Lightroom 2 Language Selection

For those working with the new language versions of Lightroom, if you would like to switch languages just follow these instructions:

Windows

  • In Lightroom, visit Edit –> Preferences and click on the General tab
  • Select the desired language from the dropdown
  • Restart Lightroom

Macintosh
Lightroom follows the operating system language preference.  To change it:

  • Visit the Mac OS X System Preferences and select International
  • Select the desired language in the list and drag it to the top of the list
  • Restart Lightroom

Thanks again for everyone’s feedback on our new updates.

Camera Raw 5.3 and Lightroom 2.3 Available on Adobe Labs

Camera Raw 5.3 and Lightroom 2.3 Release Candidates are now available on Adobe Labs.(Camera Raw 5.3, Lightroom 2.3) The release includes new camera support for the following models:

  • Nikon D3X
  • Olympus E-30  

There are several bug fixes in this update :

  • In the Windows 64-bit version of Lightroom an sFTP upload process could cause Lightroom to crash
  • Slideshows could return to the first image randomly during playback
  • A memory leak could cause Lightroom to crash while attempting to process files with local adjustments
  • Canon EOS 5D Mk II sRAW files could process with artifacts in Lightroom 2.2
  • Lightroom 2.2 could cause disc burning to fail for Windows customers

Additional Languages
Lightroom 2.3 now provides language support for the following additional languages:

  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • Dutch
  • Italian
  • Korean
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Spanish
  • Swedish

The translation effort for these languages is over 90% complete in this release. We appreciate your feedback as we complete this work so that we can ensure that the final release provides a high quality update for all of these new languages. If you find a translation error or problem with these new language versions please report them here: Bug Report Form

Notes on the Additional Languages

  • Localized help is not yet available for these additional language versions
  • The new language versions cannot be installed simultaneously with the English/French/German 2.3 RC build

I’d like to thank everyone who contributed in the Adobe User to User forums to help us track down some of the bugs we corrected in this release.

Free Lightroom Presets for Download

The folks over at the Presetting Lightroom Flickr group have compiled a collection of 180+ Free Lightroom Presets with sample before and after images for anyone who’s interested. Included in the collection of links are Wonderland Lightroom Presets and Presets Heaven.

Pro Photography Show has a similarly expansive collection of links to free Lightroom presets. Collections range from authors Sean McCormack, Jack Davis, and Matt Kloskowski to Adobe’s Exchange community.

Sharing labels between Lightroom and Bridge

Several users have pointed out an issue where you assign a color label to an image in Lightroom and then view the same image in Bridge the label appears white instead of in the expected color.

The issue is Lightroom and Bridge assign labels as text and not as a specific color in the file metadata. The label text is associated with a specific color in Bridge’s preferences and Lightroom’s Color Label Set settings.

To make the labels you assign in Lightroom show up in the same colors in Bridge, go into Bridge preferences, choose “Labels,” and then change the text string for each to simply the color (“Red” for red, “Yellow” for yellow, “Green” for green, “Blue” for blue, and “Purple” for purple).

bridgePrefs.jpg

Or if you prefer Bridge’s label naming better, go into Lightroom and select Metadata>Color Label Set>Edit and the text string from Bridge for each (“Select” for red, “Second” for yellow, “Approved” for green, “Review” for blue, and “To Do” for purple). You can then “Save Current Settings as New Preset” from the Preset pop-up.

lightroomColorLabelSet.jpg

We’ll likely provide a “Bridge Defaults“ Color Label Set preset in a future version of Lightroom. [Via]

User Group Events

There are two user group events this evening, Wednesday, January 14th.

The Professional Photographers of Santa Clara Valley, CA are hosting Photoshop Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes, talking about Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4, starting at 7pm.

The Twin Cities Lightroom User Group will meet tonight at Easel Training in Saint Paul, MN, at 7pm. Topics include catalogs, backing-up & moving your data, and Lightroom/Photoshop interop. Engineers from the Lightroom & Photoshop teams will be on hand to help answer questions.

We hope to see you tonight or at future user group events.

