this programm uses a unique approach to photo-editing (at least to my knowledge). it is easy to use. it needs some work, though. if you do a lot of photo-work, its worth trying.

details:

- the zone-model is super. much easier to handle than photoshop curves. takes some time to get used to.
- the work with region is fun. not like photoshop masks.

some work must be done here:

- add a healing-brush!
- IMHO an imagebowser needs a fast preview for selecting the keepers and sorting the photos.
- how do you view just the jpgs if you have a folder full of jpgs and raws? in LZ you can't search for a certain "kind" of file, can you? the column.view doesn't have a "kind"-column? why that? i tried to accomplish this by searching for photos with a size less than 3MB... it didn't find the jpgs, either.
- did i say: add a healing-brush? yes. anyway. that important! so: add a healing-brush!

feature-requests.
- i LOVE photomechanics combined raw+jpg view. please add this to lightzone.
- add a highlight and shadow warning to the zonemapper. its too easy to blow the highlights there.
- make the feathering area not just resizable, but movable (inside the region). and better: make it possible to convert the feathering area into a spline/polygon with ajustable single points.
- the imagebrowser is slow. at least compared with photomechanic. but i never saw other imagebrowsers on the mac which are not.
- loading images for editing isn't exactly fast, either.

i trust LZ method of saving the changes to a raw file into a file much more than apertures method of saving these things into a database: what if the DB gets corrupted? how do i transfer these setting between computers? how can i make incemental backups?

some core-image magic would do wonders with the speeds-issues... i suppose, thats not possible with a java-application. is it? isn't photomechanic java, too? it doesn't use core-image, but its fast as hell... hm...

for all the brave ppl who read this far, here the gratification. http://www.outbackphoto.com/booklets/booklets.html has a 50 bucks discount on LZ.

i really consider buying LZ. a planned-features announcement would help in the descission.

n.