# Lightroom 4 Beta now available



## corpusrex (Jan 10, 2012)

Not sure if people have seen this. Lightroom 4 is now in open beta.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/

Some interesting new additions in there.

New Features in Lightroom 4 Beta
Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.

Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.

Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.

White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.

Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.

Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.

Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr®.

Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.

Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.


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## alipaulphotography (Jan 10, 2012)

Just downloading it now. I have been waiting for this for quite a while now!


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## Crapking (Jan 10, 2012)

Currently using combo of Aperture and Photoshop 5 on multiple computers (with multiple copies all over the place , and hoping to get more organized soon. Is it worth my consolidating all my keepers into this new LR ? Is the transition easy? Will it move (or copy) my originals as they are imported?


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## Mendolera (Jan 10, 2012)

Very cool. I got LR3 at student price and it makes such a huge difference in workflow... Before I got it I figured it was a good editing software but didnt realize the power of handling RAW and exporting those files so quickly. I def will give LR4 a look..


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## JR (Jan 10, 2012)

Crapking said:


> Currently using combo of Aperture and Photoshop 5 on multiple computers (with multiple copies all over the place , and hoping to get more organized soon. Is it worth my consolidating all my keepers into this new LR ? Is the transition easy? Will it move (or copy) my originals as they are imported?



You should be able to import all your photos fairly easily in Lightroom. What I first suggest before you change your setup is first download the trial version of LR (even if it is the LR3 version) and try importing all your photos into it so you can play with it and get familiar with its library capabilities. I dont use Aperture myself but I love how LR and PS work well together.

Lightroom will be able to import preatty much any RAW file format you have or JPEG. The trial verison is for 30 days...enought for you to judge...


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## alipaulphotography (Jan 10, 2012)

Yeah easy to transport everything from aperture. Can even tell lightroom to organise it all for you by date.

The beta isn't as 'new' as I was hoping. Hoping they stick in the ability to edit grain in the shadows/midtones/highlights or i'll be pretty miffed. The new exposure editing section is pretty good though. Really helps to nail a skin tone.

New brush section is greatly expanded too which is a welcome addition. Other than that - seems much the same for the 'develop' section.


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## 7enderbender (Jan 10, 2012)

Crapking said:


> Currently using combo of Aperture and Photoshop 5 on multiple computers (with multiple copies all over the place , and hoping to get more organized soon. Is it worth my consolidating all my keepers into this new LR ? Is the transition easy? Will it move (or copy) my originals as they are imported?



Not sure if this is a simple yes/no question. I guess you have to try it. I personally find Lightroom especially weak at what its core functionality is supposed to be: organizing things.

Especially when using more than one computer I find stuff to get all over the place quickly since Lightroom manages the edits as a virtual catalog. If you have all your photos in one place, say a network drive that you access from all computers, it may be easier - you "just" need to make sure to always synchronize the virtual catalogs then. Since you are talking about "keepers" it sounds as if your workflow may be more like mine in which you prefer an actual finished result and not a virtual version in some LR catalog.

I only bought Lightroom 3 because I could get it cheap for about $100. That's about what I find it's worth. I'm not going to spend more money to upgrade and none of the new features sound interesting to me.

LR is great for a quick fix of things or if you do some basic edits to a batch of photos. Also some of the export to web functions are ok (not great, but ok). Some of its presets are great to try out different styles and ideas quickly.

Generally speaking, I'm still more comfortable with using Photoshop and then save a final result to an "edits" folder together with the originals and then back that up and sync it to my other locations. Yes, that does eat even more memory but what the heck. In the grand scheme of things the occasional new hard drive isn't really the problem.


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## Crapking (Jan 10, 2012)

That is my real question, the ease of managing the original RAW and the 'edited' JPG (which the keepers get posted to the web) and then later, maybe get printed / enlarged, whatever. I find myself struggling with the colorspace issue / print profile of the different versions. As I understand and develop my Photoshop workflow, I've learned to create project folders with subfolders for RAW/JPGs, but was curious the 'power' of LR to go back to help my old JPGs (pre RAW era) and more importantly moving forward, how to optimize workflow with new projects.

