Author: Tom Hogarty

Every year InfoTrends surveys professional photographers in North America on a wide variety of topics. As the Lightroom and Camera Raw product manager the results of one question always interest me more than the others: “What raw conversion software does your company use. (Check all that apply)” Photoshop product manager John Nack has been kind enough to post the 2007 and 2008 results to his popular blog. This year is no exception and the 2009 results of the pro photography survey show that Lightroom’s popularity continues to grow. Check out the details here: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/09/lightroom_vs_aperture_09.html

A big thanks to all the professional photographers who have picked Lightroom for their photographic workflow. We’ll continue to do our best to provide you with software that lets you focus on your photography, not your computer.

Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5 are now available as final releases on Adobe.com and through the update mechanisms available in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2. These updates include camera support for the following models:

• Nikon D300s
• Nikon D3000
• Olympus E-P1
• Panasonic DMC-FZ35**
• Panasonic DMC-GF1

**Note that in Europe and Japan this model is marketed as the DMC-FZ38. Unfortunately, due to a metadata difference between these cameras, files from the DMC-FZ38 will *not* be supported until the next Camera Raw and Lightroom updates.

Release Notes:

• Camera Raw 5.5 and Lightroom 2.5 include a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Bayer sensor cameras with unequal green response. Olympus, Panasonic and Sony are among the more popular camera manufacturers affected by this change. But the demosaic correction provides only a subtle visual improvement to the processing of those raw files.
• Lightroom 2.5 corrects for the following problem in Lightroom 2.4. Lightroom 2.4 on Windows continued to display the import dialog when a memory card was detected regardless of the preference setting “Show import dialog when a memory card is detected.”

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on our Camera Raw 5.5 Release Candidate.

I’ve always been a big fan of the Adobe TV site where we host tons of great Lightroom tutorials. One of the challenges however was searching or navigating the site. Well, the Adobe TV team has done a great job updating the architecture of the site and providing a new search engine. Check it out! http://tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/

Here are some additional notes directly from the Adobe TV Team:

The brand new Adobe TV website has been architected and designed based on substantial input from the community. It’s the first website in the world to deploy a video player built with the Adobe Open Source Media Framework, and one of the first sites built using Adobe ColdFusion 9.

The site has a brand-new look & feel, and many new features including:
• User-customizable homepage
• Vastly improved navigation & search
• Save your favorite episodes to “My Library”
• Share videos on social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg, and StumbleUpon
• Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite shows
• Pop-out video player to view videos at any size
• Commenting & Rating
• Tags

I tweeted this information yesterday but it deserves a broader announcement here on the blog. The next full version update of Lightroom will not run on PowerPC-based Mac computers. Lightroom 2 updates will continue to support PowerPC.

The Creative Suite made the same announcement yesterday via their FAQ and John Nack added his color commentary as well.

As part of Scott Kelby’s second-annual worldwide photowalk Adobe is leading the charge with four walks of our own, hosted and joined by members of the Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge or Camera Raw teams.  Space is limited so sign up quickly to walk and shoot with Adobe’s digital imaging team:

• San Francisco, CA (Led by Tom Hogarty, Lightroom/ACR Product Manager)
• San Jose, CA (Led by Bryan Hughes, Photoshop Product Manager)
• Seattle, WA  (Led by Tina Carter, Digital Imaging Support Engineer)
• Stillwater, MN (Led by Melissa Gaul, Lightroom Technical Evangelist)

Enjoy!

