Adobe on Monday released a new beta version of Lightroom, its pro digital photo processing software. With this new beta 4 release, the company has rebadged the software Photoshop Lightroom and has united the product feature set for both Mac and Windows platforms. Still a public beta, Photoshop Lightroom is expected to make its official release in early 2007.
Lightroom is Adobe’s answer to Apple’s own Aperture software. It was developed to give pro photographers a digital workflow, showcasing, importing, selecting and retouching digital photos.
New to this release are precision white balance selection options and a new streamlined user interface with customizable controls. New tone curve adjustment features have been added, and enhancements have been made to the Develop and Library models. Users can rename and convert files to Adobe’s Digital Negative (DNG) format after importing into the Lightroom library. And new filters, search presets and organizing options have been added.
New camera models supported by this release include the Nikon D2Xs, Sony A100, preliminary support for the Canon Digital Rebel XTi (400D) and Nikon D80.
Final system requirements are yet to be established, but this beta version requires Mac OS X v10.4.3 or later, 1GHz G4, G5 or faster, including Intel (Lightroom is a Universal binary for Intel-based Macs); 768MB RAM and 1GB hard disk space.