My colleague Julieanne Kost has been doing a daily series on her blog where she's been outlining the small, but important enhancements in Lightroom 4 that could easily be overlooked. These are the kind of enhancements that would probably never make the brochure, but will impact our use of Lightroom 4 everyday. I thought she did such a fantastic job that I copied them and posted them below. 🙂 However, you shouldn't let that stop you from checking out her blog directly. She has a TON of Lightroom and Photoshop information there. See Julieanne's blog here.
Enhancements to the Library Module
• In the Folder panel, you can now move and/or delete multiple folders at one time.
• In the Collection panel, Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) a collection to duplicate it. More specifically, if the collection is loose (it’s not in a Collection Set), Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) until a thicker line appear between two items (indicating that the collection will be duplicated), and release. To duplicate a collection within a Collection Set or to duplicate the collection into a different Collection Set, Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) the collection on top of the Collection Set icon (watch for the highlight) and release.
• Stacking is now available in Collections.
• At the top of the Filmstrip bar, the selected image’s folder or collection is displayed. (This is really handy when in other modules.)
• The Flag attribute is now global.
Terry's Soapbox WARNING! – If anyone has ever attended one of my Lightroom sessions at Photoshop World or other workshops you'll know that I've made it a point to say that "I didn't like the way Flags worked in LR 2 and LR 3." If we go back to LR 1 when you flagged an image with a Pick Flag, that flag would be present no matter where that image went (say you dragged it into a collection for example). In LR 2 (I think it was 2) the Pick flag behavior got changed so that the Picks would only be present in the location that you assigned them. For example if you Flagged an image in a folder and then dragged that same image to a collection the Pick Flag would NOT be there in the collection. I thought this was a bug at first and complained about it to the LR team repeatedly. Eventually someone explained to me that this "new" behavior was intentional and that Picks should be local. I got the logic of this as it gave the user the ability to have Picks in one place that were different than another place. Although I got it, I never really liked it! I always felt that a Pick is a Pick and that at a minimum it should be a preference "Picks are Local or Global". For this reason I started using Color Labels more because they were Global! It would appear that this decision has been reversed in Lightroom 4 and now Picks are back to being Global again ala LR 1. Woot! …stepping down from my soapbox now.
• You can filter and/or search images based on their Metadata status. Images will be assigned one of several different statuses including Changed on Disk, Conflict Detected, Has Been Changed, Unknown and/or Up to Date).
• You can also search/filter on Map Locations and GPS Data (GPS Location or No GPS Location).
• That folder structure that you carefully crafted in the Develop module to hold your presets is now maintained both in the Import dialog box as well as the Quick Develop panel.
Enhancements to the Develop Module
• Snapshots now auto name with a time/date stamp.
• The White Balance Selector Tool’s sample area is dependent on zoom level. (Zoom in to sample a smaller area.)
• Noise reduction adjustments are always displayed (regardless of the zoom viewed).
• The Navigator panels in both the Library and Develop Module have two new options for zooming 1:8 and 1:16.
• This one isn’t new, but when using the Adjustment Brush, clicking on the disclosure triangle to the right of “Effect” displays an amount slider to increase/decrease all of the adjustments applied to that adjustment at one time.
Enhancements in the Output Modules
• Settings in the output modules (Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web) are “sticky”. When you leave a module and come back to it – even if you change the folder of images – the settings will remain as they were the last time you visited the module. This is an excellent addition if you’re working with one set of photographs and then move to another set of photographs and want the same output settings.
• In order to save output settings with a set of photographs, click the Create Saved Book, Slideshow, Print etc. button in the bar at the top of the creation’s preview area.
• Flash Galleries in the Web Module are now color managed.
Enhancements to the Export Options
• When exporting files, in the Metadata section, you can choose to Remove Location Information. Note: this option is only available when choosing either “All” or “All Except Camera and Camera Raw Information” as it doesn’t make sense with the other options.
• It is now possible to export images directly to Adobe Revel to be used on your mobile phone or tablet device. Use the “Export To” pull-down menu at the top of the Export dialog.
• Export to DVD is now available on 64-bit Windows machines.
• In the External Editing Preferences, you can now choose to “Stack with Original”. Or not. : )
Enhancements to Publish Services
• In the Lightroom 4 Beta, only the Facebook and Flickr plug-ins are installed in the Publish Services panel by default. However a button has been added directly underneath them to easily “Find More Services Online”. Although it might seem like added work to have to install a plug in, there is an advantage – if a plug-in is not baked into the application, it can be updated by the developer at any time.
