At the beginning of the year, photographers and retouchers got at their disposal a new tool – the Loupedeck console, an accessory for the Lightroom application, which duplicates the main controls of the editor program with physical buttons and switches. The approach was extremely successful for solving large-scale similar tasks. A few months later, a new version of the console was released, devoid of “childhood diseases”.
The main and well-grounded issue of the first version of Loupedeck was the cheapness and the resulting flakiness of the hardware. Thin, creaky plastic, failing buttons, not very high-quality tactile connection. All this remains in the past – the upgraded version of the console is made extremely soundly.
Plastic has not gone anywhere, but it has become solid. Now it feels that under the buttons a reliable, powerful mechanism is hidden, and the relief notches on the handles and switches rest against the pads of the fingers, but do not slip under them. The glitter of silver paint, too, remained in the past, it was replaced by a strict uniform blackness.
Another important innovation: the tuning mode. Now you can reprogram the switches for yourself, so you can use more functions while using your console less often. Plus, the range of compatible software has expanded, which now includes Skylum Luminar and Capture One. And finally, the price tag for Loupedeck has dropped to $ 229 – still a lot, but the tool is intended for professionals who will appreciate its capabilities.
