Lightroom 4 Public Beta launched

Jimmy_Lemon said:
...yeah, if you save yours in "user presets" you can just click the arrow/triangle on the left of "lightroom presets" and they will all be hidden.
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You can collapse them in the left screen panel on the "develop" module but I prefer to select from either the right click context menu in the "develop" module or the right screen panel if in the "library" module.
 
Aperture is currently £54.99 on the Mac App Store.

I've had a play with the Lightroom 4 beta and it is a step on from Lightroom 3, not a big one, but I like the maps feature, its a lot more intuitive to use than I expected.
 
I use the built in presets but only for B&W. I apply a preset that's close to what I want and then adjust to get the desired results (I like a lot of contrast). For none B&W i will adjust one image in a set save a preset and then apply it to the rest I will need to make adjustments on an individual basis but it saves me hours sitting in front of a PC.
As said previously the cheap version of aperture is download only via app store not an issue for me I'm win7 but you'd think adobe would sell far more copies at a cut price.
 
STARRIDER said:
so if i want to use ver4 i gotta get win 7..i dont think so...:nono:
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Why? Unless you have an ancient machine that doesn't support it (in which case, it's probably time to upgrade) Win7 is way better than XP....
 
arad85 said:
Why? Unless you have an ancient machine that doesn't support it (in which case, it's probably time to upgrade) Win7 is way better than XP....
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Agreed 100%
 
First few thoughts after a very very brief test..

First thing i really really wanted to see to avoid me keeping going into PS was a content aware heal brush. That seems to not be there which means i need to load PS for a lot of shots still.

Not sure i like the removal of fill light and so on out of basic - i use those a lot.

Improvements to the adjustment brush i like. Noise for example means i might be able to avoid a lot of going into PS to create layers/masks to sort out blue water backgrounds or some sky. Happy with that.

Map module. Dies with lots of images currently but its needed. It needs to support more than 1 track log though. Im currently using a very good 3rd party plugin.

Not played with yet but apparently white balance adjustments are on an adjustment brush as well for specific area adjustments. If so i like the sound of that especially for underwater where you get drastically different fore and background balances.

Early beta so maybe not a full feature set. Some interesting changes but some notable omissions (content aware and where has my recovery etc gone!).

Edit:- Per channel curve adjustment has potential for things similar as per-channel contrast levels you get in PS which are lacking in LR currently.
 
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gnirtS said:
Early beta so maybe not a full feature set. Some interesting changes but some notable omissions (content aware and where has my recovery etc gone!).
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Watched one of the webcasts last night on Scott Kelby (as linked above). Recovery has moved into shadows & blacks - they felt it didn't give enough fine control and affected more of the image than it should have.

As to content aware, they said it wouldn't be in LR at least for V4 and that it would be difficult to incorporate into LRs flow as it tends to be destructive and LR is non destructive.
 
arad85 said:
Recovery has moved into shadows & blacks - they felt it didn't give enough fine control and affected more of the image than it should have.
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I've always backed off the recovery slider in LR3 after hitting auto tone because I could see the whole image changing in a way I didn't like so that is good news.

I've reduced by image library from 1600 to 16 now but LR4 is still running so slow as to be near impossible to use. My system is a Q6600 + 8Gig + SSD + win7 64bit so not the best but not that slow either.

Edit. Strangely LR4 performance improved when I stopped typing this post! Firefox while typing a reply seems to be killing Lightroom. task manager shows FF at 25% processor just sitting waiting for a keystroke!
 
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Hi - I was new to Adobe with LR3.

What is Adobe policy - will this be a free upgrade from LR3 or will some money be requested? I which case I probably wont go for it!

Mel
 
Not having any performance problems here (a catalogue of precisely 10 things!) although I am having problems with LR sometimes not thinking it has a photo to develop. That is, I can see the photos in the film strip and in the thumbnail view, but when I double click a photo to view it on its own in the Library module, nothing appears.

There seems to be a helper process "dynamiclinkmediaserver.exe" which is running when LR4 is working properly but isn't running when it goes awry.
 
