LightZone

I had planned on doing a review of Lightcrafts Lightzone 3.8. However,  Lesa Snider King at MacWorld has done a very good review here:

LightZone 3.0

As a beta tester from the beginning, and a regular user of the image editing application, I consider Lightzone to be an excellent software tool. I use it almost everyday, especially for contrast masks (relight tool) and for opening linear raw DNG’s. I would give the software 4.5 out of 5 stars. The Java application is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux users. On the Linux platform, there are very few competitors to Lightzone.

In the early development stages of LightZone, I participated in a beta-testing program that was well executed. In return for my time and effort I was awarded the title of “Charter Member” and granted free upgrades for the life-time of the product. I trust that this privilege will apply when Lightzone 4 is rolled out.

By the way, I have a soft-spot for small start-up companies and developers. If you have a product that needs beta-testing, and it suits my interests and time available, please feel free to contact me.

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Just a quick pointer to a helpful comment left by LightZone COO Scott McGregor to my earlier post:

A production version of LightZone for Linux is planned. But there are so many Linux variants that we want to make sure that we get a large number beta testers distributed across them before we go to production status. At this point (January 2008) we expect to extend the beta period another 90 days, through the end of April to be sure we get that coverage. During that period of time we expect to do periodic updates to address reported bugs and to keep the Linux version synchronized with our Mac and Windows versions at all times.

We recently released the 3.4 version of our product for Mac and Windows, and simultaneously our 3.4B Linux release. The 3.3 version uncovered some OS dependent bugs that caused crashes on some Ubuntu systems. The specific cause of the reported Ubuntu bugs was localized and fixed in 3.4B, but the point of staying in Beta for a while is to ensure we shake out any others. In the meantime, Linux users get the benefit of a LightZone release on par with Windows and Mac, absolutely FREE. Give it a try, give us your feedback, and we’ll be able to turn out quality production release at the end of Beta testing. –Scott McGregor, COO, Light Crafts, Inc.