lightroom 4 beta
Adobe today announced the release of a free public beta of Photoshop Lightroom 4, the company's digital photo management and post-production software. The software is the primary competitor to Apple's Aperture and a popular option for photographers.

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.

The free public beta expires on March 31, with the final release of the software planned for "early 2012". Pricing is yet to be announced. The current Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 carries a recommended retail price of $299 and an upgrade price of $99, although many retailers offer the software at substantially lower prices.

With Aperture's move to the Mac App Store upon the marketplace's debut one year ago, pricing for Apple's software has now dropped to $79.99.

Top Rated Comments

SalsaShark Avatar
173 months ago
LR 2 to 3 was an absolute no-brainer if for no other reason than the new RAW processing engine. Absolutely love it. But from what I'm reading here, I can't say I'm too excited about LR4's prospects. Spot white balance adjustment is nice, especially when dealing with quirky phasing indoor lights, but how about the workflow? Not sure who they're going after with some of these features, but it's certainly not pros. Keywording/captioning needs improvement. Switching between modules is still a bit clunky. I have to rely on too many third party plugins to make LR do what I want. I guess when they're already head-and-shoulders above Aperture, Adobe doesn't feel the need to innovate much.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ThunderSkunk Avatar
173 months ago
As in making adjustments to .PNG? If so that makes no sense... And it has great dual monitor support I use it all the time for comparative study or a loupe. Also multiple users = log in to a different account like any other application on OSX.
No, no, and also no.

1. .png support: have a read through some of these (http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=lightroom+support+png&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) if you don't know why you'd want to store your images in png. When you have millions of files, the filesize savings of .png makes a huge difference. Having to use a separate program to manage a certain filetype is asinine.

2. Dual monitor support: A joke. The ONLY thing you can use it for is a dummy display, for comparative study & loupe. Useful would be, library on one monitor and develop on another, or for those of us working on quad displays, a module on each.

3. Multiple users: Imagine, and I know it's a leap since Adobe never considered it either, that unlike a student or sport shooter, you have more than one person working with your images in your office at a time. For instance, even a small marketing dept that has two photogs, a dev, three ad guys and a webmaster. Lightrooms complete lack of multiuser & network support is an organizational & operational cluster#$%^ and results in a gigantic waste of energy, time, and space.

All primary issues we've been bugging Adobe about since day 1, and all ignored, in favor of... uploading video clips to youtube??? Pretty clear where Adobe is taking Lightroom.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kirky29 Avatar
173 months ago
I've been thinking about moving from Aperture to Lightroom for awhile now, Aperture is just becoming too slow for me....Takes too long to open & instantly uses around 2-3GB RAM - then when I export something it makes even my music playing in the background lag..
Such a shame, cause I love the application.. And it's setup nicely!

I've tried Lightroom 2 and briefly 3, but it looked a lot of work to get everything to how I like it! - might try again though.

:)
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ThunderSkunk Avatar
173 months ago
Still no .png support, still no support for multiple users, no way to use it on a network, no worthwhile dual monitor workspace layout.

...but good thing they built an email and Facebook client into it, for all those who can grasp color work and advanced editing & printing workflows, but can't figure out how to send an email. & all this video crap & YouTube uploader, really helpful for all those times you want to just adjust the levels on some raw footage and upload it for everyone to see.

Adobe and their priorities. CaptureOne it is...
Score: 0 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 19 Mock WWDC25 Feature

iOS 19 Expected to Run on These iPhones

Monday March 31, 2025 5:28 pm PDT by
iOS 19 will not be available on the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, or the iPhone XS Max, according a private account on social media site X that has accurately provided information on device compatibility in the past. The iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max all have an A12 Bionic chip, so it looks like iOS 19 will discontinue support for that chip. All other iPhones that run iOS 18 are expected...
maxresdefault

Apple Releases iOS 18.4 With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music, New Emoji and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:03 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, the fourth major updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating system updates that came out last year. iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 come two months after Apple released iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to...
watchOS 11 Thumb 2 1

Apple Releases watchOS 11.4 With Sleep Alarm Update

Tuesday April 1, 2025 10:34 am PDT by
Apple today released watchOS 11.4, the fourth major update to the operating system that runs on the Apple Watch. watchOS 11.4 is compatible with the Apple Watch Series 6 and later, all Apple Watch Ultra models, and the Apple Watch SE 2. watchOS 11.4 can be downloaded on a connected iPhone by opening up the Apple Watch app and going to General > Software Update. To install the new software,...
AirPods Pro Firmware Feature

Apple Releases New Firmware for AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4

Monday March 31, 2025 11:27 am PDT by
Apple today released new firmware updates for all AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 models. The new firmware is version 7E93, up from the 7B21 firmware that was installed on the AirPods Pro 2 and the 7B20 firmware available on the AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with ANC. It is not immediately clear what new features or changes are included in the new firmware, but we'll update this article should we find ...
macOS Sequoia Feature

Apple Releases macOS Sequoia 15.4 With Mail Categorization and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:04 am PDT by
Apple today released macOS Sequoia 15.4, the fourth major update to the macOS Sequoia operating system that launched in September. macOS Sequoia 15.4 comes two months after the launch of macOS Sequoia 15.3. Mac users can download the ‌‌macOS Sequoia‌‌ update through the Software Update section of System Settings. It is available for free on all Macs able to run macOS 15. With...
iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Sunday March 23, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Apple Card iPhone 16 Pro Feature

Visa and American Express Vying to Win Apple Card Deal in 'Fierce' Fight

Tuesday April 1, 2025 1:50 pm PDT by
Visa wants to pay Apple approximately $100 million to be the new payment network for the Apple Card, reports The Wall Street Journal. As of right now, the Apple Card is on the Mastercard payment network, but that is set to change because Apple is ending its partnership with Goldman Sachs. Both American Express and Visa are vying to replace Mastercard as Apple's card services provider, while...