It’s live! Lightroom 4 has just been released after a short 2 month beta period.
Thank you to everyone who joined in testing the beta and offering feedback. The list of bugs fixed is huge – around 800 since the beta, at the last count.
The feature set is largely the same as the beta version, so we won’t list everything again, but if you missed the previous list, you can find it here.
A few other changes to be aware of:
- Can now upgrade catalogs from prior versions
- Reverse geocoding now works
- Develop has had further ‘tweaks’
- Improved auto tone in Develop
- Increased range of local white balance controls (temperature and tint)
- Changes to rolloff of highlight rendering
- Changes to positive Clarity to reduce overall image brightening.
- More tuning to auto CA algorithm.
- Re-added the Process Version checkbox in the copy/sync dialog
- Updated Develop presets + added new ones for video
- Maximum Blurb book size is now 240 pages
As usual, there’s some new camera support:
- Canon EOS 1D X, Powershot G1 X, PowerShot S100V
- Fuji F505 EXR, F605 EXR, HS30 EXR, HS33 EXR, X-S1
- Nikon D4, D800, D800E
But the big news this morning? PRICING! For the first time in Lightroom’s history, the pricing is changing, but it’s not going up…. it’s going down! The full version Lightroom price will be lowered from $299 to $149 (€109 excl. VAT), with upgrades and education editions at just $79 (€62 excl. VAT). There’s no reason to put off upgrading now!
With all of the new features added in Lightroom 4, especially the new improved Develop rendering, and now the new low pricing too, there’s no reason not to upgrade. You can purchase direct from Adobe or from your favorite retailer. For now, download the trial and let us know what you think!
In the meantime, I’m putting the finishing touches to Adobe Lightroom 4 – The Missing FAQ, and it’s available to preorder now.
I still am using LR 3, and I’m wondering if sometimes the highlights/shadows/ darks sliders sometime show up in LR3, because I used them yesterday, andI don’t see them now – are they teasers to get you to buy LR4? Or have I just hidden them somewhere in the adjustment panel?
Nope, they definitely don’t show up in LR3. You might have been looking at the Tone Curve sliders, which have a similar name.
Okay – thanks!
If you can do anything to light a fire under Adobe to get the sluggish performance fixed, a lot of folks would be very grateful. To my knowledge, they haven’t even acknowledged it yet. It’s a killer! What’s the point of sliders and brushes if there’s a 2-3 sec lag before the effect shows up? And god help you if you get ahead of the program on clicks – the screen flashes then hangs. It doesn’t always come back. This happens on both a 32 bit Vista desktop (12GB) and a 64 bit Win7 laptop (4GB).
I’d say the price drop is commensurate with the quality.
Have you tried the 4.1RC yet? They released it 3 weeks after the buggy 4.0, which is a pretty good turnaround in my opinion! http://clkuk.tradedoubler.com/click?p(265883)a(2791170)g(22913796)url(http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4-1/) There are still some bits they’re working on, but most people are finding it a huge improvement.
hi,
could you please issue some step by step instructions on how to upgrade from LR3 to LR4.
How do I bring my LR3 catalogs into LR4?
Can I prevent the automatic formation of a new LR4 catalog?
will LR4 keep the LR3 *.lrcat file names and merely update them to 4?
How do I prevent that the LR4 adjustments get applied to the files I adjusted under LR3?
How do I make sure the ‘plug ins’ work?
How to I ensure proper transfer of the key words?
thank you so much! 19,000 pix are at stake.
Hi Inge, I’ll reply to your email. For the minute, I’d suggest holding off on upgrading your catalog. Just wait until the end of the week as there’s a new release due out which avoids one of the upgrade issues.
could you please rid your site of this teeny tiny old fashioned arial font?
Thanks!
Which font would you prefer Charles? And which browser are you using? It’s defaulting to Helvetica Neue and Helvetica before it gets to Arial. It does look a little tight in the blog posts though, doesn’t it. Let me put that on my to do list to consider.
The font looks (to me) just the same as the tiny arial from this site http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100325172448AAxnPFe
I’m on a personal crusade, i guess, to rid the web of this old ding-dong tiny font that exists everywhere only because all those programmers from 1999 used it, having no incentive to use anything other font; not caring that its use would make the web pages it adorns look very dated, and, so very, very, very obviously, hard to read. It just so happens that your site has become my first stop on this campaign to raise humanity.
Here are some choices, albeit from six years ago.
hmm
Sorry if this has been asked before but does LR4 come with Adobe Camera Raw?
That’s a good question! You can download ACR 6.7RC from When the dialog says it requires 7.0 for a match, press the Open Anyway button and it’ll open into CS5 correctly with that RC installed.
Are there any changes to sharpening in LR4 versus LR3?
No, not this time round.
I upgraded from 3 to Lighroom 4 yesterday and I am now having problems importing RAW files from my 5D II, can anyone help?
What kind of problems are you having? Importing the photos into Lightroom, or getting them off the camera or card reader?
