Lightroom Identity Plates–The Curse of Scaling

It’s no secret I’m a Lightroom believer.  Up until recently it’s never let me down, but I think I’ve finally found an scenario where it simply falls short – the scaling of a graphical identity plate on prints.

About a year ago I blogged about creating a 2 line identity plate in Lightroom.  For one reason or another, Adobe hasn’t accommodated those of us on the Windows platform to be able to create a multiple line textual identity plate within Lightroom.  Instead, we must resort to creating the plate as a graphical file.  It sounds simple enough and it actually is pretty easy, but here’s the problem.  Scaling.  When you add the graphical identity plate in the Print Module, it automatically scales to 100% of the page size and not the size of the graphic.  Odds are pretty good that you didn’t create the graphic to be the width of the entire page so you’ll immediately notice that the text in the graphic is somewhat distorted.  Even when you scale the plate down to the size you intended, odds are pretty good it will STILL be somewhat distorted.

This hasn’t been a problem for me in the past as I’ve been confined to printing simple posters, etc. for my own use.  Now, however, I’m working on a limited edition print to benefit one of my favorite charities and “good enough” or “okay” are not acceptable outcomes.  It needs to be perfect.  No matter how hard I tried (and how much money I spent on what ended up to be “sample prints”), the text still appears “soft”.  In my example, the page size is 30” wide so I made the identity plate exactly 3” wide and then scaled it to exactly 10%.  Nope. Still “fuzzy”.  So what to do?

Post your question to the nice community of folks on the Adobe forums.  At least that’s what I did.  You can view the entire thread here, but the short answer is to prepare the print as you normally would to provide to a commercial printer, but WITHOUT the identity plate.  Then open the jpeg file produced by Lightroom into Photoshop and recreate the identity plate on a new layer and save it back to the jpeg file using the maximum quality settings. 

This may sound like common sense, but I was worried that “re-saving” back to the jpeg file was going to result in loss of image quality because it was being further compressed.  It took someone with experience with the process to convince me it wasn’t worth worrying about before I actually tried it.  While I don’t have the actual print in hand yet, I did do a compare of the jpeg images within Lightroom; the one where the jpeg with identity plate was produced from Lightroom and the one where the identity plate was saved from Photoshop.  It appears to be true.  I can see no discernable difference in the quality of the actual photo even zoomed in to high magnification.  Well, almost no difference…

The top line is the text captured from the file with the identity plate scaled to 10% in Lightroom.  The bottom is the exact same text produced directly in Photoshop.

Hopefully this is something that is addressed in future releases of Lightroom because so far it’s the only scenario I’ve encountered in my workflow where there isn’t an acceptable solution.

How Large is Your Lightroom Catalog?

 

My computer is tired. 

As a technology professional I employ all of the best practices to keep things running smoothly and efficiently, but inevitably things just start to bloat and slow down over time.   I’ve been running it pretty hard for just about 2 years now and this is generally the point at which I’d wipe the hard drive clean and reload my favorite applications and data from scratch. A fresh start.

If you’re a reader of the blog, you know I’ve been keeping my eye on the Microsoft Surface Pro as a potential laptop replacement.  Unfortunately we’re still a few months away from the release of the product so here I am in “limp along” mode.  Windows 8 has been available for a few weeks now too which, for a self-proclaimed geek, it’s pretty hard to sit back and wait patiently rather than just pull the plug and rebuild my current machine.  Still, I wait.

One of the areas I’m noticing the most degradation is within Lightroom.  I have only a single catalog which is now approaching 9,000 images.  I’ve read posts online from people having 5 or 6 times that number in their catalogs seemingly without performance problems.  Regardless, I’m wondering if it’s time to start with a new catalog when the eventual migration to the Surface Pro happens.  After all I will be taking a step down from 500GB of storage in my current laptop to just 128GB (plus whatever memory card I purchase).  So what does 9,000 images translate to in occupied storage space?

Catalog File	730 MB
Preview Folder	3.94 GB
Original NEF files (RAW images)	135 GB
Total	139 GB

How many images reside in “My Favorites” collection? 65.  I have just 65 photos out of nearly 9,000 images that I feel are “portfolio quality”.  I guess that helps me make my decision. I think with the advent of a new machine I’ll be bringing over those favorites into a new catalog and archiving the rest to external storage.  Another “fresh start”.