When LR imports RAW from the CF card, and then PS does the edits, where do the edits/original go?? are people happy with file management issues, I am happy using PS for my edits, but before adding another file management scheme (LR), I'd like to know if current users are happy


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## Chewy734 (Jan 10, 2012)

wait... you can import from Aperture to LR3 easily? Does that include importing all the adjustments for all the photos in Aperture?

The reason I ask is because I have a large Aperture library, and since spring of 2011 I switched to LR3 and started with a new library. I would like to merge so I don't have to keep Aperture installed on my Mac, but I wasn't able to find an easy way to do that back then. Thanks!


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## EYEONE (Jan 10, 2012)

I love the video addition if it will allow me to easily make cuts, combinations and color corrections.

And I've been wanting a noise reduction brush for a long time!


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## nikkito (Jan 10, 2012)

Does it have rgb curves like photoshop? Thats all I want


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## Canon-F1 (Jan 10, 2012)

dilbert said:


> Given that some features never made it into LR 3.0 beta that were in the final release of LR 3.0, I wonder what will be in the final release of LR 4.0 that are not in LR 4.0 beta?



sorry my glas orb is kaputt.


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## Gothmoth (Jan 10, 2012)

i agree the geotagging support is lousy.


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## Peerke (Jan 10, 2012)

No Windos XP support :-X. OMG, just when they made some great changes.


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## Canon-F1 (Jan 10, 2012)

Peerke said:


> No Windos XP support :-X. OMG, just when they made some great changes.



time to move on.

i mean.. what do you want with only 2GB RAM for applications in 2012 anyway.

and LR eats RAM....


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## contrastny (Jan 10, 2012)

Has there been any additions to Lightroom 4 that help you correct flicker in time lapses?


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## Canon-F1 (Jan 10, 2012)

contrastny said:


> Has there been any additions to Lightroom 4 that help you correct flicker in time lapses?



well that is something you do in a video application.

there is also no multiband audio editing for video clips in LR.


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## contrastny (Jan 10, 2012)

Canon-F1 said:


> contrastny said:
> 
> 
> > Has there been any additions to Lightroom 4 that help you correct flicker in time lapses?
> ...



I Deflicker my time lapses prior to video. I've been using "LR Time Lapse" to Deflicker since you can make the adjustments to your RAW images; pre-processing on a RAW file basis rather than post processing video.

I was hoping to see more options for time lapses in lightroom 4.


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## Canon-F1 (Jan 10, 2012)

contrastny said:


> I Deflicker my time lapses prior to video. I've been using "LR Time Lapse" to Deflicker since you can make the adjustments to your RAW images; pre-processing on a RAW file basis rather than post processing video.



isn´t that awfull slow?
but maybe worth it when you output to HD (but i doubt that).

i don´t do much TL anymore.. i used this: 

http://www.granitebaysoftware.com/Products/ProductGBD.aspx


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## alipaulphotography (Jan 10, 2012)

nikkito said:


> Does it have rgb curves like photoshop? Thats all I want



Yes! It does!

This is a really good video summarising the new features in the develop area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeieHtruelU&feature=g-u&context=G269593aFUAAAAAAABAA

I'm sure there will be a lot more tools we'll find out about as time goes on.

It isn't a downgrade that is for sure.


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## Picsfor (Jan 10, 2012)

OK, just had a quick play, importing a single 200 image shoot and playing with a single picture.

Without a doubt, this version runs leaner than V3, but then v3 was such a system hog that if they hadn't improved its system efficiency they would lost whole rafts of upgrade sales because people with a maxed out 4gb computer would have had to buy a new computer.

Now, with regards to the geo tagging thing, i don't mind it in its current form. Pretty much most of my shoots are single location shoots, and where the location various, the key wording varies - so to me it is all part of the same workflow.

Organisation seems to be pretty much the same, but the import process is much quicker.

The ability to create a book from within LR and have exported as a PDF to offer up as an eBook, or have published by Blurb Books is a welcome addition. Mrs B certainly likes it, and once i've mastered it so will i!

Some of the tweaks in the develop module are welcome, but where is my square brush tool? It seems as though Adobe are determined not to give LR the one thing that is useful in other packages - an editing tool that is not just round. It doesn't need elliptical, octagonal or star shaped with stripes - just round or square...

Certainly enough to get me upgrading at the moment - but lets see how the final thing pans out.


