Lightroom 4 - first impressions
I upgraded to Lightroom 4 yesterday (the day it was released) because I was excited about one of its new features. Being a PC user I don't have access to Aperture and up until recently I didn't know what I was missing out on. About 3 months ago I went to a preprocessing workshop by Guy Gowen, something I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn how to process lots of photos consistently and quickly. At the end of the workshop he processed the same photo twice, once through Aperture and then again through ACR (Adobe Camera RAW). The results were fairly similar except for one thing, Aperture did a much better job at retaining highlight details than Adobe's RAW converter. This wouldn't be such a big deal if not for the fact that I like to shoot 1 or more stops over in order to record detail in the shadows - I then recover highlights or over-exposed areas using a RAW converter. The fact that Aperture did it so much better was an issue for me. I have been considering switching to an Apple computer to get the benefit of Aperture but then Adobe announced LR4 (Lightroom 4) and after a few quick demos I was relieved to see that it handles highlight and shadow detail much better. But is it worth upgrading for one benefit?
The cons of lightroom 4
There's more to this update than just ighlight details. There is two new modules, maps for geotagging information and books for designing photo books. In all honesty I don't care for either of these modules. I don't really see the benefits of geotagging unless I'm just taking a happy snap with my iPhone and if I want to design a photo book I will do it in InDesign (I'm a graphic designer by training). So the fact that these two modules were added is wasted on me and to be honest I would rather the software didn't get too bloated, it is now a much bigger program and takes longer to load. What is more, the software doesn't seem to be as fast as previous versions. LR3 used to just buzz through photos, even the 21MP ones shot on a 5DmkII. Granted I've only been using LR4 for two days but I'm disappointed that it isn't as fast as LR3 when it comes to loading and editing photos, the main reason I use LR in the first place is for its streamlined workflow. If I want to do serious editing, where time isn't an issue, then I will use the full version of Photoshop.
The pros of Lightroom 4
There are other new features too though. The ability to deal with noise and moiré within the local adjustment brush and graduated filter is quite handy. You can also change WB (white balance) within the local adjusters too, very useful for when you are shooting in mixed lighting conditions. The Basic panel in the develop module has been reworked, it no longer contains brightness or recovery sliders, however it has gained whites, blacks, shadows and highlights. All of these sliders start of in the middle and move left for darker or right for brighter, a much more intuitive system. The big news is these sliders aren't just called something different from the old ones - they are actually connected to something. In particular the highlights and whites sliders are simply amazing. If, like me, you expose to the right (meaning you deliberately overexpose in order to record more information in the brighter side of the histogram) than you are going to love the ability to recover highlight information easily. In previous versions, using the recovery slider, highlight information wouldn't help very much, sometimes it would make things worse and leave a colour cast. In this version it is simply remarkable and is going to save me hours of round tripping into Photoshop. I am so impressed by the new methods for controlling exposure - the way that LR divides the historgram into 4 different sections and allows control over each is very easy. There must be some clever new maths behind them.
Is it worth the upgrade to Lightroom 4?
On the one hand LR4 has slowed my workflow down dramatically, each image takes a long time to load and so does the program. Hopefully this will be remedied in the next update however I can't help but think that part of the problem is the two extra modules that Adobe added, I could be wrong though. And to be fair my computer is no longer the fastest machine one the block - so I may be due for an upgrade in that department too. However in my opinion, the pros do outweigh the cons. The ability to recover highlight information and deal with noise, colour casts and moiré at a local level will save me more time than the time I lost. And there are plenty of other features that I haven't covered here, such as RGB curves, a reworked clarity slider and the ability to handle video. If you want to see more detailed specs you can do so here. My opinion is go for the upgrade, the updates to the develop module are worth the cost alone because they will enable you to extract even more from your RAW files. What is more, Adobe have reduced the cost of purchasing or upgrading - so for me it was a no brainer, but be warned it may not run as speedy as previous versions, here's to hoping that will be fixed soon.
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