What's New in Adobe Lightroom 4 (Public Beta)?

[♫Rock music♫] [Adobe Creative Suite] [Podcast] [Learn CS5] [with your host] [Terry White] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast. My name is Terry White. It's my pleasure today to walk you through the new features of the brand new Adobe Lightroom 4. Now this is a public beta, so that means it's not done yet. It's a beta product that's not been released. So therefore, you should proceed accordingly. This is not ready for primetime or ready for production work. However, as public beta, you can begin downloading it, testing it, trying out the features I'm going to show you, plus the features I don't get a chance to show you, and check out what's in store, and more importantly, give us feedback on what you'd like to see in this version or future versions. Just go head over to labs.adobe.com. Do the download, and again, that's where you can find the forms to give us feedback as well. So with that said, I am a photographer. I work for Adobe, and therefore, I use Lightroom every day. I'm in this product all the time, so I couldn't be more excited to see a new version of Lightroom. Now again, this is not a deep dive. I'm not going to get a chance to go through every single feature and every single module. This is more just a walkthrough of the main new features, so that you can just go ahead and jump right in yourself and know what to look for when you get your download. With that said, since this is a podcast, we will do additional episodes going forward on the new features, more in-depth, more in tune with what's in the product as it becomes available and as it gets closer to release. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. So I'm in the Lightroom 4 interface, and as you can tell, it looks very much like the Lightroom 3 interface, which looked like the Lightroom 2 interface. We don't make a huge shift in interface changes in Lightroom. However, you will notice a couple of new modules. You'll notice that in addition to Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web, we now have a Map and Book module as well. We'll get to those in just a second. Now the other thing you'll note is that although Lightroom 3 could import video and you could see it, that was pretty much it. You couldn't really do much else with the video. So in Lightroom 4, the video that you bring in from your DSLR or from your point-and-shoot or whatever camera you're shooting video with, more than likely you'll be able to do a lot more with that video coming in the Lightroom. So I have a video here from one of my latest shoots. I did an Egyptian theme shoot, and I did--or actually one of the people on set did a behind-the-scenes, just a quick pan of the video camera as I was shooting. So I'm actually just moving my mouse back and forth across this thumbnail, and it's kind of giving me a preview of what that clip is without me having to double click on it, click on it, or do anything else. So I can also see that it's 53 seconds, so again, it's really short. Let's go ahead and double click on it, and bring into the loop view for video. Now you can see that we have a timeline here at the bottom or a play head and play button, so I can play the video right here in Lightroom. Lightroom works with the most common video formats--in H.264, in AVCHD as well. So I can either play it. I can scroll through it. And one of my favorite things and this is going to be kind of the thing that people will want to do a lot with videos-- keep in mind this was shot--this particular video was shot with an iPhone 4S, so it's 1080P, that means it's 1920 x 1080 resolution. So with that said, I can actually just flip over here to a button, and I can capture a frame from that video. So in otherwords, I'm basically going to use this video to grab a still from it, and when I do that, and I go back to my thumbnails, you can see that it added that jpeg frame right into the same folder, same grouping that I had done before--same collection. So that's just the quick way to get a still from a video. Now beyond that, let's say I want to use this video in a project or use it going forward. Now keep in mind, I'm a video editor as well and my main tool for video editing is Adobe Premier Pro CS55. However, for something quick if it's already here, I might as well do it while I'm here in Lightroom. So for example, there is some basic editing, some trimming here. So I'm just going to go ahead and click the little gear here to bring up the trim mode. What I can do is scroll through the video, and this video starts off, and again, she's just walking around both of us. While I'm shooting, it goes to me. Then it goes back to the model and then it eventually comes back to me. That's what I don't want. I don't want that part where it comes back to me. So I'm just going to go back to right before my lens--right as my lens is coming into view, maybe right about there. And I'm going to say that that's where I want the video to stop. And again, it's giving us something down and dirty. It's probably not the best editing job or cropping job to begin with, but it just lets me trim that in to say that this 26 seconds is all that I'm concerned with about this video. I don't want what comes after that. Now another thing that you can do is you can find a frame in the video that you like, and you can also set that as the poster frame. In other words, the thumbnail that shows up in your group view inside of