Adobe has once again proven its dominance in the world of digital photography post-production with the release of the fourth installment of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Lightroom 4, released in the Spring of 2012, offers professional quality editing features at a cost that even a hobbyist can afford. Lightroom also sports a far easier interface and learning curve than its cousin Adobe Photoshop CS.
Library
The Library is the digital equivalent of having an assistant that will import all of your photos and organize them for you. You can create catalogs and then import your photos into them. During the import process, you can create subfolders and name them so that you can recognize what photos they contain. The import dialog gives you the option to upload your pictures in Adobe's DNG format or leave them in RAW, JPEG, TIFF, etc. It’s also possible to add develop settings to the images as they are imported. The Library and file-handling properties of Lightroom make organizing your photos easy and allows you to concentrate more on creating and less on database management.
Develop
Lightroom 4 Develop Controls
AdobeThis is the meat and potatoes of Lightroom. It’s where the magic happens. The Develop module consists of eight main panels: Basic, Tone Curve, HSL, Split Toning, Detail, Lens Correction, Effects and Camera Calibration. The "Basic" panel is probably the most important and commonly used. Here, you can adjust exposure by up to five stops in either direction. You can also adjust temperature and tint (white balance), and fine tune the image with sliders that can control the amount of highlights, shadows, whites and blacks. In addition, there are sliders for clarity which adjusts the contrast of mid-tones, vibrance, which adjusts colors that are less-prominent in the photo and saturation which controls all of the color level in the photo. The other panels allow even deeper editing of contrast, colors, sharpness, noise reduction, chromatic aberration, distortion and vignetting just to name a few.
Packed with features
Map
With the addition of GPS modules in some of the higher-end camera bodies and third-party attachments for the rest, the "Map" module does about what you’d expect it to do. You can add metadata information that contains the GPS coordinates, altitude and other geographic location information.
Book
The "Book" module is also relatively self-explanatory. Adobe has baked in the ability to create a photo book that can be printed as a PDF, JPEG or through the bookmaking website, “Blurb”. This feature is great for wedding photographers or anyone that would like to create a keepsake for themselves, a client or a family member.
Sideshow
The slideshow module allows you to create a slideshow of photos set to music. You can add text and effects to the photos and then export them either into a PDF document (PDF documents do not support the audio feature) or into the H.264 video format in many resolutions all the way up to 1080p.
Print
The "Print" module is a powerful set of tools that allows you to set your printing parameters for you photos. You can adjust margins, resolution and color management based on the abilities of your printer and the needs of your client.
Web
The "Web" module gives you options to upload your photos to popular social networking sites as well as creating HTML or Flash-based galleries that can be uploaded to your website via FTP. Once you've linked Lightroom to your social networking sites, it will keep track of when and where you posted the photos and ask you if you'd like to re-upload them should you make any changes to them.
With the addition of GPS modules in some of the higher-end camera bodies and third-party attachments for the rest, the "Map" module does about what you’d expect it to do. You can add metadata information that contains the GPS coordinates, altitude and other geographic location information.
Book
The "Book" module is also relatively self-explanatory. Adobe has baked in the ability to create a photo book that can be printed as a PDF, JPEG or through the bookmaking website, “Blurb”. This feature is great for wedding photographers or anyone that would like to create a keepsake for themselves, a client or a family member.
Sideshow
The slideshow module allows you to create a slideshow of photos set to music. You can add text and effects to the photos and then export them either into a PDF document (PDF documents do not support the audio feature) or into the H.264 video format in many resolutions all the way up to 1080p.
The "Print" module is a powerful set of tools that allows you to set your printing parameters for you photos. You can adjust margins, resolution and color management based on the abilities of your printer and the needs of your client.
Web
The "Web" module gives you options to upload your photos to popular social networking sites as well as creating HTML or Flash-based galleries that can be uploaded to your website via FTP. Once you've linked Lightroom to your social networking sites, it will keep track of when and where you posted the photos and ask you if you'd like to re-upload them should you make any changes to them.
Conclusion
Example of corrected image using Lightroom 4
Dann Adams ©Lightroom 4 continues the tradition of being easy to use without sacrificing any of the professional-grade features that you've come to expect from Adobe. It is a must-have in your workflow and will simplify everything from organizing your photography to printing it out or publishing it on the web. It offers an incredible amount of control over all of your images and will inevitably lead you into more creative territories.
Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.