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## Canon-F1 (Jan 10, 2012)

Picsfor said:


> Without a doubt, this version runs leaner than V3, but then v3 was such a system hog that if they hadn't improved its system efficiency they would lost whole rafts of upgrade sales because people with a maxed out 4gb computer would have had to buy a new computer.



in fact the beta runs SLOWER on my system then V3.6.

240 GB VERTEX 3 SSD, i7 [email protected], 16 GB ram.
but i think that is because it has debugging code in it.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 11, 2012)

Crapking said:


> Currently using combo of Aperture and Photoshop 5 on multiple computers (with multiple copies all over the place , and hoping to get more organized soon. Is it worth my consolidating all my keepers into this new LR ? Is the transition easy? Will it move (or copy) my originals as they are imported?



Its a public beta, I would use it for testing, but be aware that it may change or crash and damage or lose your work. It won't damage your images, it never changes them, but if you do a lot of work in the next few months, it might be lost.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 11, 2012)

Canon-F1 said:


> Picsfor said:
> 
> 
> > Without a doubt, this version runs leaner than V3, but then v3 was such a system hog that if they hadn't improved its system efficiency they would lost whole rafts of upgrade sales because people with a maxed out 4gb computer would have had to buy a new computer.
> ...



Yup, it runs slower in v4, no issues with v3. I expect that it will be fine tuned. with the same image open, windows uses slightly more ram, 2.48 gb for v4 versus 2.38 for ver 3.


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## nikkito (Jan 11, 2012)

alipaulphotography said:


> nikkito said:
> 
> 
> > Does it have rgb curves like photoshop? Thats all I want
> ...



This made my day, thanks for your answer


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 11, 2012)

For those who print or have images printed, the soft proofing is a huge issue. So far, it does not seem to be working correctly on my pc.


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## DavidD (Jan 11, 2012)

Peerke said:


> No Windos XP support :-X. OMG, just when they made some great changes.



Hmmm. 

Adobe "forgot" to mention that Lightroom version 4 will not Install on XP.

This is as close as they get on the download page --

"* If you are running a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Windows Vista, 
we recommend downloading the 64-bit version of Lightroom. 
To find out if your computer is running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows 
in Windows 7 or Windows Vista, open System by clicking the Start button, 
right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties (under System, 
you can view the system type). If your version of Windows is not 64-bit, 
or if you are not sure, download the 32-bit version."

I sure didn't get the message from that.

To discover this I had to download the 400 megabyte file, 
(tied up my computer for 2 hours) then spent some time 
installing it, only to get a message --

"You need a minimum of Vista to run Lightroom"

Goodbye Adobe. You have disappointed me for the last time.

Goodbye Lightroom - just as I was getting persuaded to like 
working with you.


Above all else I need a reliable OS.

Sadly IMHO -- XP is the most reliable of the Windows
(But what do I know - I've only been in the OS business 
for 25 years. . .) and I'm not giving up reliability.

Yet another set of poor choices by Adobe management.

I really was hoping the Lightroom team could 
get Lightroom up to professional standards 
- then XP support gets ripped away.

This makes the decision to stay with DXO, Silkypix, 
DCraw and RawTherapee easy. They all run on XP 
just fine; in my opinion all work better than Lightroom.


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## Ivar (Jan 11, 2012)

dilbert said:


> Given that some features never made it into LR 3.0 beta that were in the final release of LR 3.0, I wonder what will be in the final release of LR 4.0 that are not in LR 4.0 beta?



I think it is not feature complete yet. I myself hope for cloning tool with movements and whatever there is to make an image even better.


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## Viggo (Jan 11, 2012)

After trying out Lr4 for 30 minutes I already see that this is an incredible leap forward for raw-converting, maan I thought Lr3 was pretty good but this is crazy good. LOVE the new control-sliders and they do so much more! And the NR is quantum-leaps ahead of Lr3 which was already seriously much better than 2,6. 

I think the final release just in time for when my 1d X arrives is going to revolutionize my images.


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## Gothmoth (Jan 11, 2012)

i like LR and use it every day.

but one thing i think capture one does better by default are skin tones.
i hope they have improved that.


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## Picsfor (Jan 11, 2012)

Canon-F1 said:


> Picsfor said:
> 
> 
> > Without a doubt, this version runs leaner than V3, but then v3 was such a system hog that if they hadn't improved its system efficiency they would lost whole rafts of upgrade sales because people with a maxed out 4gb computer would have had to buy a new computer.
> ...