Lightroom, and when you export the video out, it supports the poster frame in players like Quicktime, and so forth and so on. So I just set that particular frame as my poster frame as well. Now speaking of export, we have a few different options. You can go to your file menu, and you can export out the video, and now you'll find a few more video options here. Before we used to just have Include Video Files, now we actually let you choose the format-- H.264, DPX, or the original format, so whatever the video was, put it back out in that same format, but H.264, you'll probably find to be the most compatible, and you also get to choose the quality--maximum quality, high, medium and low. That will actually produce a video of just the trimmed, edited part that you did. Now another thing that's kind of hidden is that you can also drag and drop your video into your published collections for Facebook and Flicker. That's right. You can publish videos from Lightroom that you trimmed and have done a little editing with right out to your Facebook and Flicker accounts as a published service. The last thing that's kind of--you wouldn't think to do it here is that in video you can also use the quick develop features. So for example, if that video were a little too bright, I can actually tone it down here in Lightroom. This is pretty cool! I mean, this is like the kind of thing you would do for a still photo, like increase the vibrance, and maybe decrease the exposure right here in your video and again, that becomes the exported version, not the original. So you're never editing or damaging the original file, just like you are never damaging the original photo when you make edits in Lightroom. So pretty cool video support. I'm going to be happy to use that. And by the way, you might say why video? Because there isn't a camera being made today, or being sold today, that doesn't do video. In other words, all of the new DSLRs, video is kind of becoming the standard option on them and even all the point-and-shoots--I've just got my parents a point-and-shoot camera, a little Kodak, and it shoots 1080P video. So video is video. It's here to stay. You don't have to use it, but it is going to be there. Alright, so with that said, let's go ahead and take a look at our next feature. We're going to go ahead and go to my collection here. I have one for the Develop module. Now the Develop module, again, is where people are going to spend a lot of time enhancing their photos. So I'm in the Develop module for this particular photo, and actually let's go back to the Library for a moment because I really want to show the difference. So I'm going to take this particular still frame here, and I'm just going to go ahead and create a virtual copy of it. So we'll select it. There we go.There's a virtual copy. And Virtual Copy is not a new feature. It's been in the Lightroom for a while, but it let me make a metadata copy of it, so I can have 2 versions of this photo. So let's go back to the first one. Let's head over to the Develop module. This is a DNG file, and the first thing I want to do or build this up is-- I took this shot back in 2009. My first trip to Page, Arizona where I shot Horseshoe Bend. Horshoe Bend looks phenomenal in person. When I got back to my hotel room that night, I'm thinking, oh my God, this photo looks horrible! Why doesn't my photo look like the ones I see everyone else take. So I was actually disappointed, depressed, and I thought what can I do to make this photo better? Well, the first thing that was distracting me was the sky is completely blown out. There is no sky. So I thought, well, might as well crop it. But before we even do anything else, I want to point out a little warning here. This little warning is letting me know that there is a new process algorithm inside of Lightroom 4 and the updated camera rod that will go along with this eventually. When I click on it, it asks me, do I want to use the new processing technology? Now I'm going to cancel because I want to show the difference. Now you might have noticed that in Lightroom 3, we have a 2003 or the original processing, which was rudamentary or crude at the time, or by today's standards, I should say-- not at the time. Then we have the 2010 that we all know and love. This is the one that we've been using in Lightroom 3. The 2012 is the new processing engine in Lightroom 4, and of course, you can pick and choose which processing engine you want. You can upgrade your existing photos to the new processing engine if you want to or keep them the way they are. Now I'm going to keep this one as kind of a Lightroom 3 edit, so that we can do the other copy in the Lightroom 4 edit, and you can see the difference. