Will this be an upgrade from Lightroom 3? I just bought Lightroom 3 and am enjoying the use of it at the moment.

I have used LR3 primarily for organizing and printing, doing most of my processing with plug-ins. Now the Develop module in LR4 Beta is my heavy lifter; major, major improvement.

I spent a lot of time with Capture One Pro 6 because LR3 is good but not great. I, too, have been playing around with LR4 and think Adobe did a nice job upgrading this thing. So my time will now be split b/n C1 Pro 6 and LR4 when it’s released.

Yep, it’s a brilliant update. 4 part histogram, the printing option (can’t remember the name..(S) key shortcut), Rgb curve, same options for the filters as we see in the main module + white balance.

Books is a fantastic add on.

One question, I asked the same on Matt’s lightroom blog as well. When am in LR 4, Book module, I see 4 page size options. Is there any way we can assign a custom page size.

As long as i don`t need a 12 core desktop machine with 64 gigs of RAM and an terribly expensive SSD drive (probably with thunderbolt inside) to get a bit more beef when working with my mobile and don’t have to wait until LR imports my pictures (without any import processing settings) from my CF card forever.
LR3 is DOG SLOW!
Don’t cheer to early!

Having never made the jump from Bridge and ACR to LR I’ve been loving the beta of LR4, and will be seriously tempted to get it when it arrives properly (if the price is right). Only concern is that at the moment the compatibility with ACR isn’t quite there (not surprising, different controls and rendering engine).
Will adobe let you update Camera Raw for free with CS5, because I don’t want to have to fork out for an upgrade to the full Photoshop CS6 just to be compatible with LR4

I couldn’t agree more Scott. I have been using Lightroom since the first beta of version one and am really looking forward to LR4.

Will you be bringing out an update to your LR4 book? I have the first one and am hoping to migrate my workflow to using just LR4 rather than my current combo of LR3 plus PS5 for finishing touches. I think that your book will really help me with this and hope to see it before summer, maybe even in iBooks format as well as print?!?

Totally agree, Scott. LR4 is so much better than LR3. All of my concerns with LR3 were addressed in this update.

–John

Scott, I am loving LR4 but my question is how am I going to combine by LR3 catalog with the LR4 beta catalog when the final version comes out?

Thanks.

I’ll have to wait until official release to make my decision. Beta4 runs so slow on my machine, I can’t incorporate it into my workflow. It’s like driving a sports car, stuck in first gear. Once they release official version, we should still be able to demo that one for 30 days, yes? (I’m assuming the official version will run much more efficiently on my machine.)

I have a brand new 27″ iMac and the full blown CS5, both given to me for free by my school in exchange for my photography. My question is a simple one – Is there any reason for me to purchase LR4?

I agree. I’ll definitely be ordering when it’s ready. Hopefully, they don’t jack up the regular upgrade pricing.

Is it me, or is LR4 a lot slower/less responsive than LR3? When I move sliders in LR3 the screen adjusts immediately, in LR4 I am getting a second or two lag (just like Aperture).

They may have put in debugging code traps in LR4 for the beta that slow things down, they may come out when it goes into production.

I haven’t had much time to play with it (that’s what this weekend is hopefully for) but I liked what I’ve seen so far. I’ll be upgrading, just hope that the plugin vendors (especially onOne) will be hot on the heals of the release with their updates.

Scott, I use PS Elements for my photo adjustments, and use iphoto for books. What would you say LR adds over PSE? Do I still need PSE (e.g. will LR4 have a content-aware clone tool like PSE)?

Hi Scott, i just have one question, on some of your tutorials i saw that to get that dirty HDR look for portraits you use in LR3: Recovery 100%, Fill Light 100%, Clarity 100%. i tried similar settings on LR4 beta: Shadows 100%, Clarity 100%, and other setting just to play, but still cant figure it out how to get the same HRD look for portraits on LR4 beta as i’m getting on LR3, any tips?

Just glad to see the Brightness slider go away. Never understood why it was there and why one would use it instead of Exposure. Shadows/highlights is so much more sensible a well. Looking forward to v4. Hopefully they’ve sped up general usage for larger libraries. Can’t really tell on small sample imports. Fingers crossed. :-)

LR4′s 2012 process is a spectacular improvement. I can’t get over how many subtle improvements are made just by switching between the old and new processes on my D3s and especially my D300s files.

Also, has there been an upgrade to the lens profiles? I was floored at how good of a job LR did with my new 20mm 2.8, which is known for “moustache” distortion and relatively heavy vignetting.

I am not sure about this. When working in the developing module moving the sliders the preview updates after a second or so, after a while really annoying. I work with the windows 7 version with a quite new laptop.

I just purchased LR3 two months ago and I don’t know if I will be able to upgrade without having to pay the whole price again….Anybody has an idea?