Interesting you're running SSD - i wonder if some one has coded for this. I know it's lightning quick compared with HDD, but i wonder if it has the ability to be handbagged by poor coding?
(I'm afraid my knowledge of SSD is too limited to really know, but i put it in the same class as CF, but with faster read/ write speeds - and the variation in how software manages Cf is amazing)


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## Picsfor (Jan 11, 2012)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Crapking said:
> 
> 
> > Currently using combo of Aperture and Photoshop 5 on multiple computers (with multiple copies all over the place , and hoping to get more organized soon. Is it worth my consolidating all my keepers into this new LR ? Is the transition easy? Will it move (or copy) my originals as they are imported?
> ...



exactly - and it's amazing how many people forget that basic fact. Hence my testing is done using pics from previous shoots that have already been processed so i can make comparisons.

The improvement in the clarity feature of the brush tool have come to the fore at the moment, along with improved noise reduction. Contrary to what some others have said - am liking the maps module, and at some point soon, hope to make use of the Books module.

As long as the final package doesn't hit the system resources like v3 did, then i'm ok for an upgrade, but my iMac is maxed out on RAM and i'm not in a position to upgrade to a new thunderbolt system, as that would require a few new HDD's as well!


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## Gothmoth (Jan 11, 2012)

Picsfor said:


> Interesting you're running SSD - i wonder if some one has coded for this. I know it's lightning quick compared with HDD, but i wonder if it has the ability to be handbagged by poor coding?
> (I'm afraid my knowledge of SSD is too limited to really know, but i put it in the same class as CF, but with faster read/ write speeds - and the variation in how software manages Cf is amazing)




SSD are like HDD on steroids. they can´t be compared to CF drives.
the contollers are very different.
access times are very fast what helps for database applications.

so an SSD has nothing to do with the fact that the beta feels a bit sluggish.


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## pwp (Jan 11, 2012)

LR V4.0 better not be such a system hog as V3. It's a shocker in that regard. Early impressions suggest this is a highly meaningful upgrade of an already brilliant piece of software. The LR3 public beta held back a couple of cool features (can't remember which ones) so maybe LR4 final release candidate will deliver even more cool stuff. 

SSD? This is the future. You seen the way a Macbook Air powers up instantly? iPad? One day we'll look back at the days when we relied on antique HDD's which had actual _moving parts_ and shake our heads in disbelief. SSD might as well = *S*peed *S*tability *D*urability

I build my own PC's (it's a bit like Lego) and the next build will follow a pattern established by others of having the OS and programs on SSD (two for RAID) and modest 1Tb local storage on HDD (two for RAID). The storage heavy lifting is handled on a 10Tb NAS.

Paul Wright


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## Viggo (Jan 11, 2012)

Although I'm loving the NR-brush, I REALLY wish they would have added a masking-feature to the NR sliders, applying directly to shadow or the opposite from sharpening-function.


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## Gothmoth (Jan 11, 2012)

pwp said:


> LR V4.0 better not be such a system hog as V3. It's a shocker in that regard. Early impressions suggest this is a highly meaningful upgrade of an already brilliant piece of software. The LR3 public beta held back a couple of cool features (can't remember which ones) so maybe LR4 final release candidate will deliver even more cool stuff.
> 
> SSD? This is the future. You seen the way a Macbook Air powers up instantly? iPad? One day we'll look back at the days when we relied on antique HDD's which had actual _moving parts_ and shake our heads in disbelief. SSD might as well = *S*peed *S*tability *D*urability
> 
> ...




two of the newest SSD´s in raid will outperform SATA 3 (~600 mb/s) already for seq. read speed. and then it´s mostly "software raid" with onboard controllers people use.

i have build my latest system using a PCIe SSD card, an OCZ RevoDrive.
much better then using software RAID with SATA3.

but you should have a mainboard of the latest generation and win7.
with older hardware such a PCIe card can make problems.
but for a new PC build it´s fantastic.


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## Lee Jay (Jan 11, 2012)

Canon-F1 said:


> it does not even put the metadata in the fields for city etc. when you have geotagged an image.



Reverse geotagging will be enabled in the final version.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 11, 2012)

DavidD said:


> Peerke said:
> 
> 
> > No Windos XP support :-X. OMG, just when they made some great changes.
> ...



