Lightroom 2 rumour

[Stephen]

I'm a bit giddy to say the least, as I've just read some rumours that Adobe will be announcing a new version of Lightroom on Wed 2nd April. Now the word is that this could be V2 though its quite possible I suppose it could be V1.5

Already though Scott Kelby has announced that he has already see V2 http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/941 and frankly if it contains some of the things on his wishlist which he published in January, it will be great http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/941.

Jeff Schewe drops a strong hint in this thread too http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.59b4d563/16 and he is a man in the know.

As Kelby says, this is exciting times for digital photographers

[Autumn]

I would like to see layers and the transform tool for converging verticals.

[peter]

I also would like to see layers added. I know its not photoshop cs or even elements but I would love to see some of the basic things even from elements added to it. Oh well not long to wait and see I guess.

[Stephen]

Further to the rumour I mentioned, it seems Adobe have today released a Beta of V2. This will not upgrade an already installed V1.x but run along side it. Anyone with a license for V1 can run the Beta for its life, though anyone else gets 30days.

The V2 beta can be downloaded from http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

[Stephen]

A pretty comprehensive list of the changes from V1 to V2 can be found here http://victoriabampton.com/lightroom20beta1whatsnew.htm

Still not made up my mind whether to download the Beta version, it is said not to affect your existing installation. Think I may just keep an eye on the forums etc first and see what others think and how they get on.

[devilgas]

i'll be downloading that later! multi masks opens up all new possibilities as does the vignette to crop.

[devilgas]

ok, had a quick 20 minute play last night.

definitely worth trying. it's clearly not finished e.g. whilst using the masks there was no easy way of navigating the image / zooming etc. the masks are fine but relatively basic as to the adjustments that can be made.
it imports all of your current presets so there's no need to redo that - saves a bit of hassle if nothing else. it also stays totally away from your current 1.x library (understandable as the product is likely to change for the first full release)
vignette to crop is great, although it's strangely set as 2 sets of sliders rather than a just-tick-this-box affair.
not tried much with the keywording as that doesn't feature too heavily in my current workflow.
there's a hell of a lot in v1.x of lightroom and there's now more in v2. it's a definite improvement, although i'd have liked to have seen visible watermarking included in the web module. there's an option to watermark, but i'm guessing it's similar to digimarc.

i need to spend a good few hours with it to suss some of the features (masks especially) a bit better.

as it's a beta, you're encouraged to submit feedback. it appears that this is through the adobe forum, which means trawling through 1000's of posts to see if what you want to feedback has already been fed back. that's not so good as the forum is getting a lot of activity.