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to hit the letter R for my crop. Crop, get it? Crop. R. Anyway, and we're just going to go ahead, and we're going to crop this down-- actually, let's undo that. And I want to maintain the aspect ratio, so let's go to lock the aspect ratio, and we'll go ahead and just crop this down. Now I would take a little bit more time and get it positioned where I want, but this is just a quick and dirty edit. Alright, so now I got kind of the bad sky cropped out, what kinds of things would I do in Lightroom 3 to make this look better? Well, it's a little overexposed. I might bring the exposure down. I would certainly bring the recovery way up as best I can to kind of bring those highlights back in, still not doing a great job on those. Then I would probably increase the blacks. There it's looking a little better. It's actually looking a lot better. And I would increase the clarity, give it a little bit more vibrance, more punch definitely. And I would probably go into my detail, and I would definitely give it some more sharpening, too. And I just kept working with this photo in Lightroom 3, and I kind of got it about where I wanted it to be. It took a lot of work to kind of get it to look like my finished printed photo. But I did do it, and I did get it to look good in Lightroom 3. But now, let's go back. Let's click on this version. This is the one we're going to edit using the new processing engine for Lightroom 4. So I'm just going to hit my Develop module here again. And again, this time it's telling me, hey there's new processing technology. Do you want to update it? This time I'm going to say yes. So now it's been updated to the 2012 engine, and we can go down there and verify that it's on 2012. And what changes are your sliders. You get different sliders now in the 2012 processing. So the first thing we'll do is, we'll do the same crop. So I hit the letter R. We'll go ahead and crop this down. Right about there. And the next thing we'll do is, we'll do some of the same things, so--and by the way, these are all enhanced controls. So even the controls that are there with the same names have been enhanced, like for example, Shadows and Highlights are now content aware to take advantage of the entire dynamic range of the photo. And by the way, we have Shadows and Highlights now. So I can adjust the Highlights and Shadows differently. The other thing you'll notice is that all of these sliders now start at 0 in the middle as opposed to 0 on the left because now you can go negative or positive. So in other words, if I want the shadows to be darker, I go to the left. If I want my highlights to be brighter, I can go to the right, or if I want my highlights to be darker, I can go to the left. For my blacks, same thing. Bring those blacks back in. There we go. It's looking a lot better. We'll bring the whites up a little bit just to brighten up the photo, and then we'll increase our clarity. Little too much there. Clarity has been improved, vibrance has been improved. Oh, that's starting to look a lot better. Now I haven't even sharpened it yet, but I'm already seeing a big difference. Now it maybe hard to tell the difference on the video, but trust me, this is kind of like almost night and day quality-wise from what I'm seeing in the detail compared to what I saw in Lightroom 3, again using all very similar adjustments, but enhancing adjustments, in a lot of cases, that let me go negative and/or positive depending on what I want and breaking some of those things out like we used to have for recovery and for the fill, we now have separate highlight, shadow, whites, and blacks for those, so you have to do the translation in your head. It'll take a little bit to get used to it to get the idea for what does what. And also, you're guaranteed you're going to drag these in the wrong direction until you get used to it. But just keep in mind, when you see the dark on the left versus the light on the right, you're brightening the highlights if you go to the right. You're darkening them if you go to the left. So it's pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Alright, so let's compare these side by side. Just going to hit the letter N, and we can get rid of our tabs here. And I don't know about you, but that looks like a richer mountain than this one. Still looks kind of dull. Looks like low contrast. Now keep in mind, I can go in and keep working with the Lightroom 3 version, but I got a much better result dragging very much the same sliders or same processes with the 2012 processing than I did with the 2010 processing from Lightroom 3. So you're basically going to get better looking photos in the Develop module in Lightroom 4 than you did in Lightroom 3 with very similar adjustments. And it's not to say that you can't achieve some things in Lightroom 3, but you can achieve them a lot faster in Lightroom 4 and in some cases, better results because of the new algorithms that are underneath the engines controlling these parameters. So the Develop module with the 2012 processing is probably the top feature, in my opinion, because it's going to affect all your photos going forward, is going to affect the way you use Lightroom, and it's also probably going to save you a lot of trips to Photoshop and using other 3rd party plug-ins because of the results you can achieve right here inside of Lightroom 4. Okay, so with that, let's head over to--I have another folder here which is my Maps demo. So now we're going to head over to the Map module. So first thing I'll do before we head over there is we're still in the Library module-- I want to point out a new indicator here on a photo. This little flag here, looks like a little sign post, is the new--this photo has GPS data in it. Now GPS data is not new. We've had support for that in Lightroom in the past. The problem was we had no way of adding it if the photo didn't have it. So this photo out of all my other photos is the only one in this collection that already has GPS data in it, and the reason it does is because I took that photo with my iPhone. My iPhone automatically geotags photos as I take them. The ones from DSLR in the studio did not. So let's go ahead, and