Would you wait/pay for LR4?

squishy

squishy

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Adam
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I've been making do with free editing software for a while now, and after using the month free trial of lightroom 3 a while ago I decided when I finally put some money together for a program it would be LR.

Now for the last week or so I've been using the lightroom 4 beta and I'm facing a decision.

Lightroom 3 is going cheap now, with my student discount I can get it for £40, which seems like a good deal to me! But I have been enjoying some of the lightroom 4 features, the reorganised shadow/highlight recovery, one click CA removal etc., but the new map and book features are irrelevant to me.
At the moment I'm leaning towards passing on a cheap deal for LR3 and waiting for LR4.

Can anybody give an estimate of what LR4's price is likely to be on release? I'm not really sure how things work with pricing software like this, whether the price would tend to be quite high for a while after release etc. which would affect my decision.

Thanks for your help.
 
I suppose the first question would be.. will you be able to purchase LR4 with a student discount similar to the one you mention for LR3? If so, I would think about waiting, as I suspect LR4 will be with us by the end of March or thereabouts (disclaimer: I have no inside knowledge).

Anthony.
 
I would suspect that buying LR3 now and then paying the upgrade price to 4 when released will be the cheapest way. LR3 is still selling at £160 in some places, amazon have it for £95 at normal price.. if you can half that again its very cheap.

The LR2 -> 3 upgrade as about £75 I think ? so you could be looking at £115 (£40+£75), which is still cheaper than some places are selling LR3 in its own right for.
 
Personally LR3 does pretty much everything Lr4 does. Yes a few wee tweaks to make it a little better but £40 for Lr3 is a bargain....... Take it NOW!
 
I'll be able to get a student discount on LR4 as well. I don't think it's possible to get the discount on upgrades though, so buying LR3 now then upgrading would likely turn out more expensive.

The student discount price of LR3 has been hovering at around £65 on amazon for a while before the LR4 beta came out, I'm just wandering if I should expect LR4 to be significantly more than this.

Looking at it from another angle, how likely is it that LR3 will still be available for a while after LR4 is released? I don't know how quickly older software tends to be withdrawn. If I could wait till I know the price of LR4 it would make things much easier.
 
It's likely to be the same price as LR3 is now. Depending on how long the beta lasts, you may be able to get a free upgrade.

Most companies give free upgrades to people who buy within 30 days of a new release.
 
Definitely get LR3 now. Another important thing to remember is that you will be learning about how to get the most out of LR by using LR3 and when you upgrade to LR4 you will already have plenty of LR skills "under your belt" ;)
 
boliston said:
Definitely get LR3 now. Another important thing to remember is that you will be learning about how to get the most out of LR by using LR3 and when you upgrade to LR4 you will already have plenty of LR skills "under your belt" ;)
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The LR4 beta lasts until it's released though, so I'll be using that till the 31st of March.
 
steve_lyt said:
you may find that LR3 , may do everything you need to do.
you may not need the extra features of LR4

Cheers Steve
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Indeed, the main upgraded features of LR4 aren't important to me, but I'm definitely finding the slight rearrangements and smaller new features excellent (NR brush, proper shadow/highlight recovery black/white point sliders, one click profile based CA removal etc.)

Question is how much would I have to/am I willing to pay for those features ;)
 
squishy said:
The LR4 beta lasts until it's released though, so I'll be using that till the 31st of March.
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I think I read that LR4 beta catalogs will not be usable when LR4 is actually released to avoid people using the beta in a production environment.

This would mean starting from scratch when LR4 is released whereas using LR3 now then importing that catalog into LR4 when it's released would avoid that.
 
The details state that beta catalogs will be able to be migrated, but they don't guaranty develop settings will transfer perfectly.

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/01/lr4betanowavailable.html

This doesn't bother me too much really, I'm strictly an amateur enthusiast so don't have anything disastrous to lose (all the raws are backed up on an external hard drive). Up till now I've been editing in destructive programs, so all my older edits are saved as separate JPG's and TIFF's.
Most of the time using the beta at the moment I'm looking back and playing around with old files. This time of year I'm not taking many photos, my main interest is insect macro which all but dries up until spring.
Basically I don't have anything to lose using the beta until it's released.

