Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 fixes some bugs, enhances tools, adds compatibility

Just when I thought Adobe had refreshed everything, it pops up with another updated program.

This one isn’t a part of Creative Suite 6, which contained many of its updated flagship programs. This is separate, yet it’s made to work with the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop CS 6 and Camera RAW 7.1.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is complementary to Photoshop, offