Wondering what the Lightroom 4 Beta looks like and/or how to use the new features successfully?
I still have some spots left in this FREE 90 minute webinar, Saturday January 28 at 10:00 a.m. PST (6:00 PM GMT.) This is my last one on the Beta!
Register here:
If you can’t attend, you will find a recording of an earlier one here: Lightroom 4 Beta Recorded Webinar.
Soft proofing is new in the Develop module of Lightroom 4 (the Beta at this point). It allows you to get a better idea of what your photo will look like in print when printing with profiles, and what it will look like when you export to sRGB or another color space. If your photo has richly saturated colors, for example, when you soft-proof you will see them become muted, since many printers and papers, as well as sRGB, can’t display them so saturated. When you print to paper, your photos will also lose contrast, as paper whites are never as bright as monitor whites. Soft proofing allows you to preview this, and then if necessary, make further adjustments to your photo to optimize it given the constraints of your chosen output method.
I will have much more to say for beginners on this topic, but for those already using soft proofing in the Lightroom 4 Beta, I wanted to show you two ways to display the original next to the proof as you work on the proof. (Thank you to Mike for the question that prompted my idea for this post.)
With Soft Proofing checked in the toolbar below your photo, as you make your first Develop adjustment, you will be asked to either make the original the proof, or to make a proof copy.
1. If you prefer to make your output / proof adjustments on the original, choose Make this a Proof. Then to see both versions side by side, type Y to view Before and After side by side. Next you will change the definition of “Before”: in the History panel, right-click on the History step that immediately proceeds your first proof adjustment (or the top step if you haven’t made any yet),and choose “Copy History Step Settings to Before”.
2. If you prefer to have a separate proof copy, you will choose Make a Proof Copy. You can’t use Before and After for two different photos, so you will use Lightroom’s second monitor functionality to display the original. Select your original photo in the filmstrip rather than the copy, then click on the [2] button in the bottom left above your filmstrip to bring up this display. In the top left, select Loupe, and in the top right, Locked, so that this will continue to display the original. (If you have a second monitor, and you want it displayed on your first monitor next to your Proof, click and hold on the [2] button, and uncheck Full Screen.)
Next, in the filmstrip choose your proof copy to work on. Finally, size the second window to fit next to your proof copy:
With either method, only the proof will change as you work.
Finally, no need to go to Photoshop for soft proofing!
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Do any of these happen to you?
If so, you will want to watch my 5 minute video here showing some cool tips for using the Lightroom spot removal tool. They won’t always work, but when they do they are quite handy. These tips apply to all version of Lightroom, and to Camera Raw as well.
I find that the more I challenge the spot removal tool, the more I discover that it can do for me. Yes, it still has its limits, but it is much more powerful than it initially appears!
Related Content:
Video on the fundamentals of using the spot removal tool (with some advanced tips, too) from Lightroom Fundamentals and Beyond: A Workshop on DVD in which I teach the fundamentals of using the spot removal tool (as well as some advanced tips).
Putting One Spot Removal Fix on Top of Another
The Difference between Heal and Clone in the Spot Removal Tool
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To be honest, I don’t download a lot of presets from the internet. I personally have limited mental bandwidth for add-ons, and there are so many out there that they can be hard to sift through. However, I agree that done right, they can add great value. It can be very efficient to use a good creative preset or set of presets, since I can get 90% of the way towards making a photo look great with just one or a handful of clicks in one panel rather than having to sift through all of Lightroom’s Develop sliders, plus I can get cool looks that I never would have thought of creating myself.
Occasionally I hear about some presets that I just have to check out, including X-Equals XeL Black and White Toolkit of over 300 presets. They are designed to emulate the look of 54 classic black and white films, as well as 4 antiquated processes, and the workflow ingeniously follows the traditional black and white darkroom workflow (as I understand it — truth be told, I only had a couple months of film/darkroom experience):
1. Simulate black and white capture:
2. Simulate darkroom work:
The toolkit also has a cool set of presets to reproduce four antiquated processes ( Tintypes, Daguerrotypes, Cyanotypes and Ambrotypes).
In this 65 minute video from my January 11 Lightroom 4 Beta webinar, I give you a tour of the new features, and explain the basics of how to use them.
I wish the audio quality were better, but it is what it is — rest assured that my Lightroom DVD products have higher quality audio and video.
(Note: I have also added one more free live webinar, for Saturday, January 28. Click here for details and sign up.)
Please enter your email below to be redirected to this and other free videos.
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Table of Contents (also shown on video web page with start times)
1. Introduction
2. Develop Changes
3. Map Module
4. Book Module
5. Saving Output – Book, Print, Slideshow, Web
6. Video Editing and Exporting
7. Integrated Email/Webmail
8. DNG Raw File Enhancements
9. More on Conversion from Develop Process Version 2010 to 2012
In this post from November, I reported Adobe’s announcement that only customers on Photoshop CS5 would be eligible for upgrade pricing on CS6 when it comes out in the first half of this year. (I also reported on the alternative Cloud version and how that should factor into your upgrade decisions.)