I just wish they would add a channel mixer in lightroom :/

I am working with Lightroom 2 will I be able to purchase Lightroom 4 upgrade without also having to buy the Lightroom 3 upgrade?

Nigel: 
As I have said publicly MANY times, I use BOTH Lightroom and Aperture (I make my slideshows in Aperture, and I used to make my photo books there before Lightroom 4 added that feature). That being said: (1) It’s not my job to sell you Lightroom. That’s Adobe’s job. I just made a prediction in this post that it would sell like mad, and why I thought that would sell so many copies, and it is selling even better than that. (2) I don’t have to defend my opinions to you, any more than you don’t have to feel bad about your decision to be an Aperture user. You don’t have to go attacking anyone that says something good about Lightroom. (3) This isn’t the New York Times. You came to a blog called “The Photoshop Insider.” The full name of Lightroom 4 is “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.” What kind of advice did you expect to get here? If you go to a Website called the “Chevy Insider” do you think they’re going to tell you to go buy Ford products? They obviously have made their choice. (4) In my opinion, Lightroom 4 does a better job of processing Raw and/or JPEG images than any image editor I’ve ever used. Period. I have Aperture, and I think LR4 does a far better job. I actually think LR3 did a better job than Aperture, but 4 takes it to a new level. Adobe re-engineered the way it processes images, and frankly being able to get better-looking images is the MOST important reason to use a particular piece of image editing software for many people. (5) You can keep right on using Aperture. Just because other people use something else doesn’t mean you have to feel bad about what you’re using. (6) If you already used Lightroom 4, you would read my post, nod in agreement, and that would be the end of it. But because you use something else, you assume that I must be a shill for Adobe. In other words, if you agree with the author of the post, you read it and move on. If you disagree with his opinion, then he must be getting paid off by the company, right? Geesh. I so get tried of crap like this. -Scott

Lr4 is better…no question…but it’s A LOT slower too.

Can Someone give me The Serial Number For LightRoom 4 ?

Please :/

If it wasn’t so slow on my machine, I’d like to test and praise more of the new features. But unfortunately I am one of those sad creatures on whose computers LR4 is unwilling to perform – despite 16 GB or RAM and six cores. I cannot recommend the product yet.

I for one love the new CA/PF tool in LR4.1. This can achieve something you couldn’t in versions before it, including LR4, so as far as CA goes you will get a better result than LR3.x
For those asking, the full download ( or update) is the size it is because its both 32 and 64bit version is one compressed archive. No idea why Adobe decided to do this but its been this way for a while now.

Have you read this forum…..http://forums.adobe.com/message/4519421#4519421

I am a many year user of Lightroom and right now am sooooo frustrated with Lightroom 4.1 I am thinking of leaving the product entirely. I have major performance problems like everyone else on the forum and too be honest….the product is unusable. Did you have these problems Scott?

Hi Scott, I am saving hard to get a new Full Frame camera plus the necessary’s to go with it, but in the mean time I am gonna organise and edit current pics on LR4 to try and sell prints in the hope of making some money to advance in Photography, and like you say, they do look very good in Lightroom 4, I think Adobe have done a great job, I just need to get to grips with it one hundred and ten per cent:) 

Is this quality improvement unique to LightRoom or does it come from Camera Raw?  If you use Photoshop CS6 with the current version of ACR would you get the same results?

and this is why I won’t buy LR 5.0 and I think it won’t sell very well… http://blog.unveiledphotography.com/2012/09/why-i-will-not-buy-lightroom-5-0/ 
 
Scott, I respect you a lot but Lightroom 4 is a very poor release full of bugs that should have not seen the shelves when it did. Half a year later, it has major issues that Adobe has not only not addressed but is apparently ignored.
 
On that link above, there is a video of LR 4.1 “at its best”. Check it out how it takes 40 secs to load a preview (already built at import time) running by itself on a 3.07 GHz, 12 GB Ram, 1 GB VRam, RAID for photos, dedicated System and programs HD and dedicated scratch and cache file. Awesome! Right?

Hi scott great video, just a couple of questions. First Question you mention antique background plugins. Sorry I was engrossed watching the video, were do I get them from. I have Lightroom 4 and element 11, Can I load them both to a pc and I am thinking of getting an apple desk top, is it possible to load them on both, or do I need to buy lightroom and elements again

Scott, Please help me out here, I have used LR2 on PC for many years with no problems and absolutely loved it. I finally decided to upgrade to LR4 and move from PC to MAC. I am so frustrated. I have loaded LR4 on my PC without any problems. But on my Mac I keep getting this message “an error occured while loading modules” I have searched the web and found many many answers but none have worked or I just get so confused with what they are actually saying. I am new to Mac, and honestly still quite dumb. I cannot do anything in LR, as soon as I open it I get the message and that’s it, forget about doing anything else.