Adobe Releases Lightroom 2.1!

Final adjustments to the release candidate have been completed and Lightroom 2.1 is available to download. When you start Lightroom you should be prompted to download the update.

You can also download the update directly from Adobe. Windows users can click here. Mac users can click here.

Adobe Camera Profiles

A frequent statement from Lightroom users is “my previews don’t look as good as the LCD on my camera! What’s wrong?” Nothing is wrong. The image on your camera’s LCD is really a JPEG representation of the RAW image captured by the sensor. So some adjustments have been performed in the camera in order to present that JPEG image.

When you bring the RAW file into Lightroom the embedded JPEG preview is shown while Lightroom builds a new preview. The new preview does not have any of the image manipulations that the JPEG preview had. So the images look different. Sometimes duller. Sometimes soft. Sometimes both.

Adobe has heard your questions and introduced Camera Profiles. These are currently in beta but rather stable. Once installed you can apply these to your images and once again see those vivid previews you remember from the LCD. Currently only Canon and Nikon camera styles are supported.

Also available is a DNG Profile Editor to allow you to tweak or create your own Camera Profiles. You really need to check these out. The new profiles give you a great starting point for your images.

Click here to go to Adobe Labs and download the profiles.

Reuse Those Presets

Do you have a Graduated Filter preset that you like but you don’t want to apply it with a Graduated Filter? No problem. Grab your Adjustment Brush. The same presets are available. Now you can paint on that Graduated FIlter preset.

Adjustment Brush Resizing

The same keyboard shortcut you use in Photoshop® to change your brush size works in Lightroom® as well. Use the square bracket keys ( [ and ]) to decrease and increase brush size. By adding the Shift key (Shift [ and Shift ]) you can control the amount of feathering on the brush.

Show Keyboard Shortcuts

If you can’t remember a keyboard shortcut when working in a module, press CMD / and the shortcuts for that module will appear. Click on the dialog to close it.

Lightroom 2.1 RC Available

While not yet an official release, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.1 RC is available for download at Adobe Labs. Windows click here. Mac users click here.

According to the release notes The goal of this release is to address several bugs that were introduced with the release of Lightroom 2.0 and provide additional camera raw support. A comprehensive list of issues fixed in this release is included below:

Stability and High Severity Bugs – Fixed

• Lightroom could crash when switching to or from the web module on Windows Vista 64.
• Selecting a custom camera profile or using auto-white balance could cause a spinning ball.
• Preference files pointing to missing catalogs could prevent Lightroom from progressing past the registration dialog.
• Errors could occur when attempting to create a virtual copy with a computer that has a processor that is not SSE2 enabled. (This is a method of delivering instructions to the processor which was introduced with the Pentium 4 processor. It should not have affected a significant number of modern machines.)
• Modal dialogs could try to appear on a disabled second monitor, causing Lightroom to appear hung or unresponsive.
• When a DNG file was selected for export to a derivative TIFF file and it is added to the catalog at export there was a possibility that one of the files could be treated as a sidecar within Lightroom such that deleting one file deletes both.

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Lightroom Blog

Sean McCormack’s excellent blog on all things Lightroom! Don’t be deceived by Sean’s humble statement “By night I mix bands, by day I take pictures and very late at night I write. Sometimes I go to bed before 6am, sometimes I’m not so lucky.” There is a wealth of insight here!

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