Adobe’s Photoshop team members have been busy bees lately. Hard on the heels of the public beta of Photoshop Express comes the public beta of Photoshop Lightroom 2.0, the company’s image manager and adjuster for pro photographers.
Adobe listed six points as the most noteworthy new or improved features in the beta:
- localized corrections
- enhanced organizational tools
- the ability to display on multiple monitors
- flexible print packaging
- support for 64-bit operating systems
- better Photoshop integration
Develop Module Much Improved
In the beta demo I saw, I was most impressed by the localized correction features in Lightroom’s Develop module. Product manager Tom Hogarty used a brush to make and refine a mask as quickly as Photoshop CS3’s Quick Selection Tool creates a selection. Hogarty then applied multiple corrections, including saturation and clarity, to the masked part of the image.
Hogarty easily transformed a photo with blown-out highlights and too-dark shadows (left) into a much more appealing image (right). Click on the image for a larger version.
Like all other Develop module adjustments, Lightroom saves the changes as metadata, making them nondestructive.
Beta Availability and Eligibility
You can download the beta from the Adobe Labs site at any time between April 2 and August 31, 2008. There are three tiers of participation:
1. Anyone can download and install the beta for 30 days.
2. Lightroom 1.0 customers can install the beta at any time during the beta period and have it running until August 31.
3. Lightroom 1.0 customers can also invite others to try the beta for longer than 30 days.
Caveats
During that demo, Hogarty warned that the 2.0 beta is a true beta, not a refined “almost shipping” application. Consequently, you shouldn’t use it for real production, just for testing. You can offer your testing feedback via Adobe Labs.
Hogarty wouldn’t comment on pricing or a shipping date for the final version. To find out that information, stay tuned to CreativePro.com.
This article was last modified on December 17, 2022
This article was first published on April 2, 2008
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