Lightroom 2

[hughden]

Trial version is available for download (no longer beta)

I would like to purchase an upgrade for my (legal) copy of version 1, but the Adobe store seems unwilling to sell to me because I live in Thailand. If anyone works out how to do this....

[Jimmyd]

I guess they want us to pirate it.

I'm stoked about Lightroom 2, and can't wait to try the full version.

You could probably get it through a proxy. Opera Tor might work, too; it's available on ThaiVisa in the download section.

[The Vulcan]

Should be in Pantip soon - problem sorted!

[hughden]

Not a problem to download it, I have it running already (30 day trial), with the latest dng profiles which seem pretty good.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles

I am quite happy to pay for the upgrade; but if they don't want my money then indeed there will be serial numbers floating around quite soon.

[Jimmyd]

Yeah, it's nice. I am looking around for some training vids now. There's usually a few subtle tricks you can pick up from those.

[hughden]

There are some here which overview the new features:

www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom2/

[Jimmyd]

That didn't take long.--there's a crack out for it already. Those crackers don't waste much time.

[The Vulcan]

Hughden - seems others are having the same problem

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....showtopic=26937

[hughden]

The Thai distributor is quoting 4,800 for the upgrade on a disc, although neither of the dealers I have contacted have responded to a request to order. Sigh. It's so hard to be legal.

[The Vulcan]

From the Beta version I can't actually see what the enhancements are. Seems nothing included that the current CS3/V1.4.1 "marriage" already caters for!

To-boot it also seems awash with problems ref crashing/freezing/slow performance etc, if the Adobe user forums are anything to go by.

Even now effective noise reduction, sharpening tools, lens correction and perspective control software needs to be purchased from 3rd parties.

I'd be interested to hear of other members opinions on this.

[hughden]

It's one step closer to not needing Photoshop. The adjustment brush is the most dramatic improvement. You can brush a wide range of changes, and the automatic masking feature works really well; much better tool than anything currently available in Photoshop. Non-destructive too of course and no need to generate a TIFF.

Linking with Photoshop is now easier if you do need to go there; can go straight to generating a panorama for instance.

The cataloguing options are much better, as is the searching options on your photos; can search across multiple criteria.

Graduated filtering in develop mode.

Vignetting on cropped images, and now the vignetting is designed as an effect as well as a lens correction.

New features for printing and web page generation.

Multiple monitor support. Of no interest to me but a friend has just bought a Mac Pro and is running two monitors; and.... well, I want the same setup!