head over to the Maps module. We can actually get there by clicking--by double clicking that. And it will take us to the Maps module, and by the way, we have this big box up here. This is another new feature. You'll find these throughout all the modules where you have tips that come up, and you can go to the next tip. It'll kind of walk you through what that modules all about. And of course, once you know what they're all about, you can turn off the tips whenever you're ready. So I'm going to go ahead and close the tip here, and we'll go ahead and select this photo. Let's see, that's the one with the geotagging in it, and we'll go ahead and zoom in. There we go, and let's do-- we have a little legend here. This legend is letting us know what the icons mean. So let's go ahead and pan over. This particular photo was taken in-- actually we can just go to it. There we go. This particular photo wast taken in North America. It was actually taken in Troy, Michigan. I'm going to close the legend here because I'm working with a-- well, yeah, I'm working with a low screen resolution, and I don't want the legend taking up any extra space on screen. Alright, but anyway, we have the map here of where that photo was taken. Let's go ahead and jump right over to it. Okay, and then we'll just click on the Visible on Map and that will show us, the ones that are visible or tagged or untagged. It will actually show us the little icons there. So we want to see the ones that are tagged right now. Show me that one, and we can go ahead and click, and it will actually show us the photo itself. So if you have multiple photos from different locations, you would actually be able to see that photo, and I will show you an example of that in just a second. So we have this one photo, but the problem is we have other photos that were not geotagged. So what I want to do is, I want to go to my untagged photos. By the way, I said this was taken with my iPhone. It was taken actually in my studio. This map is generated by Google Maps, so if I actually zoom in, we can actually get an aerial view, and there we are. This is my actual studio from the rooftop. So we can actually see the buildings, see all the streets around it, and that is pretty nice, pretty amazing. So you can change your map style just like you can on Google Maps. You can see the hybrid view, which is the street names and the satellite view. You can see just the road map. You can see the satellite view alone or the terrain map, where it just shows you the terrain and streets. I prefer hybrid. That's my favorite, and that is the default. And of course, there's my little icon there to show me that particular map or that particular photo. Now like I said, these other photos were not taken in that location--I mean, they were taken in that location, but not geotagged. So how do I get those photos geotagged? Let's go ahead and select them all. And let's go ahead and drag them to the map. We drag them to the same location. And now it's tagged all 6 of those photos. So if we click on it, it will now show me the first one, but I can go ahead and click through, and it will show me the rest of the photos that I've geotagged just that easily. Also when you select the photo, you can now see the GPS information that it's added to the photo right here inside of Lightroom. I am very, very, very happy for this feature because I am a geotag freak. I love that when I'm shooting landscapes. So now, you're probably wondering, well, how do you geotag photos with your DSLR? Well, if you're a Nikon shooter, there's several GPS modules that can actually attach right to your camera. This is one by Solmeta. It's the N3. This will attach to your camera and tag the images as you shoot. However, if you don't have that ability with your camera or don't have the module, your cell phone, most likely, is geotagging the photos, if you're using a smartphone such as the iPhone or Android. And again, just like I did, once you bring one of those photos in with the geotag information, you can apply that information to the rest of the photos that you took at the same time. Now there are also geotaggers that create a log file. In other words, you turn it on. You start walking. It's time stamped. It's keeping track of everywhere you go. You take your pictures as you're shooting as you walk around. And then you bring the log file in and as long as the time and date stamp are the same for your camera and the log file, it will automatically geotag all your photos with where you were when you took them, based on the time that you took them and the day. So that's another option, and we fully support the geotag logs inside of Lightroom 4 as well. So very happy with the Maps module. You can also create saved locations. So that you can find your photos quickly that way, so for example, I can say, let's create a saved location for that. Let's go ahead and zoom it in a little bit tighter on the building, and we can say that instead of this is being Troy, I can call this my studio, and that way, if I'm ever looking for photos of my studio, I can just quickly go to that location, and it will show me all the photos. Now, in both the export and this location option, you have the ability to mark photos private. In other words, exclude the geotagging information when you're exporting your photos. For example, I don't want photos of my home out on the internet geotagged, so people know exactly where my house is. So if you have privacy