Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 – First Look

Recently Adobe introduced a new version of Lightroom, and not only does it have a new name, but it also comes with a face lift, exciting new features, and an attractive price tag.

Lightroom 4 is by far one of the most popular pieces of software among photographers, and in our opinion, probably the best one. It is a complete package that lets you organize, edit, display, print, publish, and share your photos with just few clicks.

In this new version Adobe has made some serious changes. For example, some of the sliders in the Develop module have different values and default to 0, a setting that just makes more sense.  Now you don’t have to wonder where your slider was, and if you would like to go back to the default value, it’s less confusing. They have also added separate sliders for the Highlight and Shadows Recovery, which is going to give you even more control.

Another great tool with some really cool new features, is the adjustment brush. Now you can “paint” in different color temperatures(WB), and all the other adjustments are identical to the adjustment panel. This is going to give a ton more control over any local adjustments.

There are two completely new modules too, Book and Map.

The Book module lets you create…uhh books. You can output them as a .PDF file, and then share them with your clients, or you can directly use the Blurb self-publishing service and print your book for real.

The Map module reads GPS information from your photos and shows you exactly where they were captured. Lightroom Photoshop 4 works directly with the best service out there, google maps. You can also manually set the location where your images were captured, if you don’t have a GPS unit for your camera. This module really comes into play when you need to search for photos by capture location.

There is a lot more to every module and a lot more extras, so we are going to list all of them underneath.  Before that we just need to mention it’s new price tag. Think of it as 50% off the retail price, compared to the previous version. Adobe Lightroom Photoshop 4 sells for $149, and upgrade is only $79. You decide for yourself if you like it or not. We think that Adobe has created another masterpiece that is going to help us unleash our creativity and produce stunning work, and it comes to us at a great price.

New Featueres:

• New design

• Highlight and shadow recovery

• Photo book creation

• Location-based organization

• Extended video support

• Selective editing brushes

• Advanced black and white conversion

• Superior noise reduction

• Develop presets

• Enhanced online sharing

• White balance brush

• Video publishing

• Soft-proofing

• Import of other libraries

• Emailing with lightroom

About Daniel Milchev

Hi everyone, I am a freelance commercial photographer and specialize in actions sports/lifestyle imagery. For me it’s all about putting my vision in front of the lens to get unique photos. What makes a photo unique for me is not only the photo itself, but also the way I capture it. This kind of mentality has gotten me dangerously close to the action and into some amazing situations. I have a great passion for action sports, and photography helps me stay close to the action and involved in the industry. Photography is not only something that I do, it’s my lifestyle.

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