How about you? How many images are in your Lightroom catalog and have you noticed any loss of performance as your catalog increases?

Capturing the “Impossible”?

So I had the occasion to be outside during a hazy, crisp, full moon night and miraculously my camera was in my hand.  Imagine that .  With the haze being illuminated by that big bright moon and the silhouette of the bare tree in the foreground,  we had all of the makings of a good Halloween picture.  Until I tried to shoot it.
If you’ve tried to photograph the moon, you know it can be a process of trial-and-error before you get the settings right to expose that giant light bulb in the sky.  Now consider how you’d expose the moon AND get more of the silhouette of the tree in the foreground!  After handholding 10 or 15 shots it became apparent that this was one of those  “beyond the camera” moments.  It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t obtain detail in the moon as there wasn’t really any to be obtained in the hazy sky.  The problem was that if I exposed for the tree, the moon blew out the whole image.

Luckily I was shooting in RAW and it was Lightroom to the rescue!  With the help of an adjustment brush to reveal more of the tree and then a healthy dose of noise reduction, I was able to come much closer to what my eyes actually saw that chilly, spooky evening.
Have you ever found yourself shooting that seemingly “impossible” scene? What did you do to overcome it?

Lightroom 4 – Still no “Windows Love” for Multi-Line Identity Plates

Over the weekend I was fooling around with adding text to the bottom of an image I was preparing for print.  I vividly remember the last attempt at this exercise because that is when I discovered that while Lightroom allowed for multiple lines of text on the Mac platform, the feature was missing from Windows!  After a little searching I quickly discovered that I wasn’t the only one who happened to notice this and that there were plenty of disgruntled Windows users voicing their frustration on the Adobe forums.

Over one year and one version later, I figured for sure that the issue would have been addressed.  I figured wrong.  If you’re a Lightroom user on Windows, you’re still limited to the graphic identity plate if you need more than one line of text.

You can find my original tutorial here.  You can voice your outrage here.

The Making of “Still Watchful”

Yesterday I shared a reprocessed version of a photo I took this last summer of a juvenile bald eagle.   While I loved the original image, I wanted this version of the image to really accentuate the magnificence of this bird and convey a sense of loss that I felt when I learned of its demise.

Here is a copy of the original image.  The eagle is perched among the tangles of a dead branch in the morning sun.  There is a nice catch light in its eye as well as nice lighting on is head and stomach with a strong shadow cast by an out of frame branch across its chest.  As many of the branches are without bark the light is reflecting and appears a little hot, detracting from the main focus – the returned stare of this incredible bird.

With that in mind, I wanted the background to disappear.  The branch in the foreground was important to convey the surroundings of this wild bird, but I wanted to make it gradually fade into the background and leave you with that incredible expression. 

Here are the steps I took to reprocess the image:

1. From within Lightroom, right-click on the image and “Edit In > Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS6…”
2. Ctrl+N to create a new layer positioned above the original image.
3. Shift+F5 to fill the new layer with solid black
4. Add a new “Reveal All” Layer Mask to the new black layer
5. With the Layer Mask selected, reduce the opacity until you’re able to see the original image through the black layer.
6. Set the foreground color to black and then select the brush tool to begin painting the bird at 100% opacity as well as some of the foreground branches.
7. As you paint, you’ll see more of the background show through the black layer.  I paid particular attention to the edges of the bird to be sure I didn’t allow any of the green foliage to show through.
8. When I had most of the image showing through the layer mask I then reduced the brush opacity to around 30%, set the brush color to white and changed the opacity of the layer mask back to 100% before tracing around the edges of the subject.  This allowed me to “clean up” any areas where I was too aggressive and made for a smooth transition from black to the colors of the subject.
9. Using this same technique, I made multiple passes along the tree branches, especially toward the ends where I wanted the branches to fade to black, until I was satisfied with the results.  If at any point I got too “heavy handed”, I simply changed the brush color to black and “undid” the wrong.
10. When I was happy with the results, I saved the file and returned to Lightroom where I applied some additional exposure adjustments and used the spot removal tool to eliminate a few more hot areas in the branches.

