Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Ships

Today, Adobe announced the immediate availability of Photoshop Lightroom 2 after a public beta testing period of several months. Lightroom 2 offers enhancements for dual monitor support, non-destructive, selective image correction, improved search capabilities, and 64-bit support for Mac OS X 1.5 and Windows Vista.

Since April, I sent more than 100 public beta invitations for Lightroom 2 . I would love to hear some thoughts from those of you who participated in the beta. Please post your comments below.

Meanwhile, here are some details from Adobe's press release:

The enhanced Library module in Lightroom 2 helps streamline and accelerate photographers' workflows. With the ability to visually organize images across multiple hard drives, Lightroom 2 and its powerful Library Filter Bar makes it easy for users to quickly find the images they need. The Suggested Keywords feature helps photographers keyword their images by making intelligent suggestions based on their own previous efforts. New dual-monitor support allows users to expand their workspace, giving them flexibility to edit and organize images in a way that maximizes an additional display.

In the Develop module, the new Local Adjustment Brush lets photographers fine-tune specific areas of an image to precisely adjust color, exposure and tonal range without affecting other areas of the image. The new Graduated Filter expands the toolbox in Lightroom, allowing for edits to larger areas by applying gradually diminishing or increasing adjustment effects such as exposure, clarity, and saturation, alone, or in any combination. Lightroom 2 also helps photographers print more efficiently by quickly arranging photos of multiple sizes on one or many pages with flexible and customizable templates to maximize paper and ink.

Intelligent algorithms automatically determine optimal sharpening for screen or print, producing crisper images faster. Developers can further extend the Lightroom workflow with Web, Export and Metadata Software Development Kits available at the Adobe Developer Connection, http://www.adobe.com/devnet/.  

Ground-Breaking Innovation in Raw Technology  

New raw technology gives photographers access to flexible camera profiles. Camera profiles are the visual starting point for the raw processing workflow, but image preferences vary for every photographer.

To minimize surprises, Adobe is supplying default camera profiles that closely emulate the visual looks that photographers are used to seeing from their favorite camera, while also providing the ability to create highly customized profiles to suit different tastes. Camera profiles are available for immediate download on Adobe Labs (http://labs.adobe.com) for use with Lightroom 2 and Camera Raw 4.5, along with the DNG Profile Editor for the community to test and create their own profiles.  

The Adobe Camera Raw 4.5 plug-in and DNG Converter 4.5 are also now available on Adobe.com and support over 190 camera models including the Olympus E 420 and E 520 models.  

Pricing and Availability  

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is available now through the Adobe Store at www.adobe.com/store in English, French and German with the Japanese language version planned to be released at a future date. The estimated street price is USD$299 for new users with an upgrade price of USD$99 for registered users of qualifying Lightroom customers.

Recommended system requirements are Macintosh OSX 10.4, 10.5 1 GHz PowerPC G4 or G5 or Intel(r) based processor, or Microsoft Windows(r) XP SP2 or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise, Intel Pentium 4(r) processor, 1 GB RAM and a 1024x768 resolution screen.

Additional information on product features, upgrade policies, pricing, and language versions is available on www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom.

Also see:
• Review of Lightroom 1.0
• Top Digital Darkroom Software