Lightroom 2 Public Beta, like, Now

You actually kinda heard it here first (unbelievable, I know), but now the cat is out of the bag. Lightroom 2 is available from Adobe Labs as a public beta. Uhm, now.

What are you still doing here? Oh, you want to know why this is awesome? From John Nack's blog:

Lightroom 2 adds a Retouch tool right within the Develop module (see screenshot). That means you can paint regions of the image to dodge, burn, saturate/desaturate, adjust contrast, and more. Edits are stored as metadata, just as all other LR adjustments are stored, and are applied directly to your raw images. (Because people will quickly ask, I'll point out that unlike Apple's newly released Aperture 2.1, Lightroom integrates its selective editing tools right in with the other adjustment tools. In Lightroom you don't have to generate a TIFF file for editing, and unlike in Aperture, you can always tweak the results later. In addition, Lightroom features Auto Mask technology for tweaking the clicked region without bleeding into neighboring areas.)

Dang.

I just became a better photographer.

Sorry to blog and run, but the installer just finished! Go read more, or download the beta for yourself.

Comments

[Doug]

This is blowing my mind. I almost thought it was an April Fools joke, but I'm so glad it's not.

Apple and Adobe are definitely in an arms race again, and the winner (whenever there's competition) is the consumer.

[Doug]

Sorry to comment twice, but I had to post this bit of snark from the Lightroom "Product Details" tab:

When will Lightroom 2.0 be available?
... One thing we can say, however, is that we plan to continue with a more aggressive release schedule than we’ve seen from Apple, which took over two years between release of Aperture 1.0 and 2.0. ...

[miahz]

Would you be able to send me a beta invite so i could try it out over the summer?

[Allan White]

Edits are stored as metadata, just as all other LR adjustments are stored, and are applied directly to your raw images.

This is awesome - no intermediate "layers" (as Aperture 2 does) between you and your RAW master. The way it should be done.

However, I think Aperture's Edit API is going to be more flexible in the end, by flattening the image at a certain point and letting the plug-in do whatever to it. Your original image is still there, too. I agree it's not as elegant as edit metadata, but not as fast (perhaps) or flexible (remains to be seen).

Very impressive. I'm loving Aperture 2.1, I have no complaints now. Especially since they copied the vignetting and Vibrancy sliders from LightRoom! =)

I still like LR's RAW engine, but the difference is very slight now. It's Aperture for me for now.