Photoshop Lightroom 2 released as Adobe's first 64-bit Mac

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Photoshop Lightroom 2 released as Adobe's first 64-bit Mac app
By Sam Oliver
Appleinsider


Following an earlier open beta, Adobe on Tuesday released version 2.0 of its Photoshop Lightroom post production photography software, which stands as the company's first application to run 64-bit-native on Apple's Mac OS X Leopard operating system.

The San Jose-based software developer is particularly proud of the accomplishment given that Lightroom's main competitor, Apple's Aperture, has yet to see native 64-bit support.

Adobe has committed to delivering 64-bit versions of Photoshop and its other Creative Suite applications, but said earlier this year that those updates will take considerably longer due to Apple's decision to scrap plans for a 64-bit version of its Carbon developer tool set.

For Lightroom 2.0, 64-bit support will allow the application to address large amounts of memory in excess of 4 gigabytes, which will speed up overall performance for photographers dealing with large scale images that must be swapped into and out of memory during processing-intensive operations.

The software also aims to streamline and accelerate photographers