And that’s it.  The end result is what I feel is a much more dramatic and compelling image without the additional clutter.

What do you think? Which of the two images do you prefer?

The Making of “Around the Bend”

If you tuned in earlier in the week you may have seen the image I posted titled “Around the Bend”.

Of course this is EXACTLY how it looked straight out of camera too. Alright, not really.  Despite being out in the country there was actually a fair amount of traffic on this road.  Somehow, standing in the middle of the road on a blind corner for extended periods of time didn’t seem like a real good idea so I “shot and ran”.  Here’s the REAL out of camera shot.

Here’s a quick rundown on how it got from A to B.

In Lightroom …

1. Crop and straighten the image.  That “blah” sky has got to go and we can leverage that double-yellow as a leading line to pull the viewer into the photo.
2. Now for the exposure. What a mess.  Looks like a good candidate for HDR so I focused my efforts on exposing the road properly with the original cropped image and then made 2 virtual copies.  I set the first virtual to an exposure value 2 under my original and the second 2 over.
3. Selecting all three images I sent them out to PhotoMatix Pro (right-click, Export) and applied the default enhancer template. Looks good to me. Reimport to Lightroom.
4. At this point, everything is looking good except for what I kept of the sky. Still “blah” and in need of an overhaul.  Lucky for me I had a shot of a nice crisp blue autumn sky just a few shots further into the collection.  Selecting both my new HDR image and shot of the nice blue sky, I right-clicked and selected “Edit In …” and then “Open as Layers in Photoshop…”.

In Photoshop…

1. First thing is to position the layers so the HDR is on top and the blue sky image below that.
2. With the HDR layer selected, pick the “Select” menu, use the “Color Range…” option and change the “Select” option to “Highlights”.  Just like that the crumby sky, including the difficult to select area between the pine tree branches is selected.  For good measure, I saved the selection using the option at the bottom of the “Select” menu. Just to be safe, I expanded the selection by 1 pixel from the “Select…Modify” menu to prevent any “white lines” between my sky and trees.
3. With the HDR layer selected, add a new “Reveal All” Layer Mask.
4. Select the new Layer Mask, set the brush tool, color set to black and a 30% opacity.
5. After adjusting the brush size to be able to accommodate the height of the sky selection I make my first pass over the selected sky.  Still a little blah so I made one more pass.  There. That’s better.
6. Grab the “Move Tool” and select the layer containing the blue sky.  Move the sky layer left/right until the clouds are positioned to complement the scene.
7. Save the file and exit back to Lightroom.

In Lightroom…

1. The light on the pavement in the foreground is still a little “hot” so add a new brush using the “Burn (Darken)” effect to paint the bright area until it no longer detracts from the scene.
2. Add keywords, additional metadata and share.

Compared to the amazing effort put forth by Mother Nature to provide the fall colors, the few mouse clicks were a small price to pay to help the image along a little.

Have you leveraged HDR techniques in any of your fall photos?  Have a link or two to share?  Use the comments section below to share.

Photoshop Panorama

From an early age I can remember always wanting to “challenge” a new piece of knowledge once acquired.  For example, I recall coming home with a really cool “Indian spear” from the gift shop of one of our summer vacation stops.  It had a long bamboo shaft with a rubber spear tip attached.  Attached to the toy was a label exclaiming that bamboo was “unbreakable” so of course we had to challenge the new knowledge.  My younger brother and I ran off to our favorite rock pile fort where he was kind enough to take a few whacks at a boulder with my new treasure.  Turns out bamboo isn’t “unbreakable”. Lesson learned.

So, when I recently acquired Photoshop CS6, of course I had to try out the “Merge to Pano” option.  It was there wasn’t it?  During a recent fall photo outing, I took a series of 12 landscape orientated (portrait orientated images would have been better – another lesson learned) and ran straight home to the “rock pile” to see if I could “break it”.

