Adobe released a beta version of Lightroom 4 today. New features include support for location data through a map module, book making through Blurb, new video features, new shadow/highlight controls, simplified basic adjustments, new local adjustments, and space saving lossy compression for DNG files. You can find a complete list of changes here. You can downloaded the program for free and use it until the beta version expires on March 31st, 2012.
Three years ago, an Illinois man named Michael Allison was arrested for videotaping police in public in accordance with the state’s extremely strict wiretapping laws. He faced up to 75 years in prison for his crime, but a few months ago an Illinois judge ruled that the laws were unconstitutional and threw out the case. However, the State of Illinois is now appealing to the Supreme Court to have the dismissal overturned.
Earlier this year photographer Daniel Morel was shocked when a photograph he captured during the devastating earthquake in Haiti and posted to TwitPic was distributed by Agency France Presse (AFP) and published on the front page of newspapers around the world — all without his permission.
To add insult to injury, he was then sued by AFP when he sent cease and desist letters in response to the copyright infringement. The dispute has turned into a legal battle over whether images uploaded to TwitPic and shared on Twitter can be freely republished by third parties. In what might be an indication of things to come, a federal court has denied AFP’s pre-trial request to have the case thrown out. Read more…
For those of you who have been itching to try the new Content Aware Fill and Puppet Warp features in Adobe Photoshop CS5, today’s your lucky day. CS5 became available for purchase through the Adobe website, and you can now download a 30-day free trial of the software just to play around with the amazing new features if you’re not sure yet you want to upgrade.
If you’ve tried it out already, do you think the new features live up to the hype?
After a bit of confusion, Adobe has released and confirmed the Lightroom 3 Beta 2.
Some highlights of the new free beta software are:
Faster import and loading for images
Native tethered capture for Nikon and Canon cameras – upload and see images while you shoot, segment them by session. This is extremely useful for commercial and studio photography.
Luminance noise reduction – another way to reduce color noise in an image — and it looks great in this video demo at about 4:00.
Import and manage video files
Customizable watermarking capabilities
Lightroom 3 Beta 2 is available for download from the Adobe Labs site. Adobe encourages and emphasizes its response to user feedback from the Adobe community forums, as well.
Adobe has also extended the beta expiration date from April to June 30, 2010, leaving plenty of time to take the beta for a spin.
