Lightroom 4 Public Beta launched

I installed LR3 yesterday (can't use 4beta due to XP on this machine) and what a fantastic piece of software!
Anyway can anyone give me some likelihood of price (based on what happened when version 3 came out) - will 4 be priced at pretty much the same price as 3 is now? Will 3 be reduced while they get rid of old stock?
Sorry if it's a stupid and unanswerable question - it's been about 6 years since I last bought a piece of software, so I'm out of the loop in pricing policies.
 
Its a bit difficult to tell - LR3 was released on March 23rd last year and here is the pricing chart for LR2 - if I'm honest it looks like if anything the price went up!

My advice would be to watch for a good deal then just grab it or better yet upgrade to Windows 7 (a good idea in general) then get v4 which from my playing seems a decent upgrade and the only thing stopping me using it is I don't know of any way to merge catalogues.

UPDATE: Lightroom 3 is an amazing deal at the moment - just £95 or if you;re a student £68!! Check here..
 
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JohnN said:
[..]

...then get v4 which from my playing seems a decent upgrade and the only thing stopping me using it is I don't know of any way to merge catalogues.
[..]
Click to expand...

You cannot upgrade a LR3 catalogue to LR4 *Beta*. This is by design, as there are no guarantees things won't change upon final release.

When the final release occurs, catalogues will be translated to LR4 versions automatically (copy of LR3 versions retained by the way, for safety and security).

Anthony.
 
Oh, sorry I knew that - my fault not being clear.

What I meant is that I'm 99% sure the beta library will be upgraded on release, so anything done in beta 4 is pretty safe and anything done in LR3 will 100% be safe as they will upgrade the library as you say, what I meant was that come release I'd want to keep not only the beta 4 cat but merge in all my old LR3 stuff.

I hope that made sense!
 
JohnN said:
What I meant is that I'm 99% sure the beta library will be upgraded on release, so anything done in beta 4 is pretty safe
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I wouldn't count on it. The format of the Catalog may be subject to change before final release, with no method upgrading from an earlier Beta version catalog (that could require Adobe to create a migration process)

IIRC it's happened before with Lightroom
Public Betas (v1?)
 
JohnN said:
Its a bit difficult to tell - LR3 was released on March 23rd last year and here is the pricing chart for LR2 - if I'm honest it looks like if anything the price went up!

My advice would be to watch for a good deal then just grab it or better yet upgrade to Windows 7 (a good idea in general) then get v4 which from my playing seems a decent upgrade and the only thing stopping me using it is I don't know of any way to merge catalogues.

UPDATE: Lightroom 3 is an amazing deal at the moment - just £95 or if you;re a student £68!! Check here..
Click to expand...

Thanks for the links. I'll be getting the student/teacher version, and it'll be installed on a Vista pc. What I can't decide is whether to get v3 now while its cheap, or wait until v4 comes out (which would of course be preferable as it would be the latest) :shrug:
 
Looks like you're okay on Vista so no need for the OS upgrade which is a bonus.

I guess it comes down to money and patience - as stated above although it is very likely you've be able to upgrade the beta catalogues it is not 100% so should you choose beta for free now and buy at upgrade there is an element of risk.

As best I can tell Adobe didn't do any sort of free upgrade when they brought out v3 so that as an option is out.

Price wise, I would guess it will come in at .................... STOP EVERYTHING!!!!

I just found this for you if you can get it.

LR 3 Educational at £40!!!!

PS: If you can get that at that price I want a cyber cookie ;)
 
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Having been a Elements 7 user for the last few years I was a Lightroom virgin until last week when I saw this thread and gave the LR4 Beta a try.

Bugs aside (well, it is a beta so I suppose I can forgive it for randomly turning my shadows blue) I love it and have just ordered myself a copy of LR3 from Amazon for £95.
 
