Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4

Adobe's Lightroom is the tool of choice of pro and prosumer digital photographers who need a streamlined way to import, organize, and tweak, and output large numbers of high-resolution photo files. The app's newest version, Lightroom 4, adds several compelling new features?a built-in map locating where photos were shot, video tools, improved adjustments, integrated book creation, simple photo emailing, and soft proofing. These, along with a significant price cut from $299 to $149 make Lightroom a must-have app for anyone serious about digital photography. Let's take the new Lightroom out for a spin.

Setup???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Lightroom 4 is available for Mac OS X (10.6.8 or 10.7 Lion), Windows 7 or Vista, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. (XP users: The world is moving away from you! Get with the times!) Upgrading from previous versions costs $79. It's a 400MB download, and you also have the option to download a full-featured 30 day trial.

Interface
Not a whole lot has changed with the interface design in Lightroom 4. Unlike Apple Aperture ($79, 4 stars), Lightroom uses separate "modes" for organizing (Library), adjusting (Develop), and other program functions. But you'll probably be happy to hear that now you can turn on and off the mode entries at top left; by default these now include Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, and Print. This is useful, if, for example, you never use the Slideshow or Web modes.? Another interface detail is that the first time you visit a view in the app, you'll see a help box giving you a tip about using it. You can turn these off, but they're a nice new touch. We'll see more interface changes in the Photo Adjustment section below.

Importing Photos
Lightroom has a big, ever-present Import button and media auto-detect that launches the non-destructive importer. This lets you see thumbnails and full size images on memory cards even before importing. Lightroom 3.5's import is much faster than Aperture's, and both now let you start work on any photo in the set before all the import processing is done. ACDSee let me start processing while an import was still in progress, too, but it couldn't automatically apply adjustments aside from rotation on import, and it was much slower than Lightroom.

Like Aperture, Lightroom imports pictures into its own database, aka "catalog," where other programs and the files system can't access to them (unless you change that option or export the pictures later). The database approach makes sense for photographers with huge collections of large images. Usually, you'll want to import photos as camera raw files, which offer more control over the final images. Lightroom supports raw conversion for every major DSLR and high-end digital camera.

Another way to get photos onto your computer is to tether. Mostly of use to pro photographers, tethering lets you connect your camera with a USB or FireWire cable and actually control the shutter release from the computer. Lightroom let me shoot from my laptop with a more elegant UI than Aperture's bare-bones tethering box?one area where Adobe beats Apple on interface. ACDSee and CyberLink PhotoDirector, by comparison, offer no tethering capability.

In Library mode, double-clicking takes you between thumbnail and screen fit view, and another click zooms in to 100 percent; but Aperture's browser, viewer, and filmstrip buttons at top are clearer. Zooming, unfortunately is limited to Fit, Fill, and ratios like 1:3, and 1:2, and it doesn't make good use of the mouse wheel, as many other photo editors do. But Lightroom not only gives you thumbnail and full views of your images and the ability to star rate, pick, or color-code images, but it also lets you group pictures into Quick Collections of thumbnails you select and Smart Collections of photos that meet rating or other criteria.

Star rating, flagging, and rotating can also be done from within the thumbnails. And, from Library Mode, you can use Quick Develop, which may be all you need if your pictures just need a lighting fix or to apply a preset effect (B&W, Cross Process, and the usual Instagram-like suspects). One basic fix you can't do unless you move to Develop, however, is cropping.

Another neat tool in Library mode is the spray-paint-can button, which lets you click on thumbnails to apply either metadata or adjustment presets. The program also does a good job of making it easy to compare images side by side. Finally, a Survey mode lets you select several images for larger comparison views.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/u51yJP0zMsk/0,2817,2365138,00.asp

ups mark sanchez tcu football westminster bonnaroo 2012 lineup twisted metal sea lion