concerns, you can actually turn that off from your exporting, but keep it on while you're looking yourself in Lightroom to see where the photos were when you took them. So you have that ability as well. Let's go ahead and create, and that will create a location of photos that were taken at that location. So I could at anytime go back and search for those. Now again, I said this was Google-based, so Google Maps-based. So I have a photo here. This particular photo of Multnomah Falls. Now it was not geotagged at the time I took it, but I can also search the map. Multnomah Falls--See if it finds it here. There it is. Multnomah, Oregon. So it found the lodge. Let's go ahead and zoom in on that. And the little map icon with the dot in it, is just letting you know that is a search to location versus one that you added yourself. So I'm going to zoom in. And by the way, here, let's go back to the Library module for a minute. I just want to show you this photo. And this photo, as you can see, was taken of the waterfall and there's the bridge. If I go back to the Maps module, there's the waterfall. There's the bridge. There's the parking lot. I kind of remember all of this. You walk under a little tunnel of the highway there. You walk up here, and you get to right about here, and you take the picture of the waterfall, which is about here. Again, I was there. I know where I was when I took the photo. How cool is it that I can just drag the photo right to that spot where I took it, and it will add the geotag information based on a search. So even if I didn't geotag any photos while I was there, if I knew where I was and can find it on a map, I can easily add that geotag information in just by dragging the photo to the map where I took the photo. So love the Maps module. Great addition to Lightroom. Long over due, and I'm glad it's here. So with that, we can go on and on about maps. We can go on and on about Develop. But we've got to move on, so let's head on to the Books module. So I'm going to go back to my view here. I have a lot of different photos in here. I have model photos. I have landscape photos. One of the things that you'll want to do from time to time is see your work printed in a book. So we have a new book-building module here in Lightroom that allows you to build photo books from your photos. So again, the Books module walked me through the tips if I want. It'll take me step by step explaining each and every area of it. But I'm just going to go ahead and scroll ahead up here to the top, and I have my filmstrip view at the bottom here of all the photos. So it shows me the front cover, back cover, all the pages, and of course, I can continue to add pages. Now the books are generated inside of Lightroom, but they are printed by the online service, Blurb. So this is tightly integrated with Blurb. It will allow you to lay out your book, give you the estimated price of your book, and then order your book directly from Lightroom. You also have the ability if you don't want to order, you can just export it out of the PDF. Maybe you just want to make a book, and you want to put it on your website or pass it around. So you have the ability to do either one. Either send it to Blurb or make a PDF. Let's go ahead and talk about how we would lay this out. Now I can just say auto layout, and it will just go ahead and layout all my photos for me on all the pages in the order they are in the filmstrip, which I have not put them in any particular order, so I don't want to do that just yet. But I do want to go in and experiment for example, just by laying some images out on the cover here. Let's see if I can find that one image I want to use. Here it is. I'm just going to go ahead and drag that onto the front cover, and there it is on the front cover. I can reposition it. I can scale it. I can zoom it in, zoom it out. And if I zoom it in too far, you might get a little warning in the upper right hand corner letting you know that the resolution is not high enough for you to zoom it in that far. So just letting you know if you back off a little bit until the resolution warning goes away, your resolution is now high enough to print the photo at that size. So it's kind of nice having that little indicator. You can also flip up the little module here to pick a different kind of layout for your cover. For example, I like this one which kind of gives me the whole photo wrapped around the cover of the book. Again, I would want to zoom it up. I may, get the resolution warning if I do that. I did. Right there is about good. And I can of course move this around if I have zoomed it in further than I need to-- or further than it needed to be for this cover. I can then pan it. You also have different frames here for adding text, so you can add text to the cover. You can also pick different layouts. There is over 180 professional layouts here in the Book module for you to pick from. Then of course you just go through and start laying out the rest of your book. So we're going to drag that photo in. I can. If I want to go to the next page or perhaps maybe add a page here, let's go ahead and add a few pages. I can then, for example, let's say that I want to add a picture here. I can also say well, you know what? I don't want just one picture with a full bleed, maybe I want to have multiple photos. I want 4 photos instead of 1, and then I can, of course, then pick from all the different 4-photo layouts. Some with text, some without