Lightroom-News.com

Tom Hogarty has announced that Camera Raw 4.5 and DNG Converter are available on Adobe Labs.
He says:

The Camera Raw 4.5 and DNG Converter Release Candidates (RC) are now available on Adobe Labs. The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that the plug-in is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of our customers. The Camera Raw team would like the community to help verify the quality of the plug-in through normal usage as this will ensure that the plug-in is tested on a diversity of hardware and software configurations not available internally at Adobe.

This release includes new camera support for the Olympus E 420 and E 520 camera models.

Please provide feedback on your experience with the Camera Raw 4.5 plug-in and the DNG Converter on the Camera Raw User to User forum

For Lightroom customers who would like to use the new support provided for the Olympus cameras, download the DNG Converter release candidate and convert your raw files to DNG before importing them into Lightroom 1.4.1.

(Via Lightroom Journal.)

Tom Hogarty has announced the release of both Lightroom 1.4.1 and Camera RAW 4.4.1:

The Lightroom 1.4.1 and Camera Raw 4.4.1 updates have been posted to the following locations: Lightroom(Mac, Win), Camera Raw(Mac, Win). The updates provide all of the changes included in the original Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4 releases but also include corrections for issues described below and in previous blog posts.  The Camera Raw plug-in will also be available later this evening via the Adobe Update Manager and the Lightroom update can be located by choosing ‘Check for Updates…’ under the Help menu. 
The Lightroom and Camera Raw team apologize for any inconveniences caused by the issues presented in the initial updates.

Go to Lightroom Journal for full details.

The Lightroom 1.4 update for Mac and Windows has been temporarily removed from the Adobe.com web site. Those Lightroom users who have installed Lightroom 1.4 should uninstall the update and install Lightroom 1.3.1.(Mac, Win) until a further update can be provided.

For those not in immediate need of the updated camera support available in Camera Raw 4.4 or the DNG 4.4 Converter, it’s recommended that you also continue working with the 4.3.1 versions. (Mac, Win) This decision is based on the following errors that have been discovered with the recent update:

The Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4 updates have been posted to the following locations: Lightroom(Mac, Win), Camera Raw(Mac, Win). The updates include support for the following new camera models:

Source: Photoshopnews.com

This is a cross-posted Photoshopnews story in which I have tried to unravel the question of how should you set the shadow output levels when editing an image in Camera Raw. You will find that the exact same principles apply when working in Lightroom.

Some image editing habits become so ingrained that it is hard to unlearn them when newer ways come along and make the old favorite methods redundant. An example of this is the subject of setting the output Levels in Photoshop for the print output. For many years Photoshop users were taught to set the output levels for the shadows at a slightly higher value than 0,0,0, even though (as you will read here) it has not been necessary to do so for quite some years now. Then came along Camera Raw and Lightroom and some photographers have been agonizing over how to set the output levels for an image when there is no output levels control in Camera Raw or Lightroom. Hopefully the following article will help shed some light on how Photoshop is still able to manage the output levels for you and why the solution is really a lot simpler than you would think.

Read the full story…

In part 1 of this story, which was published last week, I showed how you could use a drag and drop method to open a photo directly in Photoshop and also how to open as a Smart Object. In this second part we are going to look at drag and drop to a Photoshop droplet and how to link a photo back to a folder view in Bridge.

Last month I wrote a tutorial feature on how to use Bridge as a front end to Lightroom. Staying on that theme, there are a few more drag and drop tips you might like to be aware of such as drag and drop opening. This is not a standard Lightroom feature, it is more of a unofficial workaround and as such, not everything will work as expected. For example, you can’t drag and drop virtual copy photos from Lightroom and you need to pay special attention to the warning about opening images that have unsaved metadata via a drag and drop.

Lightroom 1.2 and Camera Raw 4.2 are now available. Lightroom customers will receive an update notification through Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 users will be able to download the Camera Raw 4.2 update through the Adobe Update Manager. This update also includes the DNG Converter 4.2. Details as well as direct links for all updates are listed below.

Source: Luminous Landscape
Author: Mark Segal

The Luminous Landscape website has posted an essay by Mark Segal, who is a member of the Applied Color Theory List (ACTL), on the subject of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) tone curves. This essay offers a detailed analysis of how the tone curve adjustments that you can apply in Camera Raw or Lightroom compare to the traditional approach of using RGB composite curve adjustments in Photoshop. Over on the ACTL list, Dan Margulis has suggested that it is better to use Camera Raw adjustments to make minor corrections only and use Photoshop Curve adjustments to make the major tone edits. Dan has also argued that in some cases ‘opening the range in Camera Raw actually damaged the image to the point where it was no longer possible to get a good result without excessive effort…’ In response to this claim, Mark has tested his own hypothesis, which is that Camera Raw adjustments applied to a raw capture in Photoshop ACR or Lightroom are not any more destructive than Photoshop and if anything, tone and color edits are easier to make in ACR, but Photoshop edits are still very useful for minor tone and color edits on a rendered raw image.

To access the PDF document and join the discussion you will need to read the full story on the Luminous Landscape website.

Tom Hogarty (Lightroom and Camera Raw product manager) has written a blog post on the Lightroom Journal. The post reveals the reason behind the disconnect between the release of Camera Raw 4.1 and the upcoming Lightroom update.