Pack Your Bags and Move to Lightroom 4

Last week Adobe released Photoshop Lightroom 4 with the added bonus of cutting the retail price in half!  It is now more in line with competitors, such as Apple's Aperture, and in a position to capture the portion of the user market that it doesn't already own.

While I unfortunately couldn't afford the time to play with the beta this time around, I did take the plunge and upgraded to the final release this past weekend.  The following outlines the process I followed with the upgrade:

• Backup the Catalog - ... and then back it up again.  My main catalog resides on my laptop and gets backed up to a Windows Home Server each night.  Additionally, I use a utility called SyncToy to replicate changes of my local photo directory to both a share on the home server AND to an external USB drive.  If you're interested in synchronizing your files to the "cloud", check out Microsoft's Windows Live Mesh.
• Educate Yourself - While you're waiting for your backups to finish, head over to the Adobe Lightroom 4 Launch Center hosted by NAPP.  There are some great videos outlining some of the newest features in Lightroom 4.
• Further Educate Yourself - Backups still not done? Jump over to Amazon and pre-order Scott Kelby's new Lightroom 4 Book for Digital Photographers.  This will be the 3rd LR book I will own written by Mr. Kelby for good reason.  They're well written and you're guaranteed to learn something new every time.
• Run the Install - With multiple backups secured, it's time to run the install.  There's not much to say about this task other than click the button when it asks you to.
• Update Your Plug ins - If you're like most LR users, you probably enjoyed a few export add-ons from our good friend Jeffrey Friedl.  Time to upgrade to the latest versions, and, since you'll have received a new LR serial number with your upgrade, donate some more well deserved appreciation to Mr. Friedl.

And there you have it. Welcome to Lightroom 4.

Over the next several weeks we'll take a look at some of the new bells and whistles introduced in the latest version of this incredible application.

Until next time, keep click'n.
-Ken