Brief Hands-On Report--Adobe Released Photoshop Lightroom Beta 4 (Universal)

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom beta 4 is now ready to download from this Adobe Web page. This is the first release to reveal the full name Adobe is giving to the product, as Lightroom takes its place as the newest member of the Photoshop family of digital imaging and photography software. It is also Adobe's first major digital imaging application, public beta or final, to be released as a Universal Application, running natively on both Intel-based Macs and PowerPC-based Macs.

Beta 4 is Adobe's biggest milestone to date, with several enhancements and additions, including the achievement of full feature parity between the Windows and Mac OS versions of Lightroom.

Lightroom Beta 4 also features:

• Ground-breaking changes in the way tone curve adjustments are made and displayed, giving you the highest quality results in an interface that's easier to use than ever before.
  
• More streamlined and elegant user interface - We've made several changes to the look and feel based on your feedback in the earlier beta releases.
  
• Customizable interface - You can now display only the controls you want to be visible.
  
• Precision white balance selection tool
  
• Facility to easily rename and convert files to DNG after they've been imported to the Lightroom library
  
• Increased interaction between Lightroom library organizational structure and the underlying file system
  
• Filter and search presets to more quickly find the photographs you want
  
• Better performance and improved interface for the Web module features
  
• Develop control improvements based on community feedback, including comments from the Pixmantec user community.

We downloaded and installed Adobe Photoshop Lightroom beta 4 over our copy of beta 3 with no problem. We launched and manipulated several sample photos with no problems either. Beta 4 is Build 257134. [Bill Fox]