Lightroom 2 – New Features

Adobe recently released an update to its popular Photoshop Lightroom software program. Lightroom 2 helps photographers manage their images through efficient and powerful cataloging, keywording, sorting, rating, editing, and presentation.

Version 1 was quite nice, but version 2 has really filled in quite a few of the gaps that I had previously identified. Here are some of the new features:

Local Adjustment Brush

This is probably the new killer feature. As you may have guessed, the Local Adjustment Brush allows you to make changes to specific areas of your photos, essentially “painting on” the desired adjustment(s).

Local Adjustment Brush Options Panel

It’s really even cooler than it sounds. The Local Adjustment Brush allows you to “paint in” any combination of adjustments:

• Exposure – How light or dark an area of your image is.
• Brightness – Very similar to exposure.
• Contrast – Basically makes your darks darker and your lights lighter. (Sounds like a laundry detergent commercial, eh?)
• Saturation – How much pop colors have in the image.
• Clarity – Similar to sharpness, it makes edges appear crisper.
• Sharpness – Makes small changes to the edges of objects in your photograph to make them appear crisper.
• Color – Allows you paint a certain color cast over parts of your image.
• Skin Softening – Available for certain tones only, it can make skin tones more flattering by reducing the appearance of wrinkles and blemishes.

In addition to being able to just brush these adjustments on, Adobe has created a gradient tool called the Graduated Filter. Really cool! Watch for an article all about local adjustments in the near future.

64-Bit Processing

If you have a new Mac or PC, you may see some performance increase from the new 64-bit capabilities.

Picture Package

Picture Package

The Print module added (and improved on) the Picture Package capabilities that existed previously only in Photoshop. Basically, it allows you to print multiple copies and sizes of an image or group of images. Think “school pictures.” You know: 1-5×7, 2-4×6s, and 8-Wallets. That sort of thing. It can really help you save paper if you’re printing out multiple images and/or multiple sizes.

Improved Organizational Abilities

Improved Organizational Abilities - Metadata Filter and Collections Panel

The ability to use filters to find just the photos you want has been greatly improved. Need to quickly see all of your three-star or greater rated images taken in the summer of 2007 outside of the United States? No problem. You can save complicated searches like this as a preset for use any time you need them.

You can also organize images into regular collections (just like in version 1) or into Smart Collections that dynamically add and remove images based on set search criteria. These collection and smart collections can now be organized into Collection Sets for easier management.

More Camera Raw File Formats

The list of cameras supported has increased. For example, if you have the new Nikon D700 right now, you have to use Lightroom 2.0, if you’re shooting in RAW. Version 1.4.1 won’t recognize the file type.

Enhanced Photoshop CS3 Integration

Over two years ago, when I first saw the beta version of Lightroom, I asked myself: “Why can’t you edit photos as Smart Objects in Photoshop straight out of Lightroom?” Well, now you can.

Enhanced Photoshop Integration

Lightroom 2.0 gives you the ability to edit your image as a regular TIFF or PSD in Photoshop, as before, but it also gives you the option to:

• Open an image as a Smart Object in Photoshop.
• Merge a set of images to a panorama in Photoshop using Photomerge.
• Merge a set of images to an HDR, or High Dynamic Range, image.
• Open a set of images into a single Photoshop file with each image on its own layer.

As we need Photoshop less and less for our daily image editing tasks, it becomes easier and easier to integrate into our workflow. Hmmm…

Multiple Monitor Support - The Secondary Display Window

Multiple Monitor Support

Finally! Photographers have been singing the praises of multiple monitors for Photoshop and other image editing programs for years, but, until now, Lightroom was a single-monitor program.

The Secondary Display display feature in Lightroom 2 allows you to sort and view images more quickly, edit more efficiently, and show images to clients in a relatively clean interface.

Plug-Ins

Adobe refers to it as “Extensible Architecture,” but it basically means that other companies can write programs that can be installed to work in conjunction with Lightroom to accomplish some task. Right now, most of the plug-ins are related to export. You can install plug-ins to export images directly to Flickr or iStockphoto, for example.

Volume Management

The Folders panel in the Library Module now shows you, in a clear manner, what volume (or drive) your folders and images are located on. This makes it much easier to see which drives are connected and which ones are not and to move images from one drive to another.

Output Sharpening

You can choose to have Lightroom sharpen images on output both to the printer and to exported files. This more closely follows the long-time routine that photographers have used of sharpening as the last step in their image processing workflow.

The output sharpening in Lightroom uses intelligent routines that take into account the destination of the image (screen, matte paper, glossy paper, etc), resolution, and size to provide just the right amount of sharpening. Your results may vary.

Miscellaneous New or Updated Features

There are probably some new features or tweaks that I’ll fail to mention, but here’s a short list of a few more…in no particular order:

• You can insert a blank or colored slide into the beginning and/or ending of your slideshows.
• The sharpening section in the Details Panel of the Develop Module now contains a small 100% preview box to see the effects of your sharpening.
• Vignettes can be applied to the full-frame image, or to the image after it has been cropped. Version 1 only applied the vignette to the full-frame image, regardless of whether or not a crop had been applied.
• 16-bit Printer Output is now available for the Mac in conjunction with printers that support 16-bit output. To my knowledge, it is still unavailable for Windows due to some software limitations.
• You can “print” directly to a JPEG file from the Print Module, if desired. Great for sending images off to a print service.

Well, I think that’s about everything. If you can think of anything that I missed, or want to chime in on your favorite feature(s), please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks!

Filed Under: Getting Started • News • Tutorials

Tags: Features