Adobe announced the release of a Lightroom 4 public beta today, it’s free to download from Adobe Labs.

I was lucky enough to get to take a peak at it pre-release and here are my top five highlights that I took away from that quick look:

1 ) Major changes to the develop module including a complete rethink of the local adjustments in the way highlights and shadows are handled. The adjustments are much easier to make independently of one another and there is no more confusion as to what is the difference between increasing exposure vs brightness etc.

There is also the ability now to do LOCAL noise reduction!

2) Support for light video editing and playback! This includes jpg capturing, trimming (thank god), exposure, WB controls and more! Here is a little list of what develop adjustments you can make to video clips:

Unfortunately, much to my disappointment the ability to add video to the slideshow module is NOT included in this release.

3) A LOT of geotagging functionality so that organizing your photos by place taken is a snap. Tagging can be done after the fact via an easy to use drag and drop interface in the new “MAP” module.

4) A NEW “ALBUM” MODULE! Yep, a whole module devoted to creating albums with text, images, tons of different layouts and the ability to save them by project! Yipee!  There is also an automatic send to blurb functionality for those of you who are blurb fans.

5) Soft proofing. WE will actually be able to see what our images look like in sRGB BEFORE opening them up in Photoshop – no more nasty blown red channel surprises :) There are other uses for softproofing, that was just the one that jumped out at me as most useful for pro photogs.

But don’t just take my word for it, go get yourself a free copy: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/

I’ll be back too in the coming days with more thoughts once I’ve had a chance to download and play for a bit!

Filed under: lightroom by ariana
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