Mel_P said:
Hi - I was new to Adobe with LR3.

What is Adobe policy - will this be a free upgrade from LR3 or will some money be requested? I which case I probably wont go for it!

Mel
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You will be able to purchase an upgrade license, which is usually about half the cost of the full version.
 
While the basic tools look good and are supposedly better (especially the shadows) i find the amount of local correction now available is a big upgrade. You can now do very major work on small area's, i especially love the NR and WB tool.

Love the basic video function as well. its enough for short facebook/flickr clips and saves me having to open Vegas just to trim a clip and WB correct it.

Unfortunately im also finding it very, very slow on my home PC so for now ill just use it at work.
 
Interesting.. most of the feedback seems to be 'ok-ish' but not 'wow', and the XP issue is raised a few times. I know a few togs that will not move from XP but hey ho :thinking:

I wonder if this release is in part due to Corel's release of their new image flow software Aftershot Pro (which does work on XP for those interested).

http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4670071#tab1

I do use LR3 but not PS - don't like it. We do use Corel X5 for all our image work and layouts etc.. so it's not a case of being pro or anti Adobe or Corel - its just a 'right tools for the job' thing with us.

Aftershot Pro does seem to have a few initial 'new boy on the block' issues but generally it seem to do what LR does, quicker and apparenly in a slightly better interface.

LR does have however as someone has already mentioned a bit of history so could be considered a more 'mature' product.

I thought LR4 would have receivd a much more enthusiastic welcome in general :|. Just shows not all version upgrades are necessary or the end users interest.
 
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arad85 said:
As to content aware, they said it wouldn't be in LR at least for V4 and that it would be difficult to incorporate into LRs flow as it tends to be destructive and LR is non destructive.
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That makes sort of sense although there's no reason they couldn't add an extra table to the database containing content aware results to make it non-destructive. Im wondering more if they dont want to cut into the photoshop market.
 
gnirtS said:
That makes sort of sense although there's no reason they couldn't add an extra table to the database containing content aware results to make it non-destructive. Im wondering more if they dont want to cut into the photoshop market.
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I would have thought it no different to the clone or healing tool, but then ive been wrong before :LOL:
 
dave_bass5 said:
I would have thought it no different to the clone or healing tool, but then ive been wrong before :LOL:
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Spot healing is stored as a circle size, opacity and spot to take from. Adjustment brush is similar (brush size, opacity, flow , position. Content aware fills that I've done tend to be areas rather than brushes. I'd think that more difficult to fit into the LR way of doing things.
 
the maths involved may make it run much slower having to rework the fill every time you look at the file
 
arad85 said:
Spot healing is stored as a circle size, opacity and spot to take from. Adjustment brush is similar (brush size, opacity, flow , position. Content aware fills that I've done tend to be areas rather than brushes. I'd think that more difficult to fit into the LR way of doing things.
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I would be very happy with just a CA enabled brush like in PS.

arad85 said:
Well, video crashed, but now working again. Like the fact you can apply some exposure/colour effects to video files easily and then export. I've just made one of my videos into a sepia video.... The H.264 encoder uses all 8 cores of my CPU too which is good. Muxes to mp4 files so should be OK with most streamers.
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Have you seen the Adobe video that shows you how to use a lot of the develop module on video's? I was quite surprised at this and although its a slight work around i feel its opened up the video editing aspect a lot more for me.
 
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dave_bass5 said:
Have you seen the Adobe video that shows you how to use a lot of the develop module on video's? I was quite surprised at this and although its a slight work around i feel its opened up the video editing aspect a lot more for me.
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Yes, that's how I figured out I could apply a preset to a video. I'd also like to be able to apply a spot heal to video (dust bunnies), but that's not possible at the moment.
 
arad85 said:
Yes, that's how I figured out I could apply a preset to a video. I'd also like to be able to apply a spot heal to video (dust bunnies), but that's not possible at the moment.
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You could do the spot heal on a video in Photoshop though if needed. It is very simple for dust bunnies as they don't move and Content Aware is your friend.
 
