BobD's Photo Blog

With the release of Lightroom 4 Beta (LR4b), Adobe introduced a new process called Process Version 2012 (PV2012). There seems to be significant improvement in the quality of the final image as Adobe claims “to extract all of the dynamic range in a single capture”.

This new process comes with some major changes to our Develop workflow… the “Tone” sliders in Develop’s  “Basic” panel have changed from LR3’s (PV2010):
–    a new “Highlights” slider was added
–    some sliders have different names BUT SIMILAR functions !
–    one slider “Exposure” has same name BUT CHANGED function !
–    only one slider “Black” has same name AND SIMILAR functions!
We have a lot to observe, learn and adapt to with this new process – this will come with time and experience.

Histogram Observation
I observed an interesting relationship with the sliders in LR4’s (PV2012) vs, the sliders in LR3’s (PV2010) with regard to the areas they affect on the “Histogram”. See the chart inset below.

		OBSERVATIONS
		> Blacks > Blacks Same Area / Same Name
		> Recovery > Whites Same Area / name changed
		> Fill Light > Shadows  Same Area / name changed
		> Highlights New to LR4
		> Exposure > Exposure Same Name / Different Area
		> Exposure > Exposure + Highlight Same Area… BUT more?

Not sure what these all mean – stay tuned!  It is an observation that will hopefully lead to a discussion that will help our understanding as we learn and adapt to this new PV2012.

Another Caveat!
Did I mention that Adobe has added an adaptive /content aware function to the Shadow, Highlight and Clarity sliders? This means the slider’s effect will be different depending on the data being sampled! – Oh my!

Until the next time, I’d love to hear your comments and personal observations.