One of the demands of concert photography can be a fast turnaround. With music photographers often feeding social media, there's a demand by clients for images as soon as possible. This need might take the form of dropping images of an artist within an hour of their set finishing at a music festival, or same night edits after a concert.

Looking for a faster photography workflow? Here are 6 tips to cut down on editing time and speed up your workflow for faster delivery.

In this article, we'll look at common bottlenecks for workflow speed and how you can make improvements at every step of your process.

Wireless Transfer + Dedicated Live Photo Editors

For events where the fastest possible turnaround is possible, wireless FTP will deliver the fastest results. No more card runners. Images are captured and transmitted wirelessly to an FTP server or other networked storage.

Combine wireless FTP with dedicated photo editors working in real time as photographers create images, images may be processed seconds after they are made. This is done most notably in professional sports where images may hit social minutes or even seconds after a game changing play.

This wireless setup is specific to high end production teams with the budget to pay for the tech and infrastructure of a robust wireless system. It also relies on photo editors, either on site or remote, who are monitoring an image stream in real time. It's out of the realm of must photographers to employ, but worth noting as we're discussing the fastest workflows.

Photography Workflow Speed Hacks for the Rest of Us

For the rest of us editing our on images either in the field or on-site, we'll explore more common ways of speeding up your workflow.

Speed improvements include:

• Optimizing your image making
• Faster memory cards
• Using faster local storage
• Faster software (Photo Mechanic)
• Optimizing Lightroom for Speed
• Lightroom Presets

You'll notice that faster computers are not included in this list, but that's a given. If you know your computer struggles with editing and processing photos, a newer, faster computer will almost always help. The focus of this article is to look at some other, less common solutions to common problems of slow photo workflows.

1. Optimize Your Shooting Workflow

A faster editing workflow starts with optimization of your image making and photography at the time of capture. A few strategies to consider:

Make fewer images

This is pretty simple, but so are some of the best solutions. When you need to have a very quick turn around of images, limit your shooting to the as close to the minimum needed to cover your shotlist or assignment.

Focus on variety over volume

Elaborating on the above, focus on creating images that are as different as possible from each other. This will focus on shifting your editing to focusing on picking between the right individual moments, rather than similar images of the same moment.

Lock/protect/rate images as you go

As you shoot, make it a habit of locking or rating images on the fly. Most photographers regularly review images, particularly after high key moments. Use this opportunity to lock or rate images that stand out. On import, you can then review these images first, which can result in massive time savings when editing.

When combined with software like Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits, which can download locked and rated images first, this is the foundation for an extremely fast workflow hack.

2. Use Faster Memory Cards

Using fast media can be a first step in a faster workflow, but not in the way you might think. Of course, using fast memory cards allows clear images quickly from the camera's buffer more quickly.

However, using memory cards with fast read speeds also allows for faster image downloads.

CFexpress cards current top out at 1760 MB/s with top performers like the Delkin Black 128GB cards. Compare this to top read speeds of 300 MB/s with the highest performance SD UHS-II cards.

In practice, I've found that XQD and CFexpress cards download twice as fast as comparable SD cards. The faster you can download cards, the faster you can cull, process and deliver images.

Shaving minutes off your workflow may not mean much for day to day photography, but this article is about achieving the fastest workflows. For events were live editing is occurring during a concert or festival, minutes matter. If you want to speed up your workflow, buy the fastest cards you can afford as well as a reader that can support their performance.

3. Use Faster Local Storage

Using fast local storage is the best option. SSD will give you the best speed and performance overall.

If you use RAID or NAS for your workflow, you may want to consider working first off solid state drives, then transferring your images to the external storage for archiving. RAID and NAS setups are excellent for redundant safeguards, but suffer in terms of pure read/write speeds.

For event photography and the fastest performance for editing, working off a single, fast drive will give you the best results. While I'm on the go, I'll work of my MacBook's internal SSD or use SanDisk Extreme SSDs. These small, portable drives are ridiculously fast and the go-to for most tour photographers I know.