Ploddles said:
You could do the spot heal on a video in Photoshop though if needed. It is very simple for dust bunnies as they don't move and Content Aware is your friend.
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Thanks for that - I didn't know you could import videos into PS. Can't seem to do one CA remove and then apply it to all frames. I'll have another go at googling when I have some time later. Any pointers to doing it so I'm not editing individual frames?
 
arad85 said:
Thanks for that - I didn't know you could import videos into PS. Can't seem to do one CA remove and then apply it to all frames. I'll have another go at googling when I have some time later. Any pointers to doing it so I'm not editing individual frames?
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Create a blank layer above the current layer. Make sure that this new layer is the active layer and select the Spot Healing brush. In the options on the option bar make sure you select Content Aware and Sample All Layers. Use the smallest brush you can to paint over the dust bunnies. That is basically it.

The trick is to make sure you are doing everything on the blank layer and sample all layers is ticked.

Once done just export your video.
 
Doh... put it on a layer... Thanks.
 
Brilliant - thanks, I never knew you could do that... but what I really want is content aware that samples on a per frame basis (dust bunnies when panning!). I can see how to do that with multiple layers that only are visible for part of the timeline, but that seems like an awful lot of work...
 
The above should work fine because the dust bunnies are always in the same place. The export will render each frame appropriately, you don't need to use multiple anything.
 
Ploddles said:
The above should work fine because the dust bunnies are always in the same place. The export will render each frame appropriately, you don't need to use multiple anything.
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Nope... the layer is static. It doesn't take the content aware fill dynamically from each frame unfortunately :(
 
Bit of a bump. I won't get to install the beta for a few days. Could someone confirm that the manual Lens correction sliders (CA, vignetting etc) are still there? Saw one post suggesting it was auto correct based on profiles only!
 
Cuchulainn said:
Bit of a bump. I won't get to install the beta for a few days. Could someone confirm that the manual Lens correction sliders (CA, vignetting etc) are still there? Saw one post suggesting it was auto correct based on profiles only!
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Distortion and vignette are there. CA is now a tick box.
 
TCR4x4 said:
Distortion and vignette are there. CA is now a tick box.
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Ahh, so what happens if it doesn't recognise the lens? I use a load of old manual lenses and also work on scans from film. Does this mean I cannot get rid of CA on these lenses? If so, that seems like a major oversight..
 
Cuchulainn said:
Ahh, so what happens if it doesn't recognise the lens? I use a load of old manual lenses and also work on scans from film. Does this mean I cannot get rid of CA on these lenses? If so, that seems like a major oversight..
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I think it just cleans up the colour, rather than specific profiles for each lens. It doesn't have my samyang on the profiles, but I could still clean up the CA with the tick box
 
A less technical point of view:

I was looking for software to edit photo's and also to manage to my workflow. I downloaded LR3 the free trial on the Sunday, and LR4 came out Monday. I'm amazed how easy it is to use, especially as I haven't touched a photo editor before.

Regarding photos it seems to do everything I need at the moment, but I has crashed my computer once, and it does run particulary slowly when deleting photos not just from a folder, but the hardrive as well. (Windows 7 64bit, 6gb ram, i7 processor)

Not even touched the video side yet, but on the few occasions I have imported a video this does also seem to kill my system if lightroom then trys to play it...
 
TCR4x4 said:
I think it just cleans up the colour, rather than specific profiles for each lens. It doesn't have my samyang on the profiles, but I could still clean up the CA with the tick box
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Yep, I've been playing with some of my pics taken with Canon FD lenses on a Panasonic G2. Works a treat with one click - as good as I could manage manually in LR3. I get the impression it actually analyses the image for lateral CA and creates a transform map to deal with it.
 
Musicman said:
Yep, I've been playing with some of my pics taken with Canon FD lenses on a Panasonic G2. Works a treat with one click - as good as I could manage manually in LR3. I get the impression it actually analyses the image for lateral CA and creates a transform map to deal with it.
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Ahh, that sounds more promising! Thanks for the info!
 
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