Did you try the beta on XP? No XP support means they are not going to spend thousands of hours testing it, it doesn't mean that it won't run.

Try it and let us know.


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## DavidD (Jan 11, 2012)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> DavidD said:
> 
> 
> > Peerke said:
> ...



I did try it. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

The Setup program refuses to install unless you have "at least Vista"

If you know a way to fool the install program - I will try it.


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## Picsfor (Jan 11, 2012)

DavidD said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > DavidD said:
> ...



My suggestion would be running the install from a Vista machine and using it to remotely install on an XP machine. You can do some funny things remotely with MS Windows, the fun i've had as part of a support time bypassing the 'restrictions'.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 11, 2012)

DavidD said:


> I did try it. Sorry I didn't make that clear.
> 
> The Setup program refuses to install unless you have "at least Vista"
> 
> If you know a way to fool the install program - I will try it.



I'd enter a complaint on the Adobe Forums, and monitor them for any work around. There are still a large number of people using XP. Windows Vista was much worse than XP, but windows 7 64 bit is a pleasure to use with resource hogs like photoshop and lightroom. It is a much more pleasant experience when a new install is run as long as your pc is not too old, all the drivers are there, or are automatically downlooaded for most common hardware. I did have to install my Epson 3880 driver from the epson site, buts all the other hardware worked fine.

Since I have moved to SSD for boot drives, Windows 7 handles them better than XT or Vista as well.


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## Jamess (Jan 13, 2012)

There's an in depth review of Lightroom 4, with some cool videos here:

http://paul-d.tv/blog/2012/01/13/adobe-lightroom-4-public-beta/


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## smirkypants (Jan 16, 2012)

I'm impressed. The noise reduction is even more impressive than before—and it was pretty good before. I'd say that it gets you a couple of stops of usability. It even does a better job at getting rid of chromatic aberration. If you turn the clarity slider down a bit and the sharpening up a bit, you can smooth some of that bad, bad bokeh as well. 

Now, if it would just stop crashing every five minutes....


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## bigblue1ca (Jan 16, 2012)

smirkypants said:


> Now, if it would just stop crashing every five minutes....



Interesting, what OS/specs are you running? Is it crashing with video or pictures? Just curious, because I've used it a fair bit since it was released and I haven't had one crash or lockup, but I haven't tried it for video yet.


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## smirkypants (Jan 16, 2012)

bigblue1ca said:


> smirkypants said:
> 
> 
> > Now, if it would just stop crashing every five minutes....
> ...


I'm on a MacBook Pro 17" with 8GB and a 1TB... and I haven't upgraded to Lion. Crashing risks increase significantly with presets or trying to "update" to LR4 a photo processed under the current Adobe Camera Raw.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 16, 2012)

bigblue1ca said:


> smirkypants said:
> 
> 
> > Now, if it would just stop crashing every five minutes....
> ...



I've been using it a fair amount on my win 7 64 bit machine with zero crashes. It is slow, but that is typically something that I see in the beta versions, and gets ironed out before the final.

I spent all morning watching the Julieann Kost videos about the new features, its a pretty significant advance, a lot more changes than I expected. I was also playing with the book feature, I will be making one next week. 

I print my own books at 8.5 X 11 on my color laser for the kids performing in the high school play and bind them myself. It doesn't support letter size, so I can't use it. Fortunately, my old album software works well, but I wish we could setup our own page templates for book making. I'm sure someone will figure out how to do this.


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## K-amps (Jan 16, 2012)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> bigblue1ca said:
> 
> 
> > smirkypants said:
> ...



Win 7 Ulti 64bit here. No crashes to report.


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## bigblue1ca (Jan 17, 2012)

smirkypants said:


> bigblue1ca said:
> 
> 
> > smirkypants said:
> ...



I'm running a 17" Laptop with Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit, 16GB, and like the others I haven't had one crash; nor have I noticed any slow downs as yet. Your MacBook is certainly no slouch, strange, I'm sure they'll get it figured out come final release.


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## smirkypants (Jan 19, 2012)

I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with the rendering and the smoothness. I'll just include a photo as an example and let you know that this really wouldn't have been possible in LR3.

