It’s always quite nice when a new product launches! The excitement starts to stir as people wonder what new features will be put in place! Will that little function you’ve always wanted to have in your workflow be included in the next major update? Who knows… but when the Beta copies come out, everyone get’s to put in their two cents and contribute their own needs to the development of the software they will use. What do I mean by this? Today is the first day of the Lightroom 4 Beta, which mean’s thousands of photographers around the world will download their copy free of charge to become part of a worldwide beta testing of the software that we love so much! Anyone who know’s me know’s that I am a tried and true Lightroomer (pretty sure that’s not a word). I’ve used Lightroom in conjunction with other DAM’s like Photo Mechanic & Digital Pro since the very beginning and have been a true evangelist of the program since I first used it in my workflow. Well I can’t possibly express to you the thousands of reasons I use and love Lightroom in a single blog posting, I can recommend to new user’s and seasoned Lightroomer’s (theirs that word again!) to go download the beta at adobe labs NOW! It’s free, so why wouldn’t you!

So now that all that hooey is out of the way, I thought I would talk about my first impressions on the new release of this amazing software!

The two major new additions in Lightroom 4 Beta are the Maps and Books module, and they are just amazing! Starting off by talking about the Maps module, I’ve been bugging the guy’s at Adobe for as long as I can remember to create a better way to manage embedded location information in your images. GPS devices that allow the camera to save coordinates into your metadata are so popular now that it’s about damn time that Adobe caught up with Aperture on this simple function. In previous versions, for a photographer to see a map of where an image was taken, they would have to go to the metadata panel in the library module and seek out location information, click on the coordinates, and a google maps page with the images capture location would open in your default web browser. The problem with this is that a user can not see the locations of multiple photographs or all of their photographs on the same map at the same time! Since Apples Aperture & iPhoto have had this feature for quite some time now, it’s only Natural adobe caught up!

Of course, who can overlook the swanky new Books module! Photographers can now use Lightroom to create photo books for PDF (to send to a printing company of their choice) or to upload to Blurb (an amazing site that allow’s photographers to publish and sell their photo books without the hassle of dealing with

manufacturers and distributors)! What’s really cool is that you can even view an estimated price per book when creating books for Blurb! That’s just über cool! If your working with other photographers, say creating a gallery book or something like that, you can share your creation as a PDF in emails with your colleagues using the simple export to PDF feature that already exists in the Print Module.

In the develop Module, some of your favorite slider’s have been renamed to make more sense. For example, the Recovery slider of Lightroom’s previous versions isnow called Highlights! A much more appropriate name if I do say so myself seeing as the recovery slider was meant to reduce highlight clipping however the word recovery could also refer to the recovery of shadow clipping as well. Additionally, the  Develop module is now home to a soft proofing feature that allows you to soft proof your images right in Lightroom! Amazing!

So if your still wondering, yes, I do have Lightroom 4 Beta loaded on my computer to work with until the release of Lightroom 4 sometime this spring. Once again, remember to download your copy of Lightroom 4 Beta today and get started testing out these and many other amazing new features!

Remember to register for our debut webinar, this friday at 7:00PM EST! I’ll be teaching quick and effective landscape finishing techniques using Photoshop and a variety of plugins. It’s free and it’ll be a load of fun, so register before it’s too late!