same as Photokit, so I’m happy with that.