Turns out it actually does work and so well that it’s nothing short of MAGIC!  When I took the photos I made sure to include about a 25% overlap from one frame to the next.  After offloading the images into Lightroom I selected the 12 shots, right-clicked and from the “Edit In…” context menu, selected “Merge to Panorama in Photoshop…”.  Photoshop launched, asked me a question about my preference for stitching the images together and then went to work.  I went to eat diner.  When I came back about 90 minutes later, there it was!  A rather awkward, but accurately stitched together, autumn panorama!

After reimporting to Lightroom I had to crop a little from the top and the bottom to remove white space, but there it was.  All 1.2 gigabytes of it!  I could zoom in to any portion of the image (wait… wait… wait…) and “WOW”, stunning detail like the deer grazing in the field.  It really is “unbreakable” (at least with this series of photos).

Anyone know where I can get a 3’ x 35’ frame?

Plugins. Lightroom or Photoshop?

 VS  

Since acquiring the latest version of Photoshop, I find myself with a new dilemma. When purchasing 3rd party processing add-ins, what platform should I choose? Lightroom or Photoshop?

I have a LONG way to go before I’ll feel proficient in Photoshop and still do the majority of my post processing within the confines of Lightroom.  From that respect Lightroom feels like the right choice.  Most of the the plugins I’ve seen, however, seem to be developed for Photoshop first.  By that I mean every LR plugin I use exports the image out to a separate interface used by the plugin.  My perception is that there seems to be tighter integration within Photoshop so you don’t necessarily need this “export” step.  Is that correct?

If you are both a Lightroom and Photoshop user, which platform do you purchase plugins for and why?

The “Hummer Invasion”

My wife has hung various hummingbird feeders around the homestead each summer for as long as I can remember.  Evidently it’s earned her a reputation with our tiny feathered friends as this year we’ve been completely inundated by these incredible tiny giants.

Due to the shear number of hummer families now zooming around the house, the number of feeders has increased in an attempt to accommodate.  Being the territorial little buggers that they are, each of them prefer to lay claim to an individual feeder, exert most of their energy warding off trespassers and the rest of their time refueling.  We’re now sporting a feeder on nearly every window of the house and going through at least a gallon of sugar water EACH DAY!

The photo above is of the little female that’s declared the feeder stuck to my home office window as her own.  This gave me a unique opportunity to set the camera on the tripod, tether it to my laptop with Lightroom, and then proceed to snap (mouse click) some images from behind the desk which the diners have agreed is a “safe” viewing distance.

LR Catalog Bloat? Try This.

This weekend when I opened by every day Lightroom catalog I noticed it contained nearly 8,000 images.  I clicked on “All Photographs” and started scanning through the mountain of pixels and more than a few sleepers started to jump off the page at me.  Time for some clean up once again.

If this sounds familiar, perhaps this post can help you tidy things up a bit.

A few things I look for are images that have not been edited, flagged, cropped, etc.  If I didn’t think they were important enough to process then they probably don’t deserve to occupy the hard drive.  Keep an eye out for that missing gem though.  On more than one occasion I’ve found a shot that I was able to apply a new technique or process to that’s resulted in a new favorite.

What are some of your criteria as to whether a photograph stays or goes?

The New Lightroom is Here! The New Lightroom is Here!

Lightroom 4.1 that is.  If you like to wait for the first service pack to arrive before jumping on the new version bandwagon, its time for you to jump!  You can read all about the latest release on Adobe’s Lightroom Journal blog.

Deleting Rejected Photos from a Collection in Lightroom 4

Back in February of 2011 I wrote a blog post about one of my Lightroom pet peeves.  You couldn't flag an image as a reject inside of a collection and then Ctrl + Backspace to delete the image.  This action only removed the rejects from the collection.

Guess what?  In LR4, you STILL can’t .  There is some good news, however.  These reject flags now persist across your catalog.  This means that when you flag an image as a reject inside of a collection, it appears as a reject outside of that collection as well.  So, now you can Ctrl + Down Arrow (or “X”) within a collection to flag images as rejects, select the “All Photographs” option in your catalog and THEN issue a Ctrl + Backspace to delete all rejects found within your catalog.  Not perfect, but better.

Have a tip about managing your Lightroom 4 catalog?  Drop a note in the comment section below send me a quick email.  I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time, keep click’n.

