Lightroom Tips

Lightroom 2 – The Day After FAQ

Lightroom 2 has been out for exactly 1 day now and the upgrade response here on the site yesterday was pretty outstanding. But there were also a lot of comments and questions. So I figured I’d answer as many of them as a I can here:

Will Lightroom 1 presets work with Lightroom 2?
You betcha. When you install Lightroom 2, those presets will automatically come over to the new version. I haven’t come across any of my presets that don’t work in the new version yet.

Will Lightroom 2 work with my Lightroom 1 catalogs?
Yes. When you first install and start Lightroom 2 it will ask you if you’d like to upgrade an existing catalog.

Will my settings, changes, and everything else I’ve done in LR 1 be in Lightroom 2?
Yes, when you upgrade your catalog it’ll take over all of the settings and changes to your photos.

Will Adobe be releasing any of those dot (.1, .2, etc…) updates for Lightroom 2? I haven’t heard any dates or specific plans but if I were a bettin’ man, I’d bet black, 6, 8, the pass line, hard eight, double-down on 11… sorry, I got carried away. What I meant to say is that I’d bet yes – they will release 1 or more dot updates in the future.

Should I wait for an update before purchasing Lightroom 2? I don’t want a Lightroom 1.4 debacle to happen again.I can’t 100% say that you won’t have a problem but I’ll tell you this. I’ve been using the GM version of Lightroom (GM is a term meaning Gold Master which is essentially the shipping version of the software) for about 2 weeks now. Everything has worked fine for me. The sliders as just as responsive as they ever were. I will say that I have noticed using the Adjustment Brush to be a bit processor-heavy but that’s a price I’ll pay to have that kind of control in LR. I’ve adjusted my self to brush fairly slower then I would have in Photoshop. Also, I know brushing on a Mac has always been a bit odd in Photoshop (takes a second for it to render on screen) so maybe it’s the same deal – maybe the PC is very responsive but I haven’t tried it on one yet. Also, I have had one other little glitch in showing and hiding my panels but other people I know running the same version don’t have this so I’m chalking it up to some mix ups with previous betas I’ve had installed. I plan on wiping out all of my Lightroom folders soon and starting from a brand new install again I think that should do it. So, other then the one small glitch, everything is working fine on my end.

Why is Adobe charging so much extra for international customers?
Folks, I’m gonna tell you the honest truth here – I have no idea. Because of what I do, I get to be on the beta testing team for Lightroom. That means I get to see the features and comment on them but mostly after the feature set is locked. From time to time I may actually get to give input on new features for Lightroom but Adobe, in NO way, comes and asks me or anyone I know, “Matt, what should we charge for Lightroom?”. My main job is to train people on Photoshop and Lightroom and because of that, I really have no idea why they’re charging so much more. I have to admit, it sounds odd to me too and I totally feel your pain. I would be ticked as well. Your best course of action is to go to Adobe’s website and either a) email or mail your feedback to them, or b) call them and express your pissed-offness (sorry… anger). That’s what I would do. 🙂

Any other price or purchase or license related questions?
See above. I simply just don’t know.

How does the upgrade / installation of LR2 deal with the two separate catalogues (and photo folder structure) when both LR1 and LR2 beta (Silvertone) are installed on your system?Does it merge them automatically into a new catalogue or does the user have to import them separately?I haven’t tried to import my Lightroom 2 beta catalog yet but I’d guess it imports them just fine. I can definitely tell you it won’t merge catalogs though. You’d have to import each one separately and merge/change your folders after the fact.

In some form or another – Can I install Lightroom on 2 machines?
Yes. Even if one is 64-bit and one is 32-bit, you can install on both.

Matt, you mentioned something about PSD files and the way they automatically got created in version 1. Where can I find these PSD files and delete them?See this link from a previous video I created.

Why don’t my PSD files appear back in Lightroom when I work on them in Photoshop?
That’s actually one of the new features. Lightroom 2 doesn’t save the PSD file right away anymore. You’ve got to hit File > Save in Photoshop to save the file so it appears back in Lightroom.

I’m a NAPP member. Where is the discount code?
Here’s the link to the NAPP member website software discount page. You’ll find it about halfway down. I just tried it and it saved $44 bucks on the full $299 version.

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