3 Things (and some more stuff) You Need to Know About Lightroom 4.1
Last week, Adobe released an update to Lightroom 4 (Lightroom 4.1). Usually the updates are more about adding camera support and new lens profiles to Lightroom. But you’ll want to make sure you grab this one pretty quick, because it not only fixes a few bugs that I’ve heard about, but it has a few new features too.
First, The 3 Things
1. You now have the ability to process HDR TIFF files (yes, even 32-bit TIFF files). Let’s say you merge multiple exposures into a single 32-bit image using Photoshop’s HDR Pro. Now you can save that image, import it into Lightroom, and use the new basic panel controls to process the image (rather than the, how shall I say, somewhat touchy, HDR Pro controls) 😉
2. If you’ve enjoyed the new Book module, you’ll be happy to know you can save photobooks as JPEG files now. That means you can assemble them for printing somewhere else.
3. Lastly, 4.1 is supposed to address any performance issues you may have had. I didn’t have them personally, but I had a few people at my seminars say that LR4 was too slow. If you were in that boat then you’ll definitely want to download 4.1
Some More Stuff
– If you’ve got color fringing problems on your photos you’ll love the new Color Fringing corrections to help address chromatic aberration (you can find out more about it here).
– Publishing photos to Adobe Revel is now accessible via a Publish plugin
– Point Curve adjustments (from earlier versions of Lightroom) are back.
– Fixed any Edit-in functionality
– Better viewing of subfolders and stacks in folders with a large number of photos.
– Clarity should no longer add gray tinting.
Tom Hogarty (Adobe’s Lightroom Product Manager) has a full write up of all the features, bug fixes, new camera support and lens profiles that were added over on his blog. Here’s the link if you want to go read it. In the meantime, make sure you go to Help > Check for Updates to download the new version. And if you did have any performance or issues fixed in the update, be sure to leave a comment and let us know how the update is working out for you.
Does anyone know when we’ll have tether support for the D4 and D800??
Or is Nikon keeping this under wraps?
Matt,
can you please create a video on how to export a book to JPG files?
Is it also possible to define you own page dimensions and dpi value?
thanks,
For the record, LR 4.1 is still very slow and pokey on my 32bit Win 7 Pro Dell PC. Even runs slow when opening a new catalog of only 10 raw images that have had no changes. I’ve done just about everything people have suggested on different forums to solve this problem but to no avail. From what I have read, 4.1 helped some but certainly not all.
Hi everyone,
For me, Lightroom 4 launch was the worst software launch I have ever experienced. (how could Adobe let this happen will remain a mystery to me) and had to go back to v3. I felt a bit relieved when 4.1 went out. Unfortunately, it still has performance issues : I can’t use it more than 20 min before experiencing slowing down (and I have a brand new i7 core CPU with 8GO RAM at 3.40 GHz…).
I just read that on a forum : http://photocamel.com/forum/computers-software/162752-help-lightroom-4-1-slow-performance-problems.html
If anyone has some insight, I’d be glad, thanks.
Arno
This weekend I created a 90 page book with images and text in LR4.1 only to have it vanish while editing one of the images in the Develop module. I called tech support and they started a case but were unable to help me. They said it was a bug that was fixed in the 4.1 update and it should not be happening, well it did and it was a lot of time wasted. How can I ever rely on book making in LR when it may just up and disappear at any time? Very frustrating. Reading through the forums I see this has happened to many. After about an hour on the phone with help desk to no avail, I did find a work around, I went to a backed up catalog and was able to open the book from the day prior, so I just lost one days work. This was never suggested to me by tech support.
Everyone is talking about the performance improvements in 4.1 over 4.0, especially RC1. I haven’t seen any performance improvements. Am I the only one? 4.1 is still dreadfully slow for me.
Scott
It’s the same for me, terribly slow since 4.0 and 4.1 is not better!
Alexander
Slowwwwww for me Adobe Lightroom 4.1 thinking in going back to
Lightroom version 3.6
Dell Laptop M1330
CPU Core2Duo 2.6Ghz
4GB RAM Windows Vista
I’m in this boat too! I waited for the 4.1 release to come out before making the purchase. Guess I was fooled somewhat by all the yea say-ers. Anyway, I move fast during post processing and LR4.1 is not moving with me too well. It hangs, it chugs and just feels brittle to me compared to LR3. Rendering is just poor in LR4.
Frankly, the tool set upgrade in LR4 is nice, but not enough to keep me in this space. LR3 is a whiz and unfortunately, I will have to wait for LR4.2 release to try again.
Over the past two weeks or so EVERY time your page comes up on my computer (programed to load daily) I get a warning that your site has a Trojan?
Kaspersky, which is a very reputable AV program says this “http://lightroomktips.wpengine.com/ contains a Trojan program Trojan-Downloader.JS.Iframe.cxk. Detected”
What’s up – you may want to look into this as I do not want to sure your site as it appears to be unsafe in the worst kind of way – a Trojan.
Thanks!
