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| Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta is now available for download. Current Lightroom owners can use the free beta until August 31, 2008 while new users may download a 30-day trial of the software. |
Adobe has released a public beta version of Lightroom 2.0, a major upgrade to its photo workflow and RAW processing software. The new software offers dual-monitor support, improvements in the way metadata and image management are handled, and the ability to edit limited areas of photos without affecting the entire image, among numerous other enhancements. It is also the first Adobe application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Intel Macs and Microsoft Vista 64-bit operating systems.
The layout of the program's Library section for organizing images has been revised to be more intuitive, and a new Smart Collections feature lets photographers specify the criteria for photos to be included in a collection so that they are automatically added to it. Another new organizational feature is Suggested Keywords, which automatically generates additional recommendations when the photographer enters a keyword for an image.
Other notable new features include the ability to create multi-page print layouts of a single image in multiple sizes, improved image export functions, and the option of opening photos directly in Photoshop without first saving them as TIFF or PSD files. Details on both improvements to the software and known bugs are available in Adobe's release notes (PDF).
The Lightroom 2.0 beta is available in Mac and Windows versions from Adobe's Web site. New users can try the program for 30 days, while Lightroom 1x owners can use the free beta until August 31, 2008. Adobe is soliciting feedback from photographers who try the beta through its Lightroom 2.0 forum.
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