Lightroom 2.4 and Camera Raw 5.4 are now available as final releases on Adobe.com and through the update mechanisms available in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2.  These updates include camera support for the following models:

Canon           EOS 500D (Digital Rebel T1i/EOS Kiss X3 Digital) Canon          PowerShot SX1 IS Epson           R-D1x Hasselblad    CF-22 Hasselblad    CF-22MS Hasselblad    CF-39 Hasselblad    CF-39MS Hasselblad    CFH-22 Hasselblad    CFH-39 Hasselblad    CFV Hasselblad    503CWD Hasselblad    H2D-22 Hasselblad    H2D-39 Hasselblad    H3D-22 Hasselblad    H3D-31	Hasselblad    H3D-39 Hasselblad    H3DII-22 Hasselblad    H3DII-31 Hasselblad    H3DII-39 Hasselblad    H3DII-39MS Hasselblad    H3DII-50 Kodak          EasyShare Z980 Nikon            D5000 Olympus       E-450 Olympus       E-620 Panasonic     Lumix DMC-GH1 Pentax          K-7 Sigma           DP2 Sony            A230 Sony            A330 Sony            A380
Note: Hasselblad support is for the 3FR file format only.  The Hasselblad FFF file format is not currently supported.

Lightroom 2.4 Bug Fixes

The Lightroom 2.4 update includes several bug fixes.  The following is a list of items FIXED in this release.

• Web galleries with a Collection Title of six characters would not export or upload
• The crop aspect ratio could revert to the last selected ratio even when reset to original
• The crop aspect ratio in Quick Develop could be lost after a crop adjustment
• The crop aspect ratio lock could be lost after an orientation switch
•  Images could preview incorrectly when imported using the MTP/PTP USB protocol
• Sony .ARW files may not have been recognized by Lightroom’s import dialog
• The Japanese language configuration of Lightroom on Mac OS X 10.5 could fail to switch to the print module if the HP B9180 was set as the default printer
• Metadata options that are intended for use were dimmed incorrectly when exporting DNG files
• The Japanese language configuration of Lightroom on Mac OS X was missing a shortcut for “Zoom Out”
• Several translation and shortcut corrections were made for the eight additional languages introduced with Lightroom 2.3

New Lightroom 2.4 and Camera Raw 5.4 DNG Options

This release includes new DNG Compatibility conversion options. These choices help address the additional options available with the new DNG 1.3 Specification (http://www.adobe.com/dng):

• Camera Raw 2.4 and later: The DNG file will be readable by Camera Raw 2.4 (Photoshop CS) and later, and Lightroom 1.0 and later
• Camera Raw 4.1 and later: The DNG file will be readable by Camera Raw 4.1 (Photoshop CS3) and later, and Lightroom 1.1 and later. The DNG file will often be readable by earlier versions, depending on the camera model
• Camera Raw 4.6 and later: The DNG file will be readable by Camera Raw 4.6 (Photoshop CS3) and later, and Lightroom 2.1 and later. The DNG file will often be readable by earlier versions, depending on the camera model
• Camera Raw 5.4 and later: The DNG file will be readable by Camera Raw 5.4 (Photoshop CS4) and later, and Lightroom 2.4 and later. The DNG file will often be readable by earlier versions, depending on the camera model
• Custom: (Not available in Lightroom 2.4)
• Backward Version Option: DNG 1.1, DNG 1.3 (default 1.3)
• Checkbox: Linear (demosaiced) (default unchecked)
• Checkbox: Uncompressed (default unchecked)

DNG 1.3 Specification Update

The DNG specification has been updated to version 1.3.[LINK] The update includes the following changes:

• In Chapter 2, “DNG Format Overview”, the section on Defective Pixels has been updated
• The section on Opcode Lists has been added to Chapter 2, “DNG Format Overview”
• The CFALayout tag has been updated in Chapter 4, “DNG Tags”.
• Additional Tags for Version 1.3.0.0 were added to Chapter 4, “DNG Tags”
• Chapter 7, “Opcode List Processing” was added.
• “Appendix A: Compatibility with Previous Versions” was updated.

The additional "Opcode Lists" allow complex processing to be moved off the camera hardware, which can have limited processing power, and into the DNG reader, which is often running on more powerful hardware. This also allows processing steps to be specified, such as lens corrections, which ideally should be performed on the image data after it has been demosaiced, while still retaining the advantages of a raw mosaic data format.