Lightroom 4

So, the much awaited Lightroom 4 is now amongst us and available for download from the UK Adobe website and, of course, the equivalent sites wherever you are in the world. Like many others I am, of course, delighted with the reduced price of this edition of the very popular program which is used by photographers all over the world.

I must say that personally  have had no problem at all with migrating to the new version, except that I now appear to have two copies of everything I have imported. In fairness they are virtual second copies so I probably forgot to tick a box somewhere. I have read tales of woe from others, but there are none so far that I can find on my iMac. A friend has needed to upgrade his Window XP machine to Windows 7, but in fairness that upgrade was probably overdue although it does add to the cost of the overall change for him.

So what do I like? Well, the new DNG Fast Load option for opening images in the ‘Develop’ panel is very good, speeding up things by 6X according to Adobe although the downsides are 1) that you have to convert to DNG which I know some are reluctant to do, and 2) the initial import of the files seems to take longer. I also really like the new geotagging feature which works very well and means that when I am working away I can geotag my images with the location before I forget where I was (a growing problem as I get older – it is sometimes enough problem remembering who I am, let alone where I am!)

There are, of course many more new features and tweeks with processed images being much better after working on them, with substantially more control of the highlight and shadow areas etc.

If you want a good book about Lightroom 4 then I can thoroughly recommend Victoria Bampton’s book ‘Lightroom 4 – the Missing FAQ’ which I have in pdf format so that I can carry it with me on my laptop easily (it will also go on your iPad or Kindle). You download it here – and have fun!