All good with 4.1 Except!… I can no longer see my handles in the graduated filter adjustment brush.
Don’t know where to go with this. When working in LR4.1, after making adjustments if I send it to CS5 for further PS adjustments, the changes are not there. BUT If I EXPORT the image after adjustments in LR 4.1 it will have the adjustment as I did in LR. Whats up????
LR 4.1 isn’t a minor bug fix if you are running Windows at least 64 bit Windows 8, it’s a major bug fix. It went from barely useable with dual monitors to the kind of performance I had with LR 3. There are a bunch of other things that are working better too.
Yeah, Windows 8 I like pushing the edge, and it’s what I get paid to do. Besides my tablet runs LightRoom 4, Photoshop CS6 and all the plugins, and I can tether it. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
BTW, Matt I tried a couple of your latest tricks with HDR, worked out really great. Thanks.
Thanks Matt for the update info, will be downloading it soon. Now if you can please send a request to Tom H, about addressing tethered shooting for D4 and D800.
Thank…drew
Matt- good news about the updates. Great to have more functionality rather than just fixing a few bugs.
I had a quick request and since I can’t find a “contact” section of the website, I figure I’d post it here. The next time you do a LR how-to video, I wanted to see if you could do a scenario I always have trouble with: portraits in cloudy days. With summer here, the best light of the day is usually before sunset, but the heat of the day often brings clouds in without notice (and too late to reschedule an engagement or portrait session). Do you have any tips on getting good skin tones, color, etc. with cloudy day portraits?
Thanks!
@Alex,
Lastolite has a really cool grey card that is small and collapses like a reflector for about 20 bucks.
http://www.lastolite.com/ezybalance.php
here is a tutorial from Manfrotto on how to
http://www.lastoliteschoolofphotography.com/correcting-in-photoshop-using-ezybalance
You don’t have to use it for every shot just when you change location or you see a dramatic light change. do it for first shot , use white balance eye dropper tool and click on it, then sync all those shots that match the conditions . go to next set.
I still to this day will shoot a grey card just as a back up . after time you will be able to eye ball it more and even then since we all see color differently to some degree you will learn to adjust to your taste.
A tip with in a tip…
once you get the white bal adjustment from a grey card in different lighting conditions on your shoot. you could always go back and select each different white bal adjustment and make a preset only checking “white balance” as what you want for your setting included in preset. then if you ever forget your grey card or just dont have it, you can get in the ball park with a white bal preset of your own creation from your grey card.
But hey Matt
A tutorial would also be nice, you can steal my idea its ok…;)
Ron
Great news to hear!
I think the Book module will get a just redemption not that you can save the pages as Jpeg.
I like Mpix Pro and could see designing books in LR maybe a tad more now.
🙂
Ron
NOW that you can save the pages as Jpeg.
oops a typo 😉
Ron
Prior to LR 4.1, merge to HDR Pro did not work correctly if you used the ghosting feature. It took more than 2 months to fix, but it now works as it did in LR3. The program works faster now as well and it does not get hung up when going back and forth between LR and CS5. I am glad they fixed these issues but it was a painful 2 months and the lack of response from Adobe was not as good as it could have been.
Hey Bruce,
I know that if you were among those that had those performance issues that it probably was painful, but I do have to say that Tom Hogarty (the LR Product Manager) was pretty up front about it publicly on his blog, and did his best to keep making sure they pushed out Release Candidates (which by the way, fixed this over a month ago). So they weren’t silent about it. Glad 4.1 has helped out though. Thanks 🙂
As always its great to get an update to fix minor problems and add new features, and 4.1 certainly does both. Sadly its added a third, its introduced a new bug that I didn’t see in 4.0.
If you have your own self created pre-set brushes it will change the title of your brush from whatever you named it to ‘Custom’ the very second you finish your first stroke with that brush. This should only happen if you change the effect of the brush by moving any of the sliders. In my case here it doesn’t seem to happen with the pre-set brushes that come with the software, only the ones you create yourself.
Its not the worst of bugs because it doesn’t effect what you have asked the brush to do, but you have to be vigilant that you chose the correct brush in the first place. I know you can still see the sliders and that should give you a very good clue as to what brush you have selected but its not the same as being able to have a quick glance at the name.
Dom
@Domonic,
That has always been since LR 1. It is CUSTOM because you changed settings of the brushes default settings. Even if its a brush you created and saved as a preset, if you move a slider either before or after its applied, it uses the name custom .
Thats for a couple reasons I would think , 1 you changed the dfault settings and now it is custom from its default, 2 to let you know you changed something from default settings.
I think you misunderstand me Ron.
I am not moving any of the sliders, just simply brushing with the chosen saved preset. I am not changing any settings of the brush what so ever so the name I have chosen for the said brush should not be changing to the word ‘custom’.
I have posted this problem elsewhere, and on the Adobe forum and it has been recognised as a genuine problem and one that other users are seeing as well.
I see, I did misread…
I have not had that issue, thats strange.
I have the same issue.