Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 review

Things have been hotting up for photo-management software in recent months, with the mighty Lightroom coming under sustained attack from highly capable, much cheaper rivals from ACDSee, Corel, Apple and Cyberlink.

Adobe’s response has been decisive. When version 4 was in public beta, version 3’s price halved, coming in at under £100 at online stores. We weren’t sure if this was just a temporary measure, but we’re delighted to report that Lightroom 4 has arrived at the same low price (£104 directly from Adobe – we expect it’ll be a few pounds less in the shops).

Local white balance adjustments let us remove the green tint of this glass cabinet without making the background appear pink

As such, Adobe has a guaranteed hit on its hands. In our reviews of rival packages, nothing else has matched up to Lightroom’s processing of raw images. It preserves more details when applying heavy noise reduction. It handles aggressive colour correction – particularly highlight recovery – with less colour banding. Lens corrections are more elegant than with its rivals, too, with a comprehensive lens database and automatic corrections for chromatic aberrations as well as distortion. It’s also arguably the most responsive photo-management and raw-processing software – we rarely had to wait for it to catch up while navigating our library of 38,000 images, or to preview large raw files with complex effects applied in real time.

Image processing has received some useful improvements in this update. Local edits allow limited areas of an image to be processed, and the list of available processes now includes highlight and shadow recovery, noise and moiré reduction and white balance adjustments. Local white balance adjustments are particularly useful for mixed light sources, while local noise reduction is handy for stubborn areas such as darker blocks of colour.

The Tone controls have been updated, too, with the ability to boost or reduce Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks – these replace the Recovery, Blacks and Fill Light controls, where the latter could only boost mid-tones and the former two could only reduce highlights and shadows. It’s an obvious improvement, but it’s less obvious why the Brightness control has disappeared. This has been assimilated with the Exposure control, but Exposure and Brightness performed slightly differently in Version 3.

Lightroom already excelled for raw conversion, but the new processing (right) engine handles highlight recovery even better than the old one (left)

Because of these changes, it’s not always possible to match the output of the new Tone controls with that of the old. Adobe gets around this by sticking with the old controls for any images that were added to the library before upgrading to version 4. There’s an option to switch to the new set of controls, but a warning message makes it clear that colours won’t necessarily match and advises to do so one image at a time. We’d second this advice – in our tests, there were some big changes to heavily processed images, although further tweaking got us back to where we started. Elsewhere, though, the new engine brought immediate improvements, with even smoother highlight recovery than before.

This switch to the new processing engine forms part of the edit history so it’s easy to go back. It’s a little frustrating that the new local edit functions can’t be used on images until they’ve been switched, but we sympathise with Adobe’s decision to keep the two engines clear cut.

Another major addition is the ability to plot and browse photos on a map. Map data is provided by Google, and it’s just as quick to navigate as on the Google Maps website. There’s the same choice of Road, Satellite, Terrain or Hybrid maps, too, plus a couple of alternative colour schemes. Photos from GPS-enabled cameras are plotted automatically, and to get-tag other photos you simply need to drag them onto the map. There’s an option to group a cluster of tags to a single location, but they’re grouped to a single location anyway when the map is sufficiently zoomed out.

The new Map module is the best example of photo geo-tagging we’ve seen

Geo-tag data isn’t automatically embedded into files, which we prefer as it doesn’t disrupt backup routines, but they can be if the tags are to be used in other software. Unlike the geo-tagging functions in Google Picasa, Lightroom lets users browse the entire photo library by location rather than just the selected folder or album. Meanwhile, unlike a similar feature in Corel AfterShot Pro, clicking a marker on the map selects the photo or photos in the library, so it’s possible to use the Map module as a way to find photos to use elsewhere, such as to share online. As such, this is the first time a mapping function has felt like a genuinely useful way to explore a photo library, rather than just an entertaining diversion.

Lightroom 3 added support for videos, but only for its Library module – the software couldn’t even play them. This time around, there are options to play and truncate clips and adjust their colours via the QuickDevelop panel in the Library. There’s a reasonable level of control, and while it’s not surprising that it doesn’t match the colour processing available for photos, it’s disappointing that there’s no undo history or numerical readout of settings. Export options include H.264, and resolution and frame rate are matched automatically to the original. Lightroom won’t be putting video-editing software out of business, but it’s a useful extra for photographers who are making their first forays into video.

Book design is less flexible than other parts of the software, but it’s a useful addition nonetheless

The other new module is called Book, which helps users design hardback photo albums, such as the ones available from Photobox and Snapfish. Lightroom can upload directly to Blurb, and there’s even an estimated price that updated as we designed. The design tools are similar to the online tools we’ve used, with lots of template page layouts and anything from one to 32 photos to a page. There’s surprisingly little scope to customise page layouts, though, and text formatting feels clumsy. Still, it’s much easier to design using local software than through a web browser, and there’s an option to export as a PDF if you don’t want to use Blurb.

Lightroom was already a Best Buy when version 3 cost over £200. Version 4 extends its lead even further. Advanced users will appreciate the subtle processing improvements, while more casual users are more likely to be wooed by the Map and Book modules – and of course the new price.