Lightroom 2.1 has been released
I’m heading out to Photo Plus today so make sure you stop by the Peachpit booth at 1pm to say hi. Also, Adobe just announced the official release of Lightroom 2.1. You may remember that they announced a release candidate of 2.1 a while back. Release candidate is really just a fancy word for beta software and, naturally, most people weren’t very keen on downloading the beta. Here’s a link to Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty’s announcement on his blog. When you open Lightroom 2 it should automatically ask you if you want to upgrade (at least mine did). So have at it and let me know your thoughts on the update.
I just upgraded, so I went straight from 1.4 to 2.1. A lot of posters mentioned performance problems with the adjustment brush. I actually haven’t noticed any slowness with the adjustment brush, per se, but I’ve noticed that the response to all the adjustment sliders (hue/tint, tone curve, etc) are MUCH SLOWER in general. It’s slow enough that I’m starting not to bother with the sliders and just manually adjusting the values instead.
I also had one strange case last night. I had an over-exposed shot. It was of a ship with lots of rigging lines. When I made an adjustment, both my navigator preview and my filmstrip preview showed pink/purple all around the (thin) rigging lines. The photo itself looked fine, and I didn’t see anything significant in the chromatic abberations view. I even closed and reopened LR, and it was still there. Anyone else run into something like this?
when i first upload pics to lightroom they look as tehy do on my d300, but then they all get extreamly over exposed, why does it do this and what can i do to stop it?
Anybody have any advice for working with photos on a laptop, when all your photos are stored on external hard drives. Is there an easy way to grab a few photos and work on them away from the drives that hold your library pictures?
I’m still looking for a serious performance upgrade for the local adjustment brush. I’m now at the point that I switch to PS CS3 to make an adjustment that was supposed to make my workflow easier in LR2. Sad to say I’m disappointed.
I noticed that the About… dialogue of LightRoom 2.1 indicates that Camera Raw 4.6 is installed; now that Camera Raw 5.1 is released with all exiting features, how can we get LightRoom 2.x to benefit from that? How do we add Camera Raw 5.1 to LightRoom 2.x?
Adobe mentions that you cannot save your contact sheets to a print file. Since this feature does not work on 2.1, to me there is no improvement. I’d rather have 2.0. I also don’t find any improvement in CS4. It takes more memory and forget about upgrading unless you have a super fast video card. I had to load a new driver from nvidia to run CS4. I’d down load a trial version before upgrading any Adobe products again.
Matt,
Has anyone reported problems installing ver 2.1 over the rc? I’m having difficultly installing the new update. I get an 2753 error msg saying the “pxsetup.exe” file is not marked for installation. I’ve checked Adobe’s support page but have not found any references to this problem. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Bill
Thanks for the post. Although, argh. They’ve removed a most useful tool – spot removal preset ability. Now I can’t remove my dust and hot pixels easily on import or in Develop modules, bad bad move.
Anyone know a work around?
Yeah. Along with a CS4 camera raw 5.1 update but I am not sure Lightroom uses those.
Hi Matt,
I am sure you are aware, but have not seen it mentioned here yet. Adobe have released Beta 2 of the DNG Camera Profiles on 22 October 08.
Matt,
Would you please develop a brush preset to remove (tone down at least) hotspots.
This would be avery helpful tool!
Jon
Hi Matt,
Can you advise if watermarking is possible in LR2 for the web galleries. I can work out how to add Copyright in the caption but an actual watermark as people can obviously download the image. I’m a social photographer and put the images online for people to view in private galleries.
Thanks
Phil
The only thing I’ve noticed so far is that preview rendering is faster, no more no less.
/D
Jeremy…vista or xp?
Thanks
dj
Runs like a champ on my Intel Core 2 Duo 3ghz w/ 4GB ram. It used to randomly do the hang-and-hourglass for up to 30 seconds while working in the library or develop module. This doesn’t seem to happen anymore. That alone made my day. 🙂
I’m glad to read that I’m not the only one having problems with Lightroom. I just updated to LR2.1 and it has slowed down so badly, It’s driving me nuts! The images almost freezes as I use the brushes, and the rendering is so slow that it almost feels like a stop-motion movie. All of my other programs are lightning fast. How could this be! Is Aperture this slow too?