This was taken about an hour before sunset with:
The much maligned 100-400mm @ 5.6
The much maligned for its bokeh 7D at ISO 800, 1/3200

Not too bad, though it looks better on my screen. Hmm.


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## jonathan7007 (Jan 20, 2012)

I promise to get back and read all the thread posts but a quick correction to advice given on page one to someone thinking of switching from Aperture. (May have been brought up on pages 2 or 3...)

LR4 will still not be truly networkable -- allowing multiple users to pull images from a central storage server for edits or the same user to share a catalog across different machines at different times. There are workarounds for teams. I am still trying to figure this out in detail for me, so I hope I am correctly characterizing what it can and can't do. 

Just be careful and research LR thoroughly if networked shared edit tasks and networked Digital Asset Management is important. Some years ago solutions like Canto Cumulus were needed for this -- as just the database -- and these programs had sophisticated check-out and check-in controls for the production teams to avoid collisions and multiple versions (where not intended.) I sometimes think I'll look at those software packages again -- pulling from an NAS -- as a back end to Lightroom and Photoshop.

jonathan7007


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## Maui5150 (Jan 20, 2012)

Wish Lightroom would give us the "Shoot yourself in the foot at your own risk" option.

I run into the Networkable issue all the time. I have my photos stored on an external drive off my main PC, but sometimes I want to edit or go through and do light work on my laptop in front of my TV. Always run into the "unable because network drive" error. LR does not have to provide any source safe protection or controls, I would just like to be able to say "Hey! I am the only one on this network... Let me do this at my own risk"


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## carlc (Jan 21, 2012)

Anyone have any info on the release date (or estimate) for the final version? And is LR4 a good place to start for a new user of post processing software who is actually just starting with RAW? I have always used JPEG with my 7D and counted on getting it as good as possible in the camera, has not always worked!


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 21, 2012)

carlc said:


> Anyone have any info on the release date (or estimate) for the final version? And is LR4 a good place to start for a new user of post processing software who is actually just starting with RAW? I have always used JPEG with my 7D and counted on getting it as good as possible in the camera, has not always worked!



If you use a PC, lightroom is very good. For Macs, Aperture is very popular.

You do need to understand how lightroom works, go to a library and borrow a Lightroom 3 book. Lightroom does not change your original photos, it merely saves the adjustments in a database, and renders them real time so you can see what the proposed changes will look like. This allows you to come back at any time and re-edit, or even edit multiple virtual versions of the same print, for example a version for 4 X 6 prints, and another for 8 X 10 prints, or a web version. you can have as many as you want, you are merely saving a bunch of different settings in a database. Each set of edits has a low resolution image associated with the virtual image, you can make them high resolution, but your database will grow quickly. You can also specify a life for those rendered images so you do not have to store them forever. You can always generate a new one in a second or less.

When you are ready, you can then export a COPY of your image that has the changes cooked in, but your original is unchanged. You also need to get your head around the image management part, you no longer need to sort images into dozens of different folders / directories, you can sort by title, keyword, date, place, camera, lens, aperture, ISO, almost anything. Its very powerful, but using all the features as they were intended requires some self training, or you can take a class. 
The discovery method will waste a lot of your time.


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## carlc (Jan 22, 2012)

Thank you Mt. Spokane. Should I download the V4 Beta and use V3 books and tutorials or just use V3 with the appropriate study materials? Not sure how much difference there is between V3 and V4? I would need to buy V3 or download the trial version (not sure how much I can learn in 30 days).

Dumb question - Can you save a processed RAW (Canon 7D) image in Lightroom as a TIFF or JPEG for sharing with others or web posting?

And I have PSE 8 but I have never used it or even read chapter 1 of the book I bought. My question is, do you even need PSE if you use Lightroom?

Many thanks for all your help. Carl


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## K-amps (Jan 22, 2012)

carlc said:


> Dumb question - Can you save a processed RAW (Canon 7D) image in Lightroom as a TIFF or JPEG for sharing with others or web posting?



LR imports RAW images (i.e. Makes a copy for itself from the source you specify) from CF card or folder etc: Then internally converts them into DNG format which a kind of RAW file format. You can then process these DNG files within LR in non destructive manner (i.e. can go back to original anytime): So it remains in a RAW like format to be reset when you want. It does not render them into jpg/tiff for internal storage since those cannot be reset to original.