-Ken

Lightroom 4.1 Around the Corner (Still)

I’ve been keeping my eye out for the official release of Lightroom 4.1, mostly to correct some of the performance issues I’ve been noticing. Luckily I haven’t been processing a lot of photos lately so my patience hasn’t run out yet, but others in the community have been pretty vocal.

The 2nd release candidate came out at the end of last month and reportedly fixes a number of the issues related to performance and the infamous point curve bug.  According to many in the forums, however, the point release may have had a negative impact in some other areas.

Have you made the leap to 4.1 RC2?  If so, what has your experience been like?

Lightroom 4.1 Realease Candidate Available

This is a little behind the 8-ball and it's entirely possible that by the time you read this, the Lightroom update may have already been made available to the public.  However, if you haven't heard, Adobe has the first update to Lightroom 4 availble to download and try as a "release candidate" meaning it's being further tested before being given the green light.

To everyone's relief, the update addresses the Point Curve adjustment bug and also tweaks some of the performance issues that were being reported in the Development Module.  I've not yet loaded it myself and am waiting for the official version, but reading through some of the comments on the Lightroom blog page, it seems promising.

Have you applied the 4.1 update?  What has been your experience?

Why I Love Lightroom and the Digital Darkroom

... or at least just one of many reasons digital processing is so cool.

Last week I mentioned my little "Photoshop project" and I thought some of you might enjoy sharing that little trip so here goes.

As you may or may not know, Facebook changed its page layout (again) at the end of March.  One of my colleagues in the marketing department at my "day job" asked if I had any interesting shots that showed our company logo and could be used for the new Facebook page header image.  While I had a few snapshots, nothing stood out as something I'd have even been comfortable offering up.  Luckily, my colleague had a concept for a shot that he was happy to share and I agreed that it would make a good image if I could pull it off.   The concept was a "point of view shot" as one exits the elevator in our Wausau office. 

Step 1, dust off the wide angle lens, grab the camera and try to get the center of 3 elevators to open up and let me on so I'd be lined up with the shot when I arrived on the 4th floor.  Just when I was beginning to think my 1-in-3 odds were never going to happen, my car FINALLY arrived and up we go.

Step 2, try to keep the door open long enough on the elevator to take the shot.  After several pushes of the "hold the door please" button and some annoying "beep, beep, beep" warnings, I had grabbed a half dozen shots that would set the rest of the experiment in motion.


Here's the original image. I thought the idea had potential, but obviously there's a few elements that needed some help.

• While we're all happy for the fire extinguisher mounted to the wall (left), it doesn't help this image.  It will have to go.
• The stainless steel elevator certainly helps provide that "point of view" feel to the image, but the reflections of the logo on its sides are distracting.  They'll have to go too.
• There are only 4 floors in this building so when you reach the top floor, the elevator makes the reasonable assumption that the car will be traveling back down and indicates that via its directional light (top right).  Helpful information, but something in my mind says there's a negative connotation here.  We want to be moving up, not down.

Step 3, "blemishes" removed.

That's right, no formal Photoshop education here.  Still, I thought my "skills" were good enough to allow it to pass a cursory glance inspection.  Being privy to what was edited in the image, however, helps support my claim of being "Photoshop challenged".

While I was pleased with the end results, I had a concern about the purple wall in relation to the rest of the company Facebook page.  After sharing the image with our marketing group they had the same concern.  "What if we replace just the wall with a shot from one of our other offices - one that isn't purple?".  Well, we could try that, but for some reason I like the lighting in this shot.  The logo is well lite and is casting some great shadows to provide depth.  How about ....

...or...

...or...

And THAT is why digital processing is so cool!  Not only can you clone out the unwanted, but to be able to take a VERY purple wall and change it's color to something more appropriate just by moving a few hue or saturation sliders.  To me, that is truly magic!

Until next time, keep click'n.

-Ken

Recover from the Lightroom 4 Tone Curve Bug

Having a background in software, I can attest to the fact that no matter how diligent you are in testing a new application, no matter how many beta cycles, there is always something that slips through the cracks and evades discovery until AFTER its released into the wild.  The largest of these gremlins in the latest Lightroom 4 release is the "Tone Curve" bug.