SanDisk also has new SanDisk Extreme Pro SDDs that are even faster at up to 2000 MB/s read/write speeds vs the 1050 MB/s speeds of the previous generation Extreme drives.

The same goes for networked storage like a server, particularly if multiple people are connecting to the same system. Work locally, then transfer files in bulk at the end of an event.

4. Use Faster Editing Software

Faster editing and faster selects happen at the speed of software. If your software takes time and processing power to preview images, you're being slowed down. Adobe Lightroom and Bridge want to render their own previews from the RAW data by default. You can generate previews in batch, but it takes more time and processing.

The best solution to faster editing is Photo Mechanic. This software reads the built-in JPG of RAW files and loads images instantly. As a result, you're never waiting for images to load before making a selection. If there's one recommendation I can make to speed up your photography workflow, it's using Photo Mechanic.

You can more more in depth about by Photo Mechanic is my choice for ingesting and selecting images. Only after selects are made do I import images to Lightroom.

5. Optimize Lightroom for Speed

There are a number of optimizations you can make to Lightroom. We'll look at two: optimizing catalogues and optimizing the overall software performance preferences.

Individual Lightroom Catalogues are Faster

Creating individual Lightroom catalogues is a great step toward optimization. This creates lighter, smaller catalogues that have fewer liabilities and fewer assets to manage. Remember, Lightroom is not just an image browser but cataloguing that indexes and manages the metadata of every image in it, as well as all the sidecar data of RAW adjustments.

Lightroom runs best when catalogues of fewer than 10,000 images. Even better, create new catalogues for each event or concert.

Lightroom Performance Preferences

You can change a few simple settings in Lightroom to get better performance. These settings are in Performance section of the preferences pane.

One easy settings adjustment you can make is to increase the size of your cache beyond the 5GB default. If you consistently have a large volume of free space on your internal drive (or fast attached drives), this is an easy change. For today's large RAW files, 25-50GB cache may be more appropriate than the default 5GB.

Read more about how to optimize your Lightroom Catalogue in this informative Petapixel article by DL Cade. If you use other processing software like Capture One, the same philosophy applies.

One note: even with optimizing Lightroom, I still recommend Photo Mechanic as stand alone editing software. It's just that good.

6. Lightroom Presets — Processing and Export

Using presets can speed up your photography workflow massively. We'll look at two kinds of presets that can improve your workflow: processing and export.

RAW Processing Presets

Whether you process for a very toned look or make more neutral adjustments to your images, having a preset will save you time.

If you're like me, at the very least, you make basic adjustments to most of your RAW images. A little increase to exposure, bump to contrast, bring down the highlights, increase the shadows, and a little S-curve to tone curve.

While I can make these adjustments in under 5-10 seconds, I have a basic preset that includes a base starting point helps shave off valuable seconds to every image. Then, I can focus on aspects of the image that do need more particular focus like color and white balance.

Export Presets

You likely have export resets set for your common image delivery formats. If not creating new export presets in Lightroom can help automate common tasks, particularly if you need to export multiple batches of images.

For music photographers, it's common for clients to have their own export requirements, whether it's for their own delivery or for creating consistency as with a festival media team.

Summary for Faster Photography Workflows

I hope that some of these tips can be easily incorporated into your workflows. From software to approach, there are ways big and small that can improve the speed of your workflow. A workflow is ultimately a series of individual steps. Finding efficiencies at every step add up to reduce time.

I'd encourage you to look at your own workflow to see what your biggest pain points are. Are they slow software? Time spent processing images? Exporting images?

Some fixes are easy to identify, such as a slow computer. But I hope this article has given you some other less obvious ways to find small efficiencies in your workflow. For event photography, concerts photography and other fast paced genres, seconds and minutes in your workflow can add up to dramatic effect.

The post 6 tips for a Faster Editing & Processing workflow for Event Photography appeared first on ishootshows.com.

Looking for a faster editingworkflow? Leave Lightroom for processing RAW files. Photo Mechanic is the fastest way to make selects.