Hi, it’s reported, that there are some problems with the tone curves at import…
See here: http://chrismarquardt.com/blog.php?id=1620266956854377999
They’re aware and working on a fix. In the meantime, opening the LR3 catalog in LR3, writing to xmp, opening the LR4 catalog and reading from xmp seems to do the trick.
Does Lightroom 4 support the Nikon D7000?
Yes it does – Lightroom 3.3 added support for the D7000
Thank you.
G’day Victoria and some feedback here re the D7000 issues. The D7000 NEF (RAW) files behave very differently when imported into Lighroom 3.3 with ACR 6.3. The colour rendition is real bad and very different compared to the same file imported after having converted it first to DNG or Tif. The D90, model before the D7000, NEF files behave normally when imported into Lightroom with the identical settings ala sliders, auto or no auto tone settings etc. Creating a preset is not much chop as every photo behaves differently and it is a nighmare. I am wondering if this latest Lightroom is managing to render these D7000 NEF files any better than the previous version of Lighroom.
We are not looking at Lightroom as the problem, its a great bit of kit, and wonder if Nikon have structured their NEF files now to under perform in any software other than their own.
Hi Stu, I’m a little confused about why you’re seeing a difference between NEF and DNG files, as it’s the same data in a different wrapper. If you’d like to send me one of your problem files and the output JPEG from a NEF and from a DNG, I’d be pleased to take a look and see if I can reproduce it.
What about custom page sizes/templates for the book module?
They still have a little more work to do on that yet.
Define: “little” 🙂
I’d love to, but I can’t say any more than that at this point in time, as there hasn’t been an official announcement.
encouraging to hear that!
Disappointing…. I wish they would have held off on the release a bit more and included this. Right now it’s forcing me to use Blurb’s software which is pretty limited, but does let you create/customize templates.
This module is practical useless until you don’t have the possibility to make your own custom sizes or, at least some other size choices like A3, A4, A5 and A6, big squares like 30 x 30cm. I don’t like the Blurb services because they print with HP Indigo Scitex. This is not the right photo book. The real photo book is made by real photo paper like EPSON´s printers
It might be not be suitable for you Gabriel, but that doesn’t make it practically useless. It’s a valuable tool for people who are happy with Blurb – just not for you.
That said, Adobe have said that Blurb integration is only a starting point. There were a number of reasons they chose Blurb to start with, but there will be other options in the future, including the possibility of other companies and alternative page sizes.
Hm, no support for 5D Mark III. Any clues on lead-time for that? Yes I know it’s only just come out… 😉
Interestingly also on Adobe’s site, the prices for the shipped boxed version were *cheaper* than the download version…!
The Canon 5d mk3 is supported in the ACR 6.7 RC that was released today too, so it should be in LR 4.1 in 3-4 months time.
The prices often depend on where the downloads come from – EU downloads come from Ireland so have 23% VAT applied. Weird how the boxed copies end up cheaper, isn’t it!
Hm. Makes the 5Dmk3 only usable within a lot of folks’ workflow from around end June(ish), possibly missing Olympics if that deadline is missed. That’s quite a hit. Thanks.
The DNG converter would allow 4.0 to open 5Dmk3 files in the meantime. And of course Adobe may have other plans, but I don’t know of them if so.
I complained to an Adobe support person on the US site about this and she gave me a link that went direct to the UK Business store. I asked if it was OK to register there as I’m not a business user and she said to go ahead. Got it for £99.03. Worth a try.
Any
The installation was an absolute mess for me. What installed on LR 4 was LR 4 Beta; nothing from LR 3 came in. I was finally able to get my LR 3 Catalog into LR 4 and set it as the catalog that automatically opens. However, the LR 4 Beta Catalog which became the LR 4 default Catalog exists as a seperate Catalog. If I want to access the work done in LR 4 Beta, I have to open this separate Catalog. The good news is that I do still have the work that I did.
Ah, I know what you mean. Out of interest, what did you expect to happen?
Back up both catalogs first, and then with the upgraded LR3 catalog open in LR4, go to File menu > Import from Another Catalog and point to the beta one. Let it import the beta catalog into your main working one. If you used the same photos in both, it’ll give you the option of keeping both sets of settings as VC’s or keeping the beta ones as the new settings.
I played around so much that I am not absolutely certain. I think that inside of LR4, I went to Import from Another Catalog and navigated to my LR3 Catalog icon (inside of my Lightroom Folder which is inside of my Mac Pictures Folder). I clicked on the icon and my LR3 Catalog opened in LR4. I also checked the box for this Catalog to open whenever LR4 opens. If I want to see all of the work that I did in LR4 Beta, I go to Open Recent, where the old LR4 Beta Catalog is now listed as the regular LR4 Catalog.
PS – all of my work that I want to save ends up as a TIFF file. As I have been going along in LR4 Beta, I have, inside of LR3, Imported the TIFF files from LR4 Beta; so they are there. Since I did my work in Beta with Copies (the original file number with a “-2” added), I have decided (at least for now) to keep the 2 Catalogs separate. I definitely don’t want a bunch of -2 files in LR4.
Sounds very sensible Jack.