Possible lightroom news on Monday

Import photoshop filters....

Ok, so Tom Hogarty was at Scott Kelby's seminar in Boston today and gave a brief preview of version 1.whatever. First and foremost, he wouldn't preannounce the release date, but said "it's coming very soon". Here's what I saw:

- They're doing away with "libraries" - now they're "catalogs". You will have the ability to import and export catalogs. Options include whether or not to include a copy of the original source file and the previews. This will make it easy to move images from one computer to another.
- Sharpening is very much improved. You have more sliders to adjust amount, radius, etc. and also some type of mask function that Tom didn't really demonstrate well (or I just didn't get it - which is absolutely possible).
- There is also a new "Clarity" control in the Basic section of develop which Tom explained as a large radius unsharp mask that adds some punch and really makes your image pop. They were thinking of naming it the Punch control and I could see why. He showed a before/after shot using the Clarity control and the new sharpening and it was awesome! Kelby said he would now give his blessing to LR sharpening after dissing it in his book and the seminar!
- You can now group and categorize Presets in all the modules.
- You can also edit and delete presets.
- They're replacing the Stamper with something called Spray Paint, which will allow you to apply keywords, rotation, and flags (and possibly other settings) across multiple images by clicking and dragging it across images in the Grid view.
- People liked the panel end markers so much that they've added a bunch of them to choose from and made it easier to apply them. There's one that is called tattoo which was developed after some German guy at Fotokina told Hogarty that the name of them meant Ass Antlers. Think of a babe with a tattoo above her butt.
- New camera support.
- Full size previews in DNG's. And, you can update the DNG whenever you choose.
- And, since Tom said all of these really should have been included in V1.0, the next update is obviously free.

So unsharp mask sliders AND a hidden unsharp mask clarity tool that uses the 15-20%, 100, 0 uber contrast fog removal settings. Good. Lightroom and its users need this.

Bring it. Sounds like I'll be using PS even less.

Cracking!

Except the end markers, what a waste of effort.. nothing about improved tagging? Argghh!

Would be nice to have a clone stamp that isn't entirely useless...but that may be asking too much. Oh well, that's what I keep good ol' CS2 around for anyway

I think there will always be a distinction between LR and PS. I would expect LR to have whole image editing and PS to remain the home of spot editing.

EOSAddict wrote in post #3245797
Except the end markers, what a waste of effort.. nothing about improved tagging? Argghh!

I agree about the end markers. As for the improved tagging, you never know. Tom didn't get into all of the changes, as he had limited time. For instance, I only found out about the full-sized previews because I asked him after the seminar. I would have asked about other pet peeves but didn't want to monopolize his time. Hopefully, there will be a lot more.

Rick,

Thanks for posting this... any idea how catalogs will be different to libraries? Will you still have to import images to work on them or will LR be able to see images in situ?

EOSAddict wrote in post #3245797
Cracking!

Aye!

How exciting!

EOSAddict wrote in post #3246155
any idea how catalogs will be different to libraries? Will you still have to import images to work on them or will LR be able to see images in situ?

Al - Quite honestly, I can't see any difference other than the names. The ability to export and import the information from one catalog to the other is the key, not what they call it. A rose by any other name..........

As for the import, there was no change mentioned and I'm sure it would be if there was. But, if you don't import the images into LR, then you would have to deal with sidecar files to keep track of all the information and, at least to me, that's a much worse scenario.

Agree..

more flexibility in working across libraries sounds good. Personally, I have no problem working in the LR library environment.

But as I hope to soon get a wireless laptop and would want to seamlessly work on my files across my wireless network with LR on both Laptop and main PC with files on a wirelessly shared drive, this sounds like a good thing.

All that stuff is great and all, but I just want to be able to sharpen and reduce noise EFFECTIVELY without having to export to Photoshop. Other than that I'm getting along just fine with LR the way it is... but always welcome other improvements.

And I'm happy that all the edits on my images for the POTN book were done in LR! Woo Hoo!

Lord_Malone wrote in post #3246306
but I just want to be able to sharpen and reduce noise EFFECTIVELY without having to export to Photoshop.

Lord - nothing was mentioned about improvements to noise reduction. We'll probably have to wait for 3rd parties to get involved.

speaking of which.. any mention of release of the SDK?