Whatever your terminology for it, the process of culling, editing or selecting photos can be very time consuming. Choosing images takes time, but one's choice of software can have a huge effect on speed as well.

When you need to edit images quickly, there's only once choice: Photo Mechanic. In this article, I'll dive into why ever photographer working in events and when fast delivery is essential should be using Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits..

Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits is custom made to make selections as quickly as possible and this precisely what I use it for. There are other functions of the app where it excels, such as metadata and ITCP data, but my favorite use is with editing.

Why use a dedicated piece of software for culling when Adobe Lightroom can do the same thing? A few reasons.

Photo Mechanic Loads Images Faster

The most compelling reason to use Photo Mechanic over Lightroom is that it is much faster at loading images. Lightroom's default is create its own preview image for every single file. This takes processing power as well as time.

Any user of Lightroom is familiar with importing a set of images and starting to edit. When you go from one image to the next, there's a noticeable delay. The reason for this is that Lightroom is rendering it's own image preview from the RAW data.

Photo Mechanic, on the other hand, uses the built in JPG of the RAW file to create its previews. As a result, images load instantaneously. When going through images in sequence quickly, this speed is essential for an efficient workflow.

After selecting images in Photo Mechanic, I'll then import only my selects to Adobe Lightroom.

Photo Mechanic Doesn't Rely on Catalogues

Another reason I love Photo Mechanic is that it is lightweight. The app essentially acts as a file browser rather than cataloguing software, as in the case of Lightroom.

This difference means that you can load folders of images in Photo Mechanic without needing to save a catalogue file. It also makes browsing images fast, whether you're looking through existing folders or using the software to ingest or download images.

Creates More Efficient Lightroom Catalogues

Finally, smaller catalogues are more efficient catalogues. Smaller catalogues are faster to index, load and process.

Since I'm only importing selects to Lightroom, my Lightroom catalogues are streamlined and more efficient. So long as I've done a proper image selection, there's very little need to have any images I won't be editing in my LR catalogue.

The benefits to your catalogue will be faster loading and smaller sizes. Both of these will aid in your computer performance overall.

After making selects in Photo Mechanic, I literally just drag and drop those files into Lightroom. That's it. Filter images to show my selects, select all, drag them into Lightroom. It's that easy.

Photo Mechanic has More Powerful Ingest Options

The instantaneous speed at which Photo Mechanic loads one image after another is reason enough to use this software, but it is not the only reason.

Another reason I love Photo Mechanic is for the more sophisticated ingest options. With Lightroom, the options are simple. You can ignore suspected duplicate files, tweak basic preview options, keyword and apply a preset.

With Photo Mechanic, the ingest options are much more robust. Among them are the abilities to:

• Copy images to a primary and secondary location
• Erase media after ingest
• Unmount media after ingest
• Apply metadata template to images
• Rename images on ingest
• Download locked or rated images first

Of these, many of common solutions that add up to a superior workflow, especially for photographers working in events such as live music, festival media teams, sports and photojournalism.

Ingesting Protected/Rated Images: The Ultimate Speed Hack

The feature of Photo Mechanic downloading protected and locked images is low key one of the ultimate workflow hacks I can share with you. I learned this from my friend Brad Moore, who is a fantastic music photographer. Nikon cameras like the Nikon Z 9 have included image protection buttons as a default, dedicated UI option. The reason for this is to easily and quickly lock images against deletion while reviewing in camera.

However, the ability to protect images in this manner also dovetails perfectly as a workflow solution to flag images for editing. Whether a photographer does this for an independent photo editor or themselves, being able to lock images while photographing has become an essential part of my workflow.

Photo Mechanic's ability to download protected images first is truly a game changer. While I'm photographing, I naturally review images anyway. Protecting images in camera is extremely quick and adds only a very small amount of time to something I'm already doing. The benefit of essentially doing a first round edit in-camera and then having those images download first is one of the best things you can do to speed up your workflow.

The Fastest Editing Workflow for Event Photography I've Found

When I'm working on a media team for a music festival doing a self-edit, I'm often downloading and processing images in between my assignments.