Quote from: dpreview article

It's very important to understand that for many of the Basic panel tools, the internal effects ranges have been changed, meaning that a slider value of say +50 in a PV 2010 tool may not correspond to +50 in the equivalent PV2012 tool. When updating PV2010 (or earlier) images which already contain manual Basic panel adjustments, slider values will be carried over or 'transposed' to the appropriate PV2012 settings. But the appearence of your image will change, often significantly. For this reason, I encourage you to apply PV2012 on an image by image basis to your existing photos to get a feel for what the new tools can do. Or simply import new images, which will automatically get the newest process version, and explore the new features with those images.

source: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7481161037/lightroom-4-public-beta-whats-new

I've seen mention elsewhere of differences being quite profound especially where the clarity slider has been used. Has anyone seen this or how would I go about getting an image edited in 3 for conversion to 4 settings, simply edit in 3 and then import to 4? (I thought you couldn't do that in the beta?)
 
ZoneV said:
Bugs aside (well, it is a beta so I suppose I can forgive it for randomly turning my shadows blue) I love it and have just ordered myself a copy of LR3 from Amazon for £95.
Click to expand...

That doesn't sound like a bug. From memory (so could be out slightly) when hovering over the dark end of your histogram it should turn blacks blue (so they show up) vice versa is shows blown whites when hovering over the other end.
 
Bennp2000 said:
I've seen mention elsewhere of differences being quite profound especially where the clarity slider has been used. Has anyone seen this or how would I go about getting an image edited in 3 for conversion to 4 settings, simply edit in 3 and then import to 4? (I thought you couldn't do that in the beta?)
Click to expand...

If you import a DNG file that has been processed in Lightroom 3 (a copy is best!) it will show up in the develop module as 2010 process version, changing in us just a case of option clicking on the warning.
 
so if I duplicate a file, import it into 3, process it and then import that same file into 4? Ok. I'll give that a go and abuse the clarity slider and see what happens.
 
Jimmy_Lemon said:
That doesn't sound like a bug. From memory (so could be out slightly) when hovering over the dark end of your histogram it should turn blacks blue (so they show up) vice versa is shows blown whites when hovering over the other end.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I didn't know that. I've had another look and as far as I can see, in LR4 Beta hovering over the histogram doesn't have any effect but there are two buttons in the histogram which can be selected to show the blown shadows and highlights in the way you describe. I definitely haven't used them before and the "bug"(?), when it happens, comes out of the blue for no apparent reason.

I've also noticed it sometimes gets in a muddle when selecting and deselecting the "show selected mask overlay" option when using the adjustment brush. Sometimes the mask is displayed when the option is cleared, and vice-versa.
 
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Bennp2000 said:
so if I duplicate a file, import it into 3, process it and then import that same file into 4? Ok. I'll give that a go and abuse the clarity slider and see what happens.
Click to expand...

Processing the file in Lightroom 3, then exporting it as a DNG and importing into Lightroom 4 Beta would be my suggestion.
 
Regarding the pricing of the LR4 upgrade, I seem to remember that the LR3 upgrade was about £70/80, so it's unlikely to be significantly more, I suggest?

I also seem to remember that one of the very best features of LR3 - the ability to correct lens distortions - was not in the beta. So unless I am wrong about that, (and please correct me if I am), who knows what the full version of LR4 will include.
 
Ive just been reading some posts by Victoria over on the LR forums and by all accounts this will be a pretty normal beta period, assuming things go well. With LR3 it went on for just over 8 months, with about three releases, so i dont think there will be too many new features between now and the final release.

Regarding the histogram and hovering the mouse over it. You have to hover the mouse over the two triangles (on the left and right) to get the red and blue masks to show the clipped whites and blacks. This is working on the LR4 beta and is how LR3 works. You can of course just turn the clipping indicators on full time by hitting J on the keyboard.

If you hover over any other region of the histogram the relevant slider below (Exposure, Blacks, shadows, highlights etc) gets highlighted so you can see just what section of the tonal spectrum each slider will alter.
just thought i would throw that in for anyone who didnt know.
 
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Oooo, a Jaffa cake - much better :D
 
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