So when you are happy with your DNG's, you can export them to whatever folder you want (right click/export) when you export you can define what files will be exported (copies of DNG) as to be jpeg or tiff etc. 

In essence if you have not deleted your RAW's, you have 3 copies on you, Original RAW, DNG and jpeg/TIFF.

This is a bit different than regular processing in PS where the edits are destructive and you typically work with 1 copy unless you actively make more. The workflow with LR is the opposite, it makes is 2-3 copies unless you delete them


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 22, 2012)

carlc said:


> Thank you Mt. Spokane. Should I download the V4 Beta and use V3 books and tutorials or just use V3 with the appropriate study materials? Not sure how much difference there is between V3 and V4? I would need to buy V3 or download the trial version (not sure how much I can learn in 30 days).
> 
> Dumb question - Can you save a processed RAW (Canon 7D) image in Lightroom as a TIFF or JPEG for sharing with others or web posting?
> 
> ...



I'd borrow a book on LR 3, books on LR 4 are not available. However, you can download a trial version of LR3 and test it.

LR 4 does not work significantly different from LR 3, but the edit controls have changed quite a bit, and soft proofing, book creation, and lots of minor changes have occurred. Using the beta LR4 is fine for a experienced LR user, but for a new user, I'd hold back. There are bugs, and they might discourage you from using what will be a fine product once the actual release happens.

In lightroom, the process of saving a file to a different format is called exporting. You can export a edited copy to tiff, dng, jpg, and other common formats. The original RAW file is unchanged, you are making a separate file with your edits baked in to the file.

If you already have tiff, dng, jpeg, etc. You can edit those files in lightroom, but cannot convert them back to CR2. CR2 files are basically Tiff formatted images with a bunch of extra information added in.

Yes, LR can edit a tiff , jpg, dng, and other formats.


PSE 8 may do some things that LR cannot do, however, I have photoshop CS5 and only use it occasionally for doing some things that LR cannot do. There are a ton of things you can do in photoshop and not in Lightroom, but they are not commonly used features for most photo editing. LR can be looked at as a subset of photoshop features plus additional ones intended for editing photographs, while PS has a much broader application.


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## smirkypants (Jan 22, 2012)

I'm an Apple fanboy and own tons of Apple everything, but Lightroom pretty much stomps Aperture, especially when it comes to noise reduction and sharpening. It really isn't even close. Additionally, Aperture is painfully slow for me on my 17" MacBook Pro when editing RAW. It's pretty much no contest for me.


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## K-amps (Jan 22, 2012)

smirkypants said:


> I'm an Apple fanboy and own tons of Apple everything, but Lightroom pretty much stomps Aperture, especially when it comes to noise reduction and sharpening. It really isn't even close. Additionally, Aperture is painfully slow for me on my 17" MacBook Pro when editing RAW. It's pretty much no contest for me.


Agree on the noise reduction, but I am not sure I like the Sharpening of LR . If I try and sharpen something, I get squiggly lines in LR, but sharp pixels (not lines) in CS5 Unsharp which I prefer to LR. I also use Topaz Detail/Denoise, they do a better job than both LR/ CS5. The denoise of Topaz can be handled many different ways you get you a more custom denoise per shot. Highly recommend checking it out.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 23, 2012)

*Re: Lightroom 4 Beta What happened to the Noise?*

I seldom use ISO 6400 with my 5D MK II, but took about 5 images out of hundreds due to the low stage lighting Thursday night at our local small town school play.

I went ahead and developed the images in LR 4 with NR turned off. There is a little added sharpening. In the past, this image would have had very noticible noise. Something is different, I can only really see it at 1:1, and then, its faint.







There is noise, mostly chroma, as you can see in the 100% crop, but its pretty minimal, and just a little NR makes it go away.


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## carlc (Jan 23, 2012)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> carlc said:
> 
> 
> > Thank you Mt. Spokane. Should I download the V4 Beta and use V3 books and tutorials or just use V3 with the appropriate study materials? Not sure how much difference there is between V3 and V4? I would need to buy V3 or download the trial version (not sure how much I can learn in 30 days).
> ...



Thank you again Mt. Spokane, your advice is very helpful and appreciated. I will order LR3 and the Adobe LR learning manual today. Stay tuned for more of "beginner" questions!!


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