text, some go full bleed, some don't go full bleed-- you have a huge variety of different layouts to work with. Then once you have your choice, you can just go ahead and start dropping in your pics and laying out your book. So very cool to have the Books module now built in to Lightroom as opposed to having to go outside of Lightroom to print books and other applications. So for example, in this particular case, maybe I want to explain that particular photo, so I want to add some text next to it, and I can just go ahead and type in my text. And also you have the ability to have a full blown type layout option here, very similar to what's in Photoshop and Illustrator--choosing font, style, sizes, characters, layout, justification, spacing, you name it, it's here. Very cool to be able to do this right inside of Lightroom. Now again, I could go on and on about Books. Not enough time, but I just want to say that you do have the ability to have a custom background color. So if you want the pages to have a particular color, you can do that page by page. You can also drop a photo in to apply a ghosted background throughout the entire book. Perhaps it's your logo. Perhaps it's your wedding, and you want the bride and groom ghosted in behind all the other pictures. So very cool to be able to do this, and again, lots of options for choosing your book size, hardcover, softcover--basically the options that are available at Blurb, and different sizes, different paper types, you got it. So with that, let's move on to actually our last small thing here, and it's in the Print module. When I go to the Print module, and again, the Print module tips will walk me through it. But there's one cool thing in the Print module that has been a long time coming. It's kind of one of those things that we all wished the Print module could do, but never really thought about how you would do it. I've even had work around videos on this in the past. Have you ever had a print job or printer where you print and your photos always come out a little darker or maybe a little lighter than what you saw on screen? So now you have the ability in the Print module alone to do a print adjustment for brightness and contrast. So, for example, if your printer always prints the photo a little dark, you can then just go into the print adjustment and perhaps make it a little brighter. And that only affects the print. It does not affect the rest of the photo. So it doesn't affect the photo when you export it out for email, doesn't affect anything else. It is just for print. So very cool to have that option--long time coming. Love the ability to do that. Again, without having to create virtual copies or special photos just for printing, I can do that out of print module. And I mentioned something just then that I almost forgot to show you. So let's go back to the Library module really quick. Let's say that I want to email someone this particular photo. Well, in the past, the email ability wasn't really built-in. It did it through an export. You exported out a jpeg, and you could put it in your email program as an export action, so it launched your email and attached the photo. I do that almost every day. So I'm always emailing photos to friends, family, collegues, and clients, in some cases. So now, you no longer have to do these work arounds. Emailing is built into Lightroom. So let me show you. Under the file menu, you have the ability to email photo as a built-in option. So you can either do it one of a couple different ways. You can do it--email photo, and that will bring up this little email page to fill out. So I can put in who it's all going to, carbon copy, blind carbon copy, all my addresses, the subject, which application we'll use to do the email-- in my case, we'll use Apple Mail-- the attached file, or multiple files, and the quality. So I can even pick the quality here that I want the exported jpeg to be scaled down to. So very cool just to be able to do it right there. Now that's one way to do it. My preferred way to do it is actually a little bit more detailed. So for example, if I go do an export, then what I want to be able to do is, I want to say for email, but I want to put in my own parameters. In other words, like for example, for the high res without it being the top resolution or original resolution was only 800 x 800. I like to do mine as 1024, so I can set my own sizes here--1024, don't enlarge, and I can choose whether or not to remove the geotag location information or not, watermark the photos. So in other words, I"m building my own preset with my own options that I can save and that will then show up as an email option to choose from when I use the built-in email feature. But again, it's built-in and it even can be configured to work with webmail, so if you have gmail, yahoo, AOL, you can even configure the settings for your sending for that as well. So with that, I hope you enjoyed this rather quick--and I know, again, I can spend more time on any of these, and I will in future episodes-- this quick walkthrough of Lightroom 4 and many of the new features, not all of the new features, but many of them, and what I consider to be some of the most important ones for this release-- strong release. I'm looking forward to it and give us your feeback at labs.adobe.com. on what you would like to see or what you'd like to see improved in this release of Lightroom 4. Thanks, again. My name is Terry White, and thanks for watching.