Today Adobe has released the beta version of Lightroom4, the successor to their popular image management and RAW processing program. As regular readers will know, Adobe Lightroom 3 is my RAW processor of choice, so I’m very interested to see how the new beta release performs. Lightroom 3 was a massive update to the series with substantial updates to the RAW conversion engine, especially in terms of noise reduction. Will Lightroom 4 live up to the challenge and set a new, even higher bar for image quality?
Adobe boasts a number of new features in the Lightroom 4 Beta, including:
Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting of these features.
Compared to Lightroom 3, the Lightroom 4 Beta features a simplified basic editing panel. Gone are the sliders for Recovery and Fill Light, as are the Brightness and Contrast options. Don’t worry, those functions aren’t gone. Instead, the editing sliders now correspond more intuitively to the image tones – Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks.
Instead of increasing Recovery to bring back highlight tones, in Lightroom 4 one adjusts the Highlights slider to a negative amount. While the effect is the same, the difference now is that one can also increase the highlights part of the histogram as well by dialing in a positive amount. This change effectively doubles the functionality from simple highlight recovery to a real and full tone adjustment – much more useful overall. Think of the new Hightlights slider as tugging on the tone curve, in a way. A Shadows slider similarly replaces the Fill Light slider of Lightroom 3.
With the Adjustments Brush panel, we see some big improvements and a much better granularity of what you can do with this tool. Specifically, we now have the ability to adjust essentially all the same variables as in the Basic editing panel, including Highlights, Shadows and White Balance. The latter is particularly a nice addition and a great improvement over the limited ability of Lightroom 3 to do color corrections via a color shift.
In addition, we have the ability to adjust noise and moiré locally, though not to the same degree as with the full Details panel.
I think that for power users, this ability for much better local adjustments may just be the best feature of Lightroom 4.
You can download the new Lightroom 4 Beta directly from Adobe. This is a free beta copy of the software, which will expire once the full version of the program is released.
At first glance, Lightroom 4 doesn’t seem like so much a revolutionary leap as Lightroom 3 was from version 2, but I think that the update represents a very nice refinement to the software.
The ability to now have very precise local adjustments to WB and noise are especially interesting. I think the fact that nearly the entire Basic Editing panel can be applied locally is going to make post processing and retouching all the more complete in Lightroom, and that fewer and fewer photographers may be going into Photoshop to achieve what’s now possible with Lightroom 4 Beta.
If you’ve been using the Lightroom 4 Beta, what do you think? Anything missing from Lightroom 3 that you would want back, or new features that you love?
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 at 9:59 am and is filed under Photography Gear and tagged with adobe lightroom 4, lightroom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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The new adjustments panel is amazing! Even though I will miss having someone asking me what the recovery a fill light sliders are for the new slider names’ are more user friendly. Looks like a nice update! ;)
Btw congrats on the ND filter post, I had never thought of the method you used on that photoshoot! I got try something similar with my polariser!
Oh, and we’re waiting for your thoughts on the D4, the 1DX had a post about it :p
Hey Manuel,
Thanks for the comment on this post. LR4 seems to be a great update indeed.
I did a preview post comparing the D4 in the late rumor stages to the 1D X, most all of that holds true. May do another comparison as well!
Hey Todd,
Yeah it does, although I meant the new brush adjustments panel! I’ve always been a little frustrated with not being able to adjust wb and noise with the brush, normally if I had too much noise on some area i’d drop the clarity but this only worked well for backgrounds…
Can’t find it but I’ll search better when I get home.
Since I can’t afford a D4 I’m really hoping Nikon doesn’t introduce a D800 with 30 smth mpx as many think..
Have you messed with the D4 already?
Assuming you already own LR 3, if you update to 4b, what happens when it expires? Are you forced to then purchase 4 and LR is completely locked out until you do so?
Lightroom 4 is a separate program from Lightroom 3, so installing the new beta doesn’t affect your current software at all. You will have to buy a new license for 4 when it comes out, and Adobe generally offers an discount for people upgrading from the previous generation.
Nice review, Todd!
What I think may become handy is the Camera Shaking Reduce Filter which should be in next PS version – CS 6.
I, personally, haven`t back to Photoshop to edit photos, sometimes just to make diptychs.
LR 4 should a killer tool for all kind of purposes
Hi Todd
As I know you are shooting with Nikon and adobe presets(LR or Camera Raw) isnt very good with nef. How do you solve it? Especialy color and noise has drastical difference in Nikon Capture and Camera Raw in Photoshop.
Your color correction is very good
Thank you!
With Lightroom 3, I’m using Adobe’s v3 “beta” profiles for the Nikon D3 and D700. They work well, though are a little brighter than the Nikon NX rendering.
I dunno, if Adobe follows through on the Beta and dumbs down the interface to accommodate “enthusiasts” throwing pros and longtime users under the bus, I’ll be moving to NX2 instead.
What’s next Adobe, a “pretty” slider?
[...] I personally use Lightroom 3 just about every single day. It’s a great RAW processor. The Lightroom 4 is available to try for free now, and it features essentially the same great RAW engine with some very welcome UI improvements that make processing faster and more flexible. If you haven’t already, you can read my thoughts on some of the major improvements in the new version here. [...]