Lightroom 2.2 Now Available

Lightroom 2.2 is now available on Adobe.com. (Mac, Win)  The release includes new camera support for the following models:

  • Canon EOS 5D Mark II
  • Canon PowerShot G10
  • Panasonic DMC-G1**
  • Panasonic DMC-FX150**
  • Panasonic DMC-FZ28**
  • Panasonic DMC-LX3**
  • Leica D-LUX 4**

We’ve also fixed a few bugs that were introduced with the Lightroom 2.0 release:

Lightroom 2 Bugs – Fixed

  • Images rendered from the Slideshow export process produced a jagged effect on hard edges relative to the quality of normal JPEG export
  • Increased the number of characters allowed in Web gallery labels beyond 150 characters
  • Catalogs with hundreds of root (top level) folders caused very slow launch times
  • Drag and drop to move a subfolder to a different folder showed the incorrect photos in the grid
  • Print Sharpening produced edge artifacts in certain conditions
  • Density defaulted to 100 percent for initial stroke regardless of position of slider
  • The  Adjustment brush created blocky, straight edges to brush strokes under certain conditions
  • Lightroom could become unresponsive when using the graduated filter under certain conditions
  • It was possible to lose the ability to edit an adjustment brush setting after applying a graduated filter with hidden pins
  • Turning auto-mask on produced a lag in Lightroom performance in when applying the adjustment brush
  • Print to JPEG functionality produced a low resolution image when printing photos with panorama aspect ratios
  • Extended characters in a folder name caused Edit in Photoshop functionality to fail
  • Smart collection did not respond to changes in custom metadata

Lightroom 2 Enhancements

  • Camera profiles are now available in the Calibration panel in the Develop module.  These profiles are designed to provide different interpretations of raw capture.

**With the release of Camera Raw 5.2 (and upcoming Lightroom 2.2 release) there is an important exception in our DNG file handling for the Panasonic DMC LX3, Panasonic DMC FX150, Panasonic DMC FZ28, Panasonic DMC-G1 and Leica D-LUX 4. In this release the native, proprietary files from these cameras can only be converted to linear DNG files. A linear DNG file has gone through a demosaic process that converts a single mosaic layer of red, green and blue channel information into three distinct layers , one for each channel. The resulting linear DNG file is approximately three times the size of a mosaic DNG file or the original proprietary file format.

This exception is a temporary solution to ensure that Panasonic and Leica’s intended image rendering from their proprietary raw file format is applied to an image when converted DNG files are viewed in third party software titles. The same image rendering process is applied automatically in Camera Raw 5.2 and in Lightroom 2.2 when viewing the original proprietary raw file format.

In a future release Adobe plans to update the DNG specification to include an option to embed metadata-based representations of the lens compensations in the DNG file, allowing a mosaic DNG conversion. In the interim Adobe recommends only converting these files to DNG to allow compatibility with third party raw converters, previous versions of the Camera Raw plug-in or previous versions of Lightroom.

Camera Raw 5.2 and DNG Converter Available

The Camera Raw 5.2 and DNG Converter 5.2 are now available on Adobe.com.(For Photoshop CS4 customers I recommend choosing the ‘Updates…’ option from the Help menu)  This release includes additional features and new camera support.  Lightroom will be updated to version 2.2 in December to provide the equivalent camera support.

New in this release:

  • Targeted Adjustment Tool for on image adjustments
  • Output sharpening for print or screen output
  • Snapshots for saving all settings in a single reference
  • Camera Profiles for enhanced raw file interpretation now available in the Calibration panel

Newly supported camera models:

  • Canon EOS 5D Mark II
  • Canon PowerShot G10
  • Panasonic DMC-G1**
  • Panasonic DMC-FX150**
  • Panasonic DMC-FZ28**
  • Panasonic DMC-LX3**
  • Leica D-LUX 4**

**With the release of Camera Raw 5.2 (and upcoming Lightroom 2.2 release) there is an important exception in our DNG file handling for the Panasonic DMC LX3, Panasonic DMC FX150, Panasonic DMC FZ28, Panasonic DMC-G1 and Leica D-LUX 4. In this release the native, proprietary files from these cameras can only be converted to linear DNG files. A linear DNG file has gone through a demosaic process that converts a single mosaic layer of red, green and blue channel information into three distinct layers , one for each channel. The resulting linear DNG file is approximately three times the size of a mosaic DNG file or the original proprietary file format.