How can we improve this mess?
I still can’t export photos to CS3 via the “merge to panorama in Photoshop…” I got the error message “Some files selected in Bridge are not compatible and will be skipped”… Anyone experienced similar problems?
Hi Matt, I just watched your video on how to watermark a photo before exporting it as a PDF slide show and discovered that the .psd option wasn’t any more available when locating a picture to use as a graphical identity plate…
Am I right or do I missed something in your tutorial ?
Thanks for letting us play with RC1. Several immediate fixes and benefits! Question on the beta2 camera profiles: when/why would we need to hang onto the beta1 profiles? Great stuff!
The only problem i’m having so far is the (so called) integration with CS3. Before 2.1 update it was fine but after upgrade not so good…what happens now is when working in LR and i want to edit in CS3 i choose that option, CS3 opens as normal but does’nt open the image, nothing at all. I don’t understand how this was one of the issues with 2.0 because for me it was working fine, now with the 2.1 release it was supposed to be fixed…not working for me now. Any help appreciated…Thanks
Does anybody have problems seeing vertical shoots in LR2 in the Develop and Print modules?
Seeing a performance improvement on my rig, especially with rendering. Plus support for my D300 and D90, huge to me (why I downloaded the RC anyways). But, the all around performance bump really has me – filters, adjustments are much improved speed wise.
Finally I can create virtual copy and I can write down metadata !!
I have a question before I install LR2 , I use a Leica M8 – is there a Camera Profile for this Camera ? Or is there a way to choose one manuell that maybe is close to my camera ? Finally I must say that I love LR and yes the brushes are slow, but I dont know any alternative !
Marcus (from Germany -sorry for my english )
@ Alex
The answer to your problem can be found on the Adobe LR forum here: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b6d251/4
Damn! Love LR, but hate the brushes! I guess we have no choice but to wait for Adobe to work this out. If patience is a virtue, then we all must qualify as saints about now.
I was so excited to upgrade to 2.1 thinking it would solve the very slow brush issues….nope…still slow ,still get streaks…looking forward to 2.3…on the upside,it forces me to get a beer while I wait for LR2 to draw a single stroke.
David
LR 2.1 working just fine here. Downloaded and installed it last night and I’ve had no issues to report.
The downloadable camera profiles make working in LR a whole lot more efficient!
Cheers,
Stephen
So glad I read this! Mine did not ask me to upgrade when I opened it. I read some of the fixes and was glad to see “using auto-white balance could cause a spinning ball.” I can certainly testify to that one! Glad it wasn’t just me and should be fixed now.
I’ve had another problem that I wonder if others experience: most of the Lightroom presets completely blow out my photos. I can take a picture that is properly exposed and apply something like Antique Light, Aged Photo, or Antique Grayscale and they appear really overexposed. Is there a way to reset the defaults?
I used to be able to choose a slider with single click and then use the mouse wheel to make fine adjustments, this no longer works with version 2.1, that SUCKS
I’ve been using the release candidate of 2.1 for some time now. When I installed the final version of 2.1 this morning it said something like “… will require 24 kb on your hard disk”. Yes, twenty-four kilobyte! Does this mean there have not been any further changes and the RC has just been published as the final version now?
When I try to install this new release (as user off 2.0) under Vista I got every time an Error (2753) with the message The file ‘pxsetup.exe’ is not marked for installation. Who could help me to solve this (I can’t find a solution on the Adobe site. Thanks.
Nice update, but needs A LOT more work. 1.4.1 was flying on my MacBook Pro 2.6Ghz with 4 GB RAM. 2.0 and 2.1 are SO very much slower it is unforgivable. And my Macbook is less than a year old. How about that?
Sliders are super sticky: I have to enter numbers because sliding is out of the question. Localised brushes are useless. (Well, they are working on it ofcourse).
I want the snappiness of the 1.4.1 workflow back or I am migrating 2500+ photographs to a different programme. Screw this. I want an update. Not a downgrade in disguise.
Things look a lot better now. I tried the local adjustment brush and was still painfully slow, but changed the ‘Flow’ to 100% and it now works in ‘real time’ but everything else seems to be OK.
