I’ve mentioned that I use Lightcraft’s LightZone before and as I have really grown to love this application I figured now is a good time to write about it at greater length. The software is available in two versions LightZone and LightZone Basic. Actually whatever version you use the software is the same, your purchased key unlocks more features if you opt for the full deal. I use the Basic version because I do my initial sorting and basic raw processing in Aperture and then refine it in LightZone with the “round trip” facility built into LZ Basic. The same facility works with Adobe’s Lightroom so if that’s your weapon of choice everything I say here about LZ will apply equally. Oh yes, LZ is also available in a Windows version - I use the Mac version.

LZ has been around for some time now and has sort of stealthily built up quite a following amongst photographers. This isn’t surprising as the application has been developed from the start to work in a way that is most intuitive to photographers - it works in the way photographers think, the way they always worked back in the days before digital.

The basis of the LZ working method is a sort of updated Zone System for the digital age. This turns out to be the most intuitive way for photographers to control the tonal values of their images with instant visual cues to the location of these values in your image and tight control over the relative placement of your tones is possible. It’s difficult to describe just how simple and intuitive this way of editing is, I can only suggest you download and take a look at the trial versions available at the Lightcrafts site.

Lightcrafts has this to say about this feature:

ZoneMapper

The ZoneMapper tool allows you to adjust the brightness and contrast of your photo for any combination of the highlights, midtones, or shadows in a way that is far more intuitive than using either “levels” or “curves” tools found in other applications.

ZoneFinder

The ZoneFinder shows a miniature version of your photo that has been segmented into 16 grayscale zones each differing by 50% brightness or half an F-stop from the next. The ZoneFinder allows you to see where the highlights, midtones, and shadows in your photo are in order to make adjustments using the ZoneMapper.

Of course, more often than not you will want to isolate the areas of your image that edits apply and once again you can create “regions” (as LZ terms them) quite easily with 3 different vector tools and feather the edges of your regions or masks equally easily, applying these selections to any tool in your editing stack. Naturally all edits are non destructive and remain editable at any time in the future you may wish to do so. Copying, pasting and live linking of your selections to other tools in your stack is also possible.

Here is what Lightcrafts says about selections and tool stacks:

Vector-Based Regions and Masks

Using regions to create masks, you can restrict a tool’s effect to just specific areas of your photo. Unlike other applications, LightZone allows you to draw (rather than paint) regions. Regions are therefore always editable. Additionally, every region has a feathering area that smoothly blends the region into the surrounding area preventing sharp edges.

All Tools are Created Equal

LightZone organizes the tools used to edit your photo into a stack similarly to “layers” in other applications. Unlike other applications’ layers, every tool in the tool stack is a layer. (For example, you create a sharpen as a layer rather than sharpening an existing layer.) This means that every tool is non-destructive and therefore can be edited or deleted at any time.

The LZ creators make a big selling point of the fact that all editing is done in a 16 bit linear space. Here’s what they say about it:

LightZone always works in a 16-bit linear color space. Unlike a non-linear gamma-corrected color space, a linear color space doesn’t introduce errors (such as increasing noise, edge distortion, and hue shifts) during enhancement operations such as sharpening, blurring, or saturation adjustments.

The technicalities aside, in practice this appears to work very well - I’ve found very few of my images that couldn’t be substantially improved by tweaking them in LZ.

Of course, LZ also has the full complement of expected tools for a complete image editing workflow, some I use, other’s I don’t. This is not to say they don’t all work very well, it’s just that my personal workflow means that some adjustments I prefer to do either before my LZ stage or after it. For example I do my capture sharpening and cropping in Aperture, also color tweaks (the tools seem better in Aperture) and final sharpening in Photoshop (Photokit Sharpener, just beacause it works pretty great automatically). I had been applying toning to my monochrome images in Aperture but after some interesting experimentation with split toning using 2 Color Balance tool stacks in LZ that will probably change.

As I’ve said I don’t personally do everything in LZ so really, as I’m only speaking from personal experience here, I have only scratched the surface of what the application is capable of. You may well find that it provides everything you need for a total workflow. I strongly urge you to take a look at it - I don’t think you will be disappointed!