Using this image protection/Photo Mechanic workflow, I can very quickly do a second and third round of selects. Often, I'm done with my final edit before the memory card is finished downloading. Then, I'm able to quickly process images, export, deliver and get back out shooting in a matter of minutes.

Trust me. Try it, you will love it. While Nikon cameras make protecting images as easy as a one-button press, rating images will also give the same benefit. Do whatever is easiest for your system.

Summary

When people lament the time it takes culling or editing photos, my very first suggestion is to start using Photo Mechanic. Camera Bits has created software that is custom made to speed your photography workflow for selecting images to process.

If you're working on tight deadlines doing same night edits for clients, Photo Mechanic is for you. For any kind of high volume photography where tight deadlines are essential, you need this software. From tour photography to sports, festival media teams to photojournalism, this is software that will dramatically speed up your workflow.

I have zero affiliation with Camera Bits or Photo Mechanic other than loving their software, by the way. I simply love this software. It's saved me untold hours and days in the decade I've been using it.

Camera Bits offers a free, 30 day trial of Photo Mechanic. Use it for your next event, you'll love it.

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As a music photographer, I'm often in a position where I shoot a large volume of images and have to turn them around in very short order. An efficient workflow for editing, processing, and delivering digital photography is therefore critical.

Whether I'm shooting on assignment, for the band, or for a corporate client, my workflow is largely the same. Here's what I've found to be an extremely efficient digital photography workflow, from file import to delivery and backup.

Here are the 9 main steps I'll discuss in my photography workflow:

1. Ingest
2. Metatag
3. Edit
4. Catalog
5. Process
6. Export
7. Upload
8. Deliver
9. Backup

1. Ingest

The first thing I do with my photos is to download all images to my to my Synology DS1813+ NAS using the application Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits. All images from a single shoot are downloaded to a date-marked folder (2015-02-15 Example Photo Shoot). I have Photo Mechanic set to also automatically append the filename to include the date (YYYYMMDD format) as well as the hour (24 hour format), minute and second. This file naming allows for easy file sorting during editing and prevents any confusion about the creation of date of the image.

2. Metatag

Following import, I will apply metadata to images based on the content. This includes, but is not limited to, IPTC data for the title, caption, and keywords, which are the three most important fields for image use and discovery. The reason metatagging is not done at the time of import, which Photo Mechanic is capable of doing, is because different images from the same shoot may possess different metadata. If the same metadata applies to all images, then I will perform metatagging for all images at the time of import.

3. Edit

After ingest, I perform editing in Photo Mechanic. The reason Photo Mechanic is used for editing instead of Lightroom is that it's far faster to load and render RAW files. Unlike Lightroom, which will by default render its own image preview for every image, Photo Mechanic uses the built-in JPG of RAW files, which dramatically cuts down on processing time needed to display each image. Editing is done using a star rating system. I will generally go to the level of three stars, which translates to three combined scans of the images for positive selection. Starting at one star and reviewing all images, I'll select images for compelling subject, timing, and lighting. All one-star images are then reviewed and the best and most unique images will be promoted two stars. This process is repeated again for the three-star rating, with an even more critical eye on the content and uniqueness of the images. While editing, I will also do negative culling as well, deleting any images have no possible use — images that are remarkable out of focus, accidental exposures, grossly under/overexposed images beyond saving, etc.

4. Catalog

After the editing process reaches the level of three stars, I'll import the images into Adobe Lightroom for cataloging. Another benefit of not ingesting the full import with Lightroom is that its catalogs are kept much smaller. Instead of a catalog that includes every image from a shoot, only the best images are indexed, which makes greatly increases efficiency and creates much smaller catalog files. If you work with set image presets for sharpening, noise reduction, and so forth, now is also the time to apply those adjustments either automatically upon import or manually via batch application.