My main concern was the lack of 50D support in RC 2.1 but Adobe seem to have addressed this very well in 2.1 (along with the updated camera profiles) so I’m happy 🙂
Hello. I’m trying version 2.0 now and I have one question about slideshow. I shoot pictures at 3:2 format Canon 20D. When I open my pictures in LR2 slideshow tab on 16:10 monitor I have cropped my pictures to 16:10 format and I can change position of my picture to look better for this format. When I open pictures in LR2 on 4:3 monitor I have my picture cropped to 4:3. So please tell me how to do 16:10 crop using 4:3 monitor? I know that when I exporting my slideshow for example to PDF I can choose different resolution but then I can’t see how it is exported and I can’t change position of my pictures to look better on 16:10 monitors. Regards.
It works faster, especially on the Develop module, particularly rendering of preview, synchronization, and exporting.
Great!
Another note on the whole “image returning to LR from CS3” issue – I’ve found that when working in a collection, the option for stacking an original with an edited image is not available. I’m beginning to feel this is becoming more and more of an issue. I wonder if removal of flags and labels on editing is “by design” or is it an oversight? If “by design” I’d love to know the thinking behind it, as it now has me having to introduce other steps and work-arounds to my workflow. Not a plus point unfortunately.
The 2.1 beta fixed a;pt of my problem, and worked great. I’m glad it’s official not though… Gav
…update on my previous comment: after several hours of working on a portrait shoot the local adjustment tools are noticeably faster (but still not super fast) than in LR 2.0 and 2.1 beta RC1…
…note for Matt: your local adjustment presets for portraits (brightening teeth, eyes, iris enhancement etc) in LR 2.1 seem to need editing: they are far too “strong” now and need adjustment…have any other people tried them already?…
Fantastic program first off. It is still ssslllloooowwww on my Power PC G5 Tower / 8gb ram, I feel like I’m at the beach because I see the spinning ball so much, my intel laptop with 1gb ram runs circles around itso much smoother. I really don’t think they’ll put a lot of man power into optimizing it to work on a 5+ year old machine, I get it. It is really a great program though. I was a doubter for a while and then I finally came into the light, ha, ha.
@ Phil – I have noticed this too, and I agree that the edits should come back with the flags/labels etc. that it left with. This is especially true since most want the edits stacked with the original, and thus it seems odd that choice is overridden by the lack of including the flag/label.
Jason
Everything seems to work great, but there is a strange change that showed up after I updated. I used to be able to choose a slider with single click and then use the arrow keys to adjust the slider. With the update, I can no longer do that. The arrow keys only function to scroll through photos. Not a huge problem, but I have become used to using the keys to adjust the sliders rather than the mouse. Is there a way to change this?
Jason
Update – I’ve found something out. I was working from images in my Folders panel. My original image was flagged as a pick and I had my filters set to show picks only. When the edited image came back in from CS3, it wasn’t flagged and was therefore hidden from view. So, just thinking this through, as far as workflow is concerned – I guess I should place all my selects into a COLLECTION and then work with the images in the collection – rather than in my “Folders”. When working on images in the collection, LR2 works the same way as LR1 did – the edited image shows up next to the original. This is fine, now I know what’s happening – but wouldn’t it be easier for the edited image to come back into LR2 complete with any flags or labels it left with? I’d appreciate opinions.
Is there are problem with LR2 and CS3? I’m on a Mac. When I open an image to edit in CS3, edit the image, save and close, the edited image does not appear next to the original back in LR2. It’s been created – I can access it through my Finder, but when I try and import that LR2 tells me it already exists and I can then view it in the “Already in catalog” – but it still isn’t available next to the original – which pretty much messes up my whole workflow! Any ideas?
I’m personally finding it essentially the same as the RC version, but there again I’m not the type who wants to shave microseconds off everything – life’s too short to worry over little things. The new beta 2 colour profiles though show a small but noticeable difference which in a way only serves to confuse the issue. Too spoilt for choices now and my history log is getting longer and longer as I try each one. 🙂
Preview rendering is MUCH faster with this release. A small, but significant improvement.
…i’ve already been playing around with it for the last hour or so…seems to me that the local adjustment tools are responding a bit faster now…hope to confirm this because in LR 2.0 and 2.1 RC the slow response happened at random…keep up the good work!…