If you're not aware, when you upgrade a previously processed image in Lightroom 4 to the latest 2012 Process engine, one of the things it DOES NOT do correctly is to bring forward any tone curve adjustments.  They are simply lost.  For many, this is a BIG deal.

Adobe is well aware of the issue and is already close to having a hotfix available to correct the problem.  If you've already upgraded to Lightroom 4 as I have, here are a few tips to help you avoid or recover from the "Tone Curve" bug until the fix is available.

1. As a general rule, only upgrade one image at a time to the new processing engine until you're confident things are working as planned.  Then you can upgrade the rest of your catalog knowing things will be as you expect.  Point #1 in this post outlines how you can upgrade the process engine for an image.
2. If you have upgraded and discovered you're image has been negatively impacted by the tone curve bug, don't panic.  Remember, all edits in Lightroom are non-destructive (they never alter  your original image), even the process upgrade option.  Simply jump into the development module and browse through the History panel to find the step immediately before "Update to Current Process (2012)".  Click on that previous step and you have your image back.  If you want to clear the history for everything but this view of the image, right click to create a snap shot on that step.  Once you've named your snapshot, click the "X" (Clear All) button at the top of the History panel and everything else is removed.

I'm sure we'll be seeing the fix coming from Adobe in the near future.  In the meantime, don't let this prevent you from upgrading your existing installation to Lightroom 4.

Have any experiences with Lightroom 4 that you'd like to share?  Drop us a note using the comments section below.

Until next time, keep on click'n.
-Ken

Lightroom 4 Brings New Life to HDR

Last August I experimented with a Lightroom only HDR image just to see how close I could get it compared to using some other HDR work flow such as Photomatix.  The results were promising.  Now, with the new "Basic Panel" controls in Lightroom 4, things are looking up even more.  Time for another experiment.

For my source image, I chose the shot that pushed me into the world of HDR, "The Great Escape".  You see the original unedited version above.

Here are the steps I took to process the image in Lightroom 4.

Upgrade Process

1. Updated it to 2012 Process engine.  This image was originally imported using LR3 and the 2010 Process engine. Until you upgrade the image to the new process engine you won't even see the new Basic Panel in the development module to be able to use it.  Look for the exclamation icon in the lower right of your display window.  Click on the icon to access a dialog box that will help you upgrade.  You can also chose the Process option in the Calibration panel.
2. Adjust the Basic sliders.  With the image upgraded to the 2012 process engine, you will now see the new LR4 Basic Panel. Gone are the Recovery and Fill Light sliders, replaced with Highlights and Shadows.  These new sliders really provide you with more control over adjusting just those parts of your image that need it.  In this example, I pushed up the troubled shadow areas of the foreground without any adverse effects on my colorful sky.



LR4 Basic Panel

3. Local Brush Adjustment.  Even with the magic shadow slider, the silhouette of the bluff in the background still needed a little help.  After painting the dark areas, I started pushing the various sliders, including the new local "Noise" reduction slider until things started to fall into place.

LR 4 Local Brush

The end result...


I don't know about you, but I find myself fairly impressed.  My need for HDR in my landscape images was to overcome the tonal range limitations of my camera.  The new Basic Panel in Lightroom 4 is a very serious tool to help fit that need.

Lastly, I wanted to comment on LR4 performance.  I've seen a lot of comments out there about things seeming a little "doggy" in the development module and based on my limited experiences to date, I'd have to agree.  It's not unbearably slow, but it also isn't what we've come to expect from Lightroom.  I can remember similar complaints when Lightroom 3 came out of beta and it didn't take long for Adobe and the user community to get things rectified. 

Have any experiences of your own with the new Lightroom 4 Basic panel?  Share your thoughts using the comments section below.

Until next time, keep on click'n.

-Ken



LR 4 Resources

Recently upgrade to Adobe Lightroom 4?  Here's a nice list of additional resources you may want to check out.

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

Comments on Lightroom 4?

I personally have not had time to download the beta of Adobe's Lightroom 4, but I've been hearing some pretty good things about it in the "blogosphere". 

Have you experimented with the beta?  Do you plan to purchase the upgrade when it's finally released?