I might still go for LR3 at it's current cheap price, I have a bit of time to think and mull over the helpful inputs here :)
 
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Can you upgrade student versions?

My guess is that resellers, such as amazon etc will still have LR3 going cheap as they sell a physical product (box with disc) so if it is still in the warehouse they will still want to sell it.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Can you upgrade student versions?

My guess is that resellers, such as amazon etc will still have LR3 going cheap as they sell a physical product (box with disc) so if it is still in the warehouse they will still want to sell it.
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You cannot "upgrade" a student version. You'd need to buy a new student version I think
 
I have just finished watching previews on adobe website and I will definitely upgrade. It won't brake the bank and the new sliders to recover detail from shadows, tame the highlights seem to be very good. Selective denoising and softproofing always a plus.
 
EOS_JD said:
You cannot "upgrade" a student version. You'd need to buy a new student version I think
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I'm pretty sure you can upgrade a student version. It's exactly the same software, you just have to prove you're a student before they give you the key code. But the student versions are usually about the same price as an upgrade anyway, so it's no cheaper and potentially more expensive. There's no student discount for the upgrades.
 
It's well worth checking the EULA for anyone thinking of buying the student version then.
 
squishy said:
I'm pretty sure you can upgrade a student version. It's exactly the same software, you just have to prove you're a student before they give you the key code. But the student versions are usually about the same price as an upgrade anyway, so it's no cheaper and potentially more expensive. There's no student discount for the upgrades.
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Read the user agreement FAQs - You CANNOT "upgrade" a registered student version of Adobe's software.

You can purchase a full student version of the software if you are STILL a student. You are not permitted to sell or transfer the licence for an education product.
 
I was having exactly the same quandary as you a couple of weeks ago. In the end I went for LR3 (Amazon student edition for ~£40).
I know that the new version will be better, but LR3 has been raved about by amateurs and pros alike for quite sometime, so if they're happy I'm sure I will be. There are also lots of resources and articles available online (and books in my local library) for LR3 so I'm able to get going straight away.
Those were my thoughts anyway.

In terms of upgrade I thought that you could upgrade from a student version to a full version at any time, so you could get an LR3-LR4 upgrade edition to turn your LR3 student edition into an LR4 full version. That would probably be cheaper than buying the full new version.
 
I have never seen Adobe offering student to full version upgrades.
 
TopBanana said:
I was having exactly the same quandary as you a couple of weeks ago. In the end I went for LR3 (Amazon student edition for ~£40).
I know that the new version will be better, but LR3 has been raved about by amateurs and pros alike for quite sometime, so if they're happy I'm sure I will be. There are also lots of resources and articles available online (and books in my local library) for LR3 so I'm able to get going straight away.
Those were my thoughts anyway.

In terms of upgrade I thought that you could upgrade from a student version to a full version at any time, so you could get an LR3-LR4 upgrade edition to turn your LR3 student edition into an LR4 full version. That would probably be cheaper than buying the full new version.
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THere is nothing in the new version that is that much better to spend a couple of hudred extra. Yes a couple of extra nice sliders but nothing that is that much better. LR3 is fine.

The student version IS a full version - no difference to the software.

Once you stop being a student though you are meant to pay the extra!

You cannot purchase the LR3 - 4 upgrade box. The serial will not allow you to progress with the upgrade. If you are a student, buy the LR4 full version and use that.

Here's a nice explanation from one of their education resellers.
http://prodesigntools.com/difference-between-adobe-cs5-student-editions-vs-regular.html
 
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You can upgrade from a student edition to the next commercial one, say if you have CS4 student edition, you can pay the upgrade price to CS5 (non-student edition) rather than buying the whole thing again for two grand. So I'm assuming the same applies to Lightroom.

If I was just shooting for fun, I think I'd just take LR3 at forty quid and be happy. :)
 
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