• Publish Services (collections) can now include video.
• After making small changes to images (such as adding a keyword etc.) in Publish Services (collections), you may not want to republish the images, If you do not want to republish, simply select the images and Control -click (Mac) / Right Mouse -click (Win) and select “Mark as Up-To-Date”.
Additional Preferences
• On Mac, in the General preferences, you can now choose your preferred Language.
• Under Presets, several features have options to Restore Presets and Templates to their defaults. This may be very useful in teaching environments.
• In the External Editing preferences, you can now choose to “Stack with original”.
• Under the File Handling Preferences, be sure to keep the “Embed Fast Load Data” checked on for DNG. This can enable DNG files to load up to 8x faster in the Develop module and will only cost you approximately 200K per image!
You can download your copy of the Lightroom 4 Public Beta here for FREE
Also if you missed it, here's my walkthrough of many of the new features of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Public Beta
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0F_5oG1euA
Thank you, Terry – and Julieanne. LR4 Beta is fantastic!!
I’m afraid that I think that going back to the old type global flags is a bot retrograde – esp if you have a well established workflow (I do – I’ve been using Lightroom since the first beta). Shame it’s not possible to let the user have the choice of how flags operate?
Quite frankly, I have actually stopped using the LR4 beta for anything practical because of the flagging behavior. Working around it just isn’t worth the time for me. I often use flags to refine things, or use collections for sets of candidates (like “candidates for online”) and then have the ability to pick the ones I want without adding additional collections.
I also like to use flags as temporary markers and only transfer the picks to a collection when I’m done since flags don’t work as a toggle like the “add to target collection” command, which you have to be really careful with so you don’t actually remove an image that is already in there (thus requiring to work through images sequentially), and it also allows me to see selected images in context with the alternatives. Using flags over collections, I can also quickly tell which images are already picked and which are not instead of always going to the target collection to check.
If I ever have a definitive set of “final” images (for instance on a studio shoot), they always go into a collection. Most of these are then retouched anyway, so strictly speaking, the RAW image isn’t the final pick anyway, but the retouched PSD or a TIF file from a retoucher, so the notion of a final pick on the raw images is kind of absurd anyway.
The changed flagging behavior is a total deal breaker for me and slows down my editing workflow by up to 20-30% depending on the type of images I’m editing (not to mention the additional collections required clutter the collections list and make it harder to find stuff or go back and look at alternatives). If this change isn’t made optional in the final release (such as a per-catalog or per-collection setting), or two types of flagging are introduced (one local, one global, and it doesn’t have to be flags, it could be the addition of something like the traffic light system Hasselblad uses), I’m afraid all the other enhancements in Lightroom 4 are not going to help me at all. I mentioned those problems on the beta forums as well.
Also, what happens to all the work that has gone into local flags in collections in older catalogs? The new version wouldn’t be able to retain them when upgrading the old catalog.
I can see why you like the new behavior, but personally, I think it has way too many disadvantages compared to local flags. If I ever need anything global, I use collections or color labels.
I’m with Peter on the flags. It would be nice if the behaviour of the flags, local or global, could be set by the user.
I use flags when I do a quick run through a shoot, pick my picks and move them to a collection where a more thorough scrutiny of the shots are done before editing the finals.
I find the speed of the sliders in the develop modules to be terribly slow. I’m running a 2.8 Quad Xeon Mac Pro with 16 GB of Ram and an SSD with the images on a 1.5TB HD.
They are much more responsive in LR3.
Terry, gr8 post. Always looking for great inside info and insight into LR and LR Betas. 🙂
TErry – Great post. I’ve just returned to school and purchased LR 3 for my new back a month ago. The school Mac use LR3.6 and I *have* to use them for in-class work (and who wouldn’t with the 27″ display??!!). I work off an external HD for the catalog and images, so it’s pretty agnostic WRT which Mac it’s attached to. However, if I upgrade to LR 4 on my Mac when LR is finally released, will I be able to work on the school’s Mac running LR3.6 (assuming they don’t upgrade this semester [likely]) AND my Mac or should I wait to upgrade on my Mac until the school does?
Will my recent LR3 purchase allow me a free upgrade to LR4?
If you don’t know, could you point me to the right place in Adobe to get answers?
Thanks.
CPB
Just thought I’d mention for the uk people, amazon have LR3 down from £240.00 to £95.00 until march. I’m guesing it’s worth getting at the knock down price…..probably cheaper to get this and an upgrade to 4 when it comes out than the new version only!