Adobe Updates Lightroom Public Beta

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Feb. 14, 2006 — Adobe Systems today announced an update to the public beta of Adobe Lightroom, an all-new digital imaging solution for professional photographers. Just one month after its introduction at the Macworld Show in San Francisco, Lightroom Public Beta 2.0 is now available as a Universal Binary for compatibility with PowerPC and Intel based Apple hardware and includes new features to streamline digital photography workflows. A Windows version is expected to follow the final Macintosh release in late 2006.

Lightroom Beta 2.0 includes new Crop and Straighten tools in the Develop module, ability to add music to slideshows and create hierarchical keyword lists to give photographers the ability to group and manage image keywords more efficiently. Improved Edit functionality provides photographers with more options for choosing how an image is delivered to Adobe Photoshop® CS2 based on its native file format. Lightroom also is able to read many IPTC fields, as well as import and export XMP metadata.

With its modular, task-based and streamlined environment, Lightroom's goal is to deliver a complete photography workflow. Leveraging industry-leading Adobe Camera Raw technology, Lightroom supports over 100 cameras and incorporates raw conversion into a single workflow experience. Upon import, files can also be converted to Digital Negative format (DNG) or renamed and segmented by folder or date. Images can be showcased via slideshows, now with the ability to add music, as well as drop shadows, borders, Identity Plates and different colored backgrounds. The size and position of the images can be manipulated and delivered in Macromedia Flash, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or HTML formats.

Lightroom Public Beta 2.0 for Macintosh OSX Tiger (10.4.3) is available for free download from the Adobe Labs Web site. Recommended system requirements are Macintosh OSX 10.4.3, 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 768 MB RAM and 1024x768 resolution screen. The final product is expected to be introduced in late 2006.