5. Processing & Retouching

Adobe Lightroom handles all imaging adjustments for the majority of my images, and Lightroom offers extremely capable RAW processing. Most of my processing needs are met by Lightroom's basic RAW adjustment panel, including white balance, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and black levels.* Beyond RAW processing, Lightroom also offers sharpening and other image adjustments that are generally more than sufficient for my needs. When dedicated retouching is needed, as in the case of promotional portraits or images intended for commercial use, I'll turn to Adobe PhotoShop for extra polish.

For Lightroom users, one setting I encourage everyone use is the use of .XMP sidecar files; by default this feature is turned off in Lightroom's Preferences, but enabling it will write all RAW adjustments to a .XMP file that can be easily read in the future. The standard is for Lightroom to write all RAW adjustments to the master catalogue, but should the catalogue file become corrupt or if you frequently change catalogues, using .XMP files to store adjustments can make working much smoother.

6. Export

Following processing, all final images are exported to a subfolder marked “High Res Output.” Images files are saved as 100% quality JPGs at their full resolution. I prefer to use JPG because of the universal nature of the image file — very rarely is the quality of a TIF needed, and should that be the case, I'll almost always go back to the original RAW file anyway to really dial in the processing and retouching. All of this export is done with a single Lightroom export preset. If there are specific output needs, creating export presets in Lightroom for your most commonly used settings will help streamline your workflow immensely.

7. Upload

The high res JPGs are then uploaded to my cloud photo service, PhotoShelter, into an individual gallery. Images can added to other galleries and further organized, as well as be priced for print sales or rights-managed licensing. Absolutely all final selects from my shoots are uploaded to PhotoShelter — even if the end goal is simply for having a cloud archive or client delivery without any forward-facing, public use. In this sense, I'm able to have a complete online archive of my work that's accessible anywhere with an internet connection.

8. Deliver

Once images are online with PhotoShelter, I can deliver images to clients as a gallery link with download privileges, send via FTP, email individual images, and more. Since all images are uploaded to PhotoShelter, which also powers my portfolio, it's also incredibly easy to make updates and showcase new work at this stage. I'm also able to easily embed images to www.ishootshows.com, making PhotoShelter effectively act as a CDN for this site, thereby reducing overall web server resources and bandwidth usage.

9. Backup

The last stage is backing up. Whether it's an automated system handled by software or a manual backup of copying over files to secondary storage, all photographers should be backing up their files regularly and reliably. My current backup plan includes bare drives stored off-site from my primary storage and using WD 4TB drives with the Anker Drive Dock with USB 3.0 and eSATA. Backup can be performed by the application SuperDuper!, which can make scheduled copies and verify data fidelity after each backup, or manually backing up new files.

End Notes on a Digital Photography Workflow

To review, these are the steps for my digital photography workflow:

1. Ingest
2. Metatag
3. Edit
4. Catalog
5. Process
6. Export
7. Upload
8. Deliver
9. Backup

The above workflow is what I use for 99% of all my photography work. It's the series of steps that I've found to be most efficient for high volume, short turn-around photography — and needless to say, it works well for less intensive needs just as well.

Whatever system you use for your photography, it should be just that — a system. Experimentation aside, using the same repeatable steps will allow for the most efficiency and the least time in front of the computer. After all, the less unnecessary time we spend on our digital workflow, the most we have time for the fun stuff — shooting.

The post The Digital Photographer’s Workflow For RAW Files appeared first on ishootshows.com.

You're probably seen it before. Strange waves or rings of color and tone rippling over fabric, or perhaps weird, maze-like squiggles instead of parallel lines when you're zoomed in at 100% in Photoshop. This is called a moiré pattern.

Moiré patterns are artifacts that have a fixture of digital imaging, but which have been most recently thrown into contrast recently with introduction cameras like the Nikon D800E and Leica M9, which are more prone to producing moiré patterns.

Here's an in-depth look at the causes of moiré, what it looks like and what it may mean to your photography.

The Anti-Aliasing Predicament

The Nikon D800E is one of the first mainstream DSLRs with no anti-aliasing applied at the sensor level. Traditionally, anti-aliasing filters are used with almost all DSLR sensors to reduce instances of moiré and false color artifacts.

