Adobe has released the public beta of Photoshop Lightroom 4 for Windows and Mac. The free download, which will be available until March 31, 2012 at Adobe Labs, is intended to help Adobe garner feedback and fix bugs before before the full version is released in “early 2012”.
Key features include greater support for video (users can now trim clips non-destructively and apply edits to both videos and stills) and better highlight and shadow recovery from Raw files. Lightroom 4 also extends the number of adjustments that can be applied selectively, with brushes added for the noise reduction, moire and white balance controls. A new map module allows images to be displayed by location and soft proofing tools have been added to simulate the effects of different printers.
Regular Digital Photography + Design contributor Mark Galer has had the beta for several weeks and shares his early impressions at his website:
As a beta version of the software it is free to download and use, but the software is neither feature complete or completely stable (it will crash!). I would, however, definitely recommend it to photographers who are desperate to see what Adobe has been working on for the last 18 months, provide feedback to Adobe about the development of Lightroom 4 and use it as a way of skilling up with the new features prior to the release of the official version later this year. It is not a replacement for your existing Lightroom 3 catalog and Adobe recommends even duplicating the images you intend to import into a new Lightroom 4 catalog that you would like to use to test-drive the software (just in case).
Although Lightroom 4 has lots of great new ‘wow’ features, such as the new ‘Book’ and ‘Map’ modules, I would have to say the most significant changes for most professional photographers and photographic enthusiasts are:
1. The arrival of the new 2012 Raw Processing engine, 2. The ability to soft proof images in Adobe RGB, sRGB and to any printer profile you may have on your operating system (a long overdue feature I had requested with the original beta of Lightroom 1) 3. Video editing capability.
The new 2012 process engine is likely to be seen as the most significant change by most photographers, and some of these changes are so big that it may cause some photographers, who are not fond of change, to throw their hands in the air in a state of disbelief.
Unlike the changes to the Processing engine when Lightroom 3 was released, the changes to the 2012 process engine have been accompanied by a complete rethink of all the sliders photographers have been using since the arrival of Adobe Camera Raw in 2003. Users do, however, have the choice of using the older process engines but if you decide to embrace the new and improved 2012 process you will have to completely rethink the way you work your image files (no more Brightness, Fill light or Recovery sliders).
When upgrading images processed with Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3, users would typically only see the improvements of the upgrade – slightly sharper images, better vignettes and improved shadow detail. Images upgraded to the 2012 process, however, are unlikely to retain their visual appearance, requiring the user to process the file again in order to fine-tune the appearance using the new sliders. Only when this occurs will the user see the benefits of the 2012 process engine.
So is using the new process engine worth the investment of time to re-learn a workflow? Absolutely. The new Process engine is quite remarkable. It has the ability to recover shadow and highlight detail like never before, and offers the photographer the ability to rescue images or extract maximum quality detail from high-contrast images in pursuit of a folio quality image.
Lightroom 4 Beta is compatible with Mac OSX (10.6.8 or 10.7) and Windows (Vista and 7). It expires on March 31.
Out with the old: The Shadows and Highlights sliders now do the hard work in the Develop module, making it possible to recover even the faintest details from the darkest and lightest parts of an image. Note that the old Recovery, Brightness and Fill Light sliders are gone.
Lightroom 4 introduces full RGB curves control rather than just luminosity.
Lightroom 4 expands video support with users now able to trim clips non-destructively.
The new map module allows images to be displayed by location.
A new Book
module lets users create a photo book and upload the project to Blurb without ever leaving Lightroom.
Adobe Lightroom 4 Beta is out now.
