Adobe has upgraded Lightroom to version 4.0 and dropped the price to $149 for the full software or $79 for an upgrade. Of course this will also now be part of the Adobe Creative Cloud released later this year, so many might be waiting for that to come out even though from the beta it is a vast improvement over the previous version. This is worth the upgrade for the superior image technology alone which we saw a beta of recently that blows the old versions out of the water.

New Features Include:


Highlight and shadow recovery
Bring out all the important detail that your camera can capture. New technology brings in more image detail from dark shadows and bright highlights than ever before. Now you've got more power to create great images in challenging lighting conditions.





Photo book creation
Create beautiful photo books from your images with a variety of easy-to-use templates included in Lightroom. Upload your book for printing with just a few clicks. Receive 20% off from Blurb on your first book created using Lightroom 4 software.*



Location-based organization
Find and group images by location, easily assign locations to images, or plot a photo journey. Automatically display location data from GPS-enabled cameras and camera phones.

White balance brush
Get more consistent color across your image in scenes with mixed lighting sources. A flexible brush lets you refine and adjust white balance in targeted areas of your shot.



Additional editing brushes
Expand your creative control by targeting particular areas of your images using new local editing brushes for noise reduction and moiré removal.



Extended video support
Organize, view, and make adjustments to video clips. Play and trim clips, extract still images from them, or adjust clips with the Quick Develop tool.

Video publishing
Easily share video clips in HD format on Facebook and Flickr. Or save HD clips formatted for phones, tablets, TV, and more.1

Soft-proofing
Save time and ink and ensure your prints meet your expectations. Soft-proofing lets you preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.

Enhanced online sharing integration
Easily post images to social media and photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr®. With selected sites, online comments about your images are visible within Lightroom.1

Emailing within Lightroom
Email images directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

Import of other libraries
Bring the power and elegance of Lightroom to all your images, new and old. Easily import photos from other applications.

Tags: Lightroom