It's finally taken the PS5 away from my landscapes which is very welcomed.  Lightroom 4 develop module is simply stunning for general landscape.  However my commercial work is beauty and it's not even close to managing that when used to PS5 tools like liquify, clone, healing etc but the new colour channels in the tone control are great for looks that i would usually resort to NIK software to achieve eg: cross process and other fashion looks.

GUI is still the worst out there of any software and surprised it didn't get a makeover like elements or bridge.  Such a waste of space.

i fully agree to veloDramatic. its not all about the "big things" that makes a software like LR great or not. its how efficently you are able to work with it. I am still using LR 2.5 because i have to use the ajustementbrush on nearly ever picture and the changes in the UI from 2.5 to 3 makes it nearly impossible for me to work fast. no changes there in LR 4 so i will stick to 2.5 till i have to switch to captureone or something else (if adobe dont make up its mind on that point - which i would prefer instead of switching because i think LR is a good tool). or another example focal point. my co-worker has to check every pic for sharpness. I think you can imagine how much time she could win if LR would display the FPs. But Adobe constantly refuses to listen. But to be fair, adobe made a great job on the engine.

IN LR 2.5 you can choose how the brush is working (remember the +/- "bubbles" which remembered the values of the brush or that you get a new, "nulled" brush each time you change the subject of what to brush (e.g. saturation or brightnes)), since LR 3 you can not.This means "just" one to three clicks more each brush you use. Sounds not  worth speak about, but lets do a little math: i am editing 200 weddings a year with an average of 500 pics a wedding, makes 100.000 pics a year. 2 seconds timeloss because of the changes makes up to 200.000 seconds a year, which are 3.333 minutes or 55 hours or as nasty as its sounds 2.3 days (24h each) more work each year. If you calculate that i work 10 hours a day and if i would use LR 4 (or 3) i would spend more than 5.5 workdays only to use the "new" brush UI. So you have taken a little bit of your limited time to change a thing that no one was harmed of but helped the frequent users of it very much. I very much think that my time is spent much better on a holiday trip than to click throu a software, but that may be just my opinion!

I'm hoping better cloning/healing support (<- click on this link to vote for better support) support may still make it into LR 4 final.

Softproofing may be a big thing for some (as was lens corrections) but I'd prefer better retouching support over softproofing and lens correction combined.

Hopefully the new photo book feature is not tied to just one vendor. It wouldn't be of much use for anyone living in an area not covered by that vendor. Still downloading LR4 beta.

thanks for the hint, you are totaly right with that. in case i need it i would do it with PV2010!!! But I am not convinced with the brush issue ;-)) i gave it a try but it is not the same. not even close. i see that this is hard to understand but i showed it to a few people ( 5 or 6) and when they saw the difference in the workflow ever single one said kind of: Ahh ok, now i see why this is annoing to you.  ;-)) but thank you anyway for your kind help!!!!

Yes...you'll have to upgrade them to PV2012 before you see the new tools.

Rob's thoughts:  http://forums.adobe.com/message/4131103#4131103

I'm honored

First impressions:

I never expected Adobe to redesign anything, so no surprise that they didn't - e.g. I wasn't expecting Lib/Dev module integration, or layers...

I must say I didn't expect the reworking of the Basics. I thought Fill-Light and Brightness were here to stay... - I thought wrong.

Anyway, it seems Lightroom now takes the liberty to recover highlights and shadow detail by default, and if you don't want that, you have to work to undo it. It used to be that you had to work to recover the highlights and shadow detail.

The highlight recovery algorithm still leaves the top end a bit flat and desaturated, but it really does reduce the amount of time and effort required to make nice shots that have an extended dynamic range.

NX2/active-d-lighting ain't got nuthin' on Lr4...

Definitely there is far more control in the basic panel to shape the left and right ends of the histogram. which is a very good thing.

It's like Eric took the Fill-Light algorithm and distributed it to all four sliders (whites, blacks, shadows, highlights).

I miss the brightness slider, but it never did anything that can't be done with the tone curve.

Love the RGB curves!

Clarity: Digs a little deeper into the top end, and *way* deeper into the shadows. Although I like the ability to open shadows for detail, I wish there was a way to control the relative weight of clarity in the tonal regions, like Nik's tonal contrast tool. Sometimes I just want to clarify the midtones and leave the shadows dark, like Lr2&3. i.e. maybe 3 separate clarity sliders for each major tonal region would be better.

Locals: The new locals are awesome, what can I say? - Still wish I could have HSL instead of just WB, and brush a tone curve, and vary sharpen radius locally (although I must admit, combining noise reduction with sharpening does allow one to sharpen things up locally without making 'em too scratchy). Local highlight & shadow control are already becoming two of my favorite new features. - all good stuff...

Summary: So far I've only briefly evaluated the develop module.

- Clarity is improved and creates an almost HDR-like effect - nicely done, high quality, but I desparately want to be able to tone down its effect in the shadows sometimes.

- Basic tone adjustments - still getting used to these, but I think they're going to be awesome once I get the hang of it a little better (highlight recovery still leaves flattening).

- RGB curves - didn't realize how much I missed this capability until having it again.

- Locals: gotta love more color control, and especially highlight/shadow targeted tonal adjustment. local noise adjustment very welcome too.

Overall I'm stoked about it, although worried about clarity and still adapting to missing fill & brightness sliders...

PS - Like almost everybody, disappointed about no improvements to distraction removal, nor masking.

This story still unfolding,

Rob

Thanks Kim.

There's always an adjustment period, so to speak (pun not originally intended).

PS - I don't think Adobe purposely denies Lightroom stuff as a ploy to get people to buy Photoshop, but I DO think Photoshop's capabilities weigh heavily into the decision making process of what to add to Lightroom. ACR is first and foremost a front-end to Photoshop - Lightroom was an afterthought...

So, it may be a while before we see layers in Lightroom, or even content-aware fill... (hope I'm wrong).

Cheers,

Rob

MethodPhoto wrote:

As for viewing Focal Points, the main reason for that is that Adobe doesn't use the Camera manufacturers' SDK, which (sometimes) offers that information. There are a couple of disadvantages to not using the SDK, but it does allow Adobe much more freedom to innovate - hence Process Versions.

That's not really true -- Aperture shows focus points and they don't use manufacturers SDKs.