Adobe Lightroom 1.3 Should Have Been 1.0?

Adobe conveniently released a Lightroom update a single day after I last checked, which brings the application to 1.3 status. Numerous aspects of the application have been improved, including faster performance, easier tabbing and more sensible scrolling. As this article points out though, the 1.3 update should have been what we saw when the application was first released.

According to a few reports around the web, some features are actually slower with the new update, and this doesn’t surprise me. For those who read our processor reviews, you know that I use Lightroom as part of our testing. In months past, I have found that 1.1 was the speediest of them all (for the export/resize process), however once 1.2 came out, the speed decreased about 10%. I haven’t tested 1.3 yet, but I am hoping the speed we saw in 1.1 returns.

Source: Adobe Systems

When a product goes on sale–even a version 1.0 that one might reasonably expect to be somewhat rough around the edges–a certain level of maturity is implied. In contrast, Adobe’s Lightroom approach has felt to me more like that of Google’s Gmail and Yahoo’s Flickr, whose Web sites were in widespread use for years even while their sponsors left “beta” tags affixed.

Source: CNET News.com