This exception is a temporary solution to ensure that Panasonic and Leica’s intended image rendering from their proprietary raw file format is applied to an image when converted DNG files are viewed in third party software titles. The same image rendering process is applied automatically in Camera Raw 5.2 and in Lightroon 2.2 when viewing the original proprietary raw file format.

In a future release Adobe plans to update the DNG specification to include an option to embed metadata-based representations of the lens compensations in the DNG file, allowing a mosaic DNG conversion. In the interim Adobe recommends only converting these files to DNG to allow compatibility with third party raw converters, previous versions of the Camera Raw plug-in or previous versions of Lightroom.

Aperture vs. Lightroom: What do the pros use? (2008 Update)

Last year John was kind enough to post an entry on his blog about how Aperture and Lightroom were faring in the pro community. The results as published by InfoTrends, an independent research firm, were conclusive in that Lightroom was the application of choice for pro photographers.(after Photoshop of course)   InfoTrends has repeated the survey and the results are even more telling.  Here are the results for both 2007 and 2008.

Question:  What camera raw conversion software does your company use? Please check all that apply.

 
2007
2008
Photoshop Camera Raw Plug-in
66.5%
62.2%
Lightroom
23.6%
35.9%
Aperture
5.5%
7.5%
 
On the Mac Platform Only
Lightroom
26.6%
40.4%
Aperture
14.3%
14.6%

Even when we remove the Windows responses from the survey, it’s clear that Lightroom is preferred by a large margin over Aperture.

Ultimately numbers are just numbers so please draw your own conclusion but from my perspective, the professional community has already decided that products from the Photoshop family remain their tools of choice.

Footnotes: 

  • This research is not available free of charge so we needed InfoTrend’s permission to share a small portion of the results. 
  • The survey was conducted in North America in June & July of 2008, prior to the release of Lightroom 2. 
  • One question that should immediately spring to mind is how did the Mac only usage stay static while Aperture’s overall usage increased?  There was an increase in the number of respondents who are using the Mac platform relative to 2007 so even though the percentage of those using Aperture on the Mac remained constant, the rise in Mac usage overall brought up the total number of Aperture users in the market.

Lightroom 2.1 and Camera Raw 5.1 Now Available

Lightroom 2.1 (Mac, Win), Camera Raw 5.1 (Mac, Win) and the DNG Converter 5.1 are now available on Adobe.com.  Both releases include new camera support for the following models:

Canon EOS 1000D (Digital Rebel XS/EOS Kiss F)
Canon EOS 50D
Fuji FinePix IS Pro
Kodak EasyShare Z1015 IS
Leaf AFi II 6
Leaf AFi II 7
Leaf Aptus II 6
Leaf Aptus II 7
Nikon D700
Nikon D90
Nikon Coolpix P6000
Olympus SP-565 UZ
Pentax K2000 (K-m)
Sigma DP1
Sony A900

Lightroom 2.1 also includes a number of fixes for issues that were introduced with the Lightroom 2.0 release. The details of those fixes are listed in the Read Me file associated with the update.  I’d like to thank everyone who provided feedback on the release candidate of Lightroom 2.1 that was posted to Adobe Labs.

The beta versions of the Camera Profiles and DNG Profile Editor on Adobe Labs have also both been updated.  The Profile update includes additional profiles and incremental improvements to the previous beta profiles.  The DNG Profile Editor update includes minor enhancements.

Photoshop CS4 with Camera Raw 5 Now Shipping

The 5th major iteration of the Camera Raw plug-in is now shipping as part of Photoshop CS4.  Camera Raw 5 has a number of new features:

  • Local adjustment brush
  • Graduated Filter
  • “Post Crop” Vignetting
  • Opacity for the cloning/healing tool
  • Improved Auto Adjustment
  • Support for the new Camera Profiles that are still in beta form

The Camera Raw code is the ‘engine’ that drives the non-destructive adjustments in Lightroom’s Develop module so you’ll see that the two products are now aligned in terms of image adjustment capabilities. 

Camera Raw 5.0 is installed automatically with Photoshop CS4 so there’s no update process beyond installing Photoshop.  One important note is that the new camera support added in the last Camera Raw update for CS3 is not currently available in Camera Raw 5.0.  We’ll be providing a Camera Raw 5.1 update next week that will include additional camera support.