Lightroom 4

Well it s been awhile since the last post, I have been busy doing other things that took me away from photography.

Last year we bought some new toys and went to Kruger National Park in South Africa (a few upcoming posts about that), which rekindled the fire.

For now I want to talk briefly about the latest fuel on the fire, Lightroom 4 (LR4).

From previous posts (Lightroom Goes To Kenya), you would know that LR is part of my workflow and I am a fan.

If you have a decent spec pc or mac and were sitting on the fence re LR4, jump on in.
It’s certainly worth the new reduced costs.

I am not going into detail but the following are the standouts for me:

• The Highlight slider, the recovery of detail from this slider is amazing. Fantastic for almost blown out subjects ie white herons. You can actually get detail back!! Overtly light skies can be given some depth. Have a play with it.


• The new basic develop panel as part of process 2012, is great. The new sliders make sense and make things much easier to achieve results that previously took many steps, if not a trip it Photoshop. We now have Highlights, Shadow, Black and White sliders, which do pretty much what you would expect.


• If you are into printing the new Softproof is worth the price of entry on its own.
  No more tripping to Photoshop to softproof.

If you really want to learn how to use LR4 I would highly recommend you visit Luminous Landscape and buy the LR4 guide video tutorial. It’s worth every penny.
Not only will you learn how to use LR4 you may also pick up tips for your workflow and photography in general. (I get no kickbacks from Luminous Landscape; I am just a big fan of Michael’s video tutorials)

 The other biggie for LR4 is that the Contrast slider is now important.
 Another important thing for upgraders from previous versions of LR, you don't have to upgrade your images to process 2012. If you are happy with your image in process 2010 leave it there. Converting to 2012 and trying to make it look like the 2010 version is pointless. The gains are made where you have an image done in 2010 (or earlier) and you think the new tools in process 21012 will help improve the image.

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