AppleInsider StaffAdobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 introduces refined technology for superior shadow and highlight processing, the ability to create photo books, additional local adjustment controls, and has enhanced video support. It's $149 for new customers, or $79 for those upgrading from a previous version.
"Feedback from our customers is invaluable in developing Lightroom and the real trick to a great release is to combine these insights with Adobe’s unrivaled image processing innovation," said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products of Creative Media Solutions at Adobe. "Lightroom 4 is a stunning new release that will enhance photography workflows and help photographs stand out from the crowd."
Adobe said on Tuesday that Photoshop Lightroom 4 features significant new capabilities and innovations, including new adjustment controls that maximize dynamic range from cameras for recovering shadow details and highlights. New auto adjustments dynamically set values for exposure and contrast, and additional local adjustments are now available, including "Noise Reduction," "Moire" and "White Balance."
The latest version of Lightroom also provides photographers with tools to create photo books with text controls and a number of templates. There's also a direct link for photo book creation within the software's new "Book" module.
Users can also access a new "Map" module that displays images already assigned a location, and also provides location tagging and reverse geo-tagging controls. Saved locations also allow for assignment of a photographer's common location.
Lightroom 4 also features native video support, giving photographers the ability to play, trim and extract frames from video clips shot on DSLR cameras, as well as point-and-shoot cameras and smartphones. Video-specific presets and many standard Lightroom image adjustments can be applied to video clips, and adjusted videos can be exported as an H.264 file or published directly to Facebook or Flickr.
The "Develop" module also offers presets that utilize new processing technology. The addition of soft proofing will also assist photographers in tuning images in a destination color space. Customers can also e-mail images directly from Lightroom using an e-mail account of their choice.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is available for both Mac and Windows direct from Adobe. Free shipping is available through March 31, 2012, and users can also download a free trial of the software.
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37 Comments
excellent update, been using beta for some time and it's really great improvement and the price is big surprise, was expecting much more not half price
Half-price? These are hard times isn't it?
Apple cut the price of Aperture from ~$199 to ~$80, so Lightroom is still $70 more expensive.
Is it worth the extra $70 ?? [Honest question - I haven't used Lightroom and can't compare]
With LR you're getting both win and mac copies. also LR in my opinion is much better than Aperture
Apple cut the price of Aperture from ~$199 to ~$80, so Lightroom is still $70 more expensive.
Is it worth the extra $70 ?? [Honest question - I haven't used Lightroom and can't compare]
it's worth the extra. speed speed speed, and better organizing, custom presets and so on. think about LR as a huge db management, all you do is stored in a db and therefore you can create from whatever you do a new preset and apply it to number of photographs, you can limit those presets to be applied only to certain ISO, camera serial nr and so on. it also means that you have full history of all edits you've done to a photo and you can go back and forth, create new virtual copies at whatever step you desire (it will create just new set of settings).
now they've added soft proofing to print module so there's no need for PS any more. the basic panel in develop module is re-done from scratch and now fulfils 98% of my post-processing needs. also B&W conversion is better than in Aperture. I've been using both for really long time.