With no anti-aliasing applied, the D800E offers exceptional detail, but also a higher chance of producing these moiré artifacts. It also has many photography deciding whether the Nikon D800 or D800E is the right camera for them.

While cameras like the Leica M9 and Sigma's line of DSLRs (which use non-Bayer sensors) don't feature anti-aliasing filters in the optical chain, the D800 and D800E are unique in that they offer choice, which thrusts the issue of moiré into more stark scrutiny.

What Is Moiré?

In essence, moiré occurs when two patterns are overlaid and result in a new, third pattern. With digital photography, these artifacts result when the frequency of detail in a scene exceeds the sensor's pixel pitch and ability to resolve “real” information.

Moiré wasn't an issue with film because the photo sensitive grains in film are arranged in a much more random, organic way.

Moiré artifacts can be an issue with any digital sensor, but particularly with the Bayer-type sensor of individual red, green and blue pixels, as the spacing between like-color pixels can result in even more errors. (New cameras like the Fuji X-Pro1 claim to address moiré with a different, more random arrangement of the RGB pixels, which should reduce instances of moiré.)

When information (scene detail) can't be accurately recorded distinctly by one pixel or another, errors can result. These errors can take the form the wrong value (luminance) or color (chrominance) for pixels.

In contrast to pixels errors that result in digital noise, which are random, moiré artifacts are distinct and localized to the area of the “offending” detail.

More Pixel, Less Moiré

In general, the finer the pixel pitch and/or resolution of a sensor, the fewer instances of moiré should be rendered. This is logical, since a “coarse” capture of information is precisely what fosters the errors that produce moiré.

With higher resolution sensors, not only is more information captured, it's captured more precisely. This is one reason why high resolution medium format digital backs lack anti-aliasing filters and record exceptional detail.

Color Moiré

Color moiré is one of the most common instances of moiré and occurs when inaccurate color information is recorded. It often looks like a rainbow or a rippling of weird color over fabric. This happens most readily with very fine patterns or fabric with a high level of sheen.

Thankfully, color moire it's generally one of the easier types of moiré to reduce, as only the color channel is affected, not the luminance channel.

Here's an example of some mild color moiré produced by the tight diagonal pattern of a shirt's fabric at 200%:

You can clearly see a small but distinct rainbow pattern created in between the black bars of this pattern. Thankfully, it's easily removed if shooting RAW.

Reducing Color Moiré

In this next sample, we see the same region that's been treated with the Adjustment Brush to reduce moiré in Adobe Lightroom 4. This is a new feature to Adobe Lightroom – it's as easy as “painting on” the effect to the problem areas.

At 50% strength with the moiré reduction brush, we see pretty much a 100% elimination of the color moiré. Since this is a black and white fabric with basically no color information, it would be possible to eliminate these color artifacts by desaturating in Photoshop.

With colored areas, the adjustment brush still works quire well, but might not entirely remove all instances of color moiré.

Maze Artifacts

Maze artifacts are less common than color moiré, but they're also more difficult to remove, since the errors that occur are in the luminance channel. Unlike color moiré, where it's possible to shift the color back to normal, maze artifacts affect the value of the pixels, so it's a much more “structural” kind of error. If color moiré were like accidentally paining one wall of a house the wrong color, then a maze artifact is like having a wall in completely different place in the house than it was originally intended.

Maze artifacts often occur when there are parallel lines at the limit of the sensor's ability to resolve detail. Because the detail doesn't fall precisely over one sensor pixel or another, the sensor essentially has to “guess” at what's right, which can result in errors. These errors can take the form of connection between the parallel lines, hence the name “maze” given to these artifacts.

Here's one typical example maze artifacts, created by the repeating lines of a metal fence, visible in the center of the frame:

Since these errors occur on the pixel level, they're often very small, as in this sample. At 200%, the artifacts become more noticeable.

Again, the errors are subtle. For most types of photography, these very minor types of moiré aren't a huge issue. However, with cameras like the Nikon D800E or Leica M9, with no anti-aliasing filters, these effects would be even more pronounced.