What this meant was that CS3 and CS4 customers were supposed to upgrade to CS5, right before the release of CS6, in order to get upgrade pricing. This caused a lot of frustration among customers, so Adobe has now revised its policy.
Here is the statement:
We’re very excited about the upcoming release of Adobe® Creative Suite® 6 software and Adobe Creative Cloud™. CS6 will be a major new release of our creative desktop tools, with huge improvements for every type of creative professional. Adobe Creative Cloud will be our most comprehensive creative solution ever, giving members access to all of the CS6 desktop software plus additional services, new tools, Adobe Touch Apps, and rich community features. In addition, Creative Cloud members will receive continuous upgrades and updates to all products and services as part of their membership.
With these great new releases coming in the first half of 2012, we want to make sure our customers have plenty of time to determine which offering is best for them. Therefore, we’re pleased to announce that we will offer special introductory upgrade pricing on Creative Suite 6 to customers who own CS3 or CS4. This offer will be available from the time CS6 is released until December 31, 2012. More details on this offer, as well as any introductory offers for existing customers to move to Creative Cloud membership, will be announced when CS6 and Creative Cloud are released later this year. (source).
It is not clear whether they will get as good of an upgrade deal as those that who upgraded to CS5 first.
I could trash Adobe for their initial decision, but I sometimes make what turn out to be bad calls in my own business, and some of them are evident to my customers and followers. While it’s embarrassing, we all just make the best decisions we can, and then adjust as needed as information comes in.
Wondering what the Lightroom 4 Beta looks like and/or how to use the new features successfully?
I still have some spots left in this free 90 minute webinar, Saturday January 14 at 9:00 a.m. PST (5:00 PM GMT.)
And stay tuned for many more webinar topics, on both Lightroom and Photoshop!
The Basics panel in the Develop module of the Lightroom 4 Beta may not be the sexiest feature, but the improvements are quite powerful, and the new controls are one of the few new features that you will use many times every day.
Working successfully with them requires that you change how you work with the sliders. The keys to successful work are to (1) understand that Exposure is now midtone brightness rather than the white point, and (2) that the sliders are designed to be worked from top to bottom.
Here is a video I have produced working several photos using the Lightroom 4 Beta. (You may have seen these same photos worked in blog posts and videos related to Lightroom 3).
For perspective, here was my workflow in Lightroom 3:
1. Set exposure for how bright I wanted the brightest tones (white point).
2. Set blacks for how bright I wanted the darkest tones (black point).
3. Use brightness and contrast to affect the midtones.
4. Use fill light if needed to add light to the shadows
5. Use recovery if needed to recover blown out highlights.
Here’s my new workflow — working top down:
1. Set exposure for midtone (average) brightness (ignoring whether I am blowing out any highlights)
2. Set contrast for overall punchiness. If this brightens or darkens the image too much, fine tune exposure.
3. Use highlights to recover blown out highlights and set highlight brightness
4. Use shadows to add light into or darken the shadows
5. If needed, use Whites to further adjust the brightest tones (white point)
6. If needed, use Blacks to further adjust the darkest tones (black point)
7. I can then circle back to any slider to fine tune the adjustments.
If you continue to treat exposure as the white point, you will find that the other sliders, namely shadows and highlights, don’t have the power that you would expect them to.
As with Lightroom 3, the secret to producing stunning photos in the Lightroom 4 Beta is to master the Basics panel!
Here’s a good set of introductory videos from Adobe’s Julieanne Kost.
Adobe announced tonight the release of its beta version of Lightroom 4. Features and testing are not complete — this release is designed to get broader feedback from the user community before the official release.
The Lightroom 4 beta can be downloaded at this link.
To give Adobe feedback on features and performance, post in the Lightroom 4 beta forum.
Below are some thoughts on who may want to use the beta, and an extensive list of new features. I will have more blog posts on some of the features over the coming days.
You should first know that (1) you must have Windows 7 or Mac Snow Leopard or Lion (see the end of this post for full specs), and (2) you will not be able to upgrade your current catalog for use in the beta (though you will be able to in the final release.) The beta is intended for kicking the tires, and Adobe does not guarantee that your work will not be lost, so you should make copies of your photos and re-import them.
Do you need or want to use some of the new features right away? Are you tolerant of bugs, crashes and inexplicable behaviors (which you most likely will encounter)? Do you want to give Adobe feedback in advance of the official release? If so, go for it! If not, you are not alone – many users are content to wait for the official release, when features and performance are stable.
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