In the below 100% crop, you can see another example of these types of maze artifacts on the left of the image at 100%:

In this 200% crop, you can more clearly see the moiré artifacts in the AC unit on the left, particularly the lower left of the grate:

Reducing Maze Artifacts

Since the RAW processing software used interets what the sensor records, using different RAW converters can have a big impact on the rendering of moiré, depending on the sophistication of the software. The above sample was rendered using Adobe Lightroom 4.

Processing the same file with another program, Raw Photo Processor, renders an image with almost no color moiré and a drastic reduction in the maze effect.

Here's a final image of the above file converted with RPP using the program's sharpening setting of 4.0 and a local contrast adjustment of 5, which makes it closer to the standard sharpening setting of Adobe Lightroom.

There's still a degree of aliasing due to the linear detail at the limit of the sensor's resolution, but the maze effect is still greatly diminished.

Short of using different RAW converters, maze artifacts are very hard to remove. The upshot is that since the errors occur at the pixel leve, they generally affect small areas of the image and may not be noticeable at most normal output and viewing distances.

Avoiding Moiré

The post Understanding Moiré Patterns in Digital Photography appeared first on ishootshows.com.

Today Adobe has released the beta version of Lightroom4, the successor to their popular image management and RAW processing program. As regular readers will know, Adobe Lightroom 3 is my RAW processor of choice, so I'm very interested to see how the new beta release performs. Lightroom 3 was a massive update to the series with substantial updates to the RAW conversion engine, especially in terms of noise reduction. Will Lightroom 4 live up to the challenge and set a new, even higher bar for image quality?

New Features

Adobe boasts a number of new features in the Lightroom 4 Beta, including:

• Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.
• Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.
• Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.
• White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.
• Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.
• Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.
• Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr®.
• Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
• Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

Let's take a look at some of the more interesting of these features.

Simplified Basic Editing Panel

Compared to Lightroom 3, the Lightroom 4 Beta features a simplified basic editing panel. Gone are the sliders for Recovery and Fill Light, as are the Brightness and Contrast options. Don't worry, those functions aren't gone. Instead, the editing sliders now correspond more intuitively to the image tones – Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks.

Instead of increasing Recovery to bring back highlight tones, in Lightroom 4 one adjusts the Highlights slider to a negative amount. While the effect is the same, the difference now is that one can also increase the highlights part of the histogram as well by dialing in a positive amount. This change effectively doubles the functionality from simple highlight recovery to a real and full tone adjustment – much more useful overall. Think of the new Hightlights slider as tugging on the tone curve, in a way. A Shadows slider similarly replaces the Fill Light slider of Lightroom 3.

Updated Adjustments Brush

With the Adjustments Brush panel, we see some big improvements and a much better granularity of what you can do with this tool. Specifically, we now have the ability to adjust essentially all the same variables as in the Basic editing panel, including Highlights, Shadows and White Balance. The latter is particularly a nice addition and a great improvement over the limited ability of Lightroom 3 to do color corrections via a color shift.

In addition, we have the ability to adjust noise and moiré locally, though not to the same degree as with the full Details panel.

I think that for power users, this ability for much better local adjustments may just be the best feature of Lightroom 4.

Updated Camera Calibrations

Download Adobe Lightroom 4 Beta

You can download the new Lightroom 4 Beta directly from Adobe. This is a free beta copy of the software, which will expire once the full version of the program is released.

Concluding Thoughts

At first glance, Lightroom 4 doesn't seem like so much a revolutionary leap as Lightroom 3 was from version 2, but I think that the update represents a very nice refinement to the software.

The ability to now have very precise local adjustments to WB and noise are especially interesting. I think the fact that nearly the entire Basic Editing panel can be applied locally is going to make post processing and retouching all the more complete in Lightroom, and that fewer and fewer photographers may be going into Photoshop to achieve what's now possible with Lightroom 4 Beta.

If you've been using the Lightroom 4 Beta, what do you think? Anything missing from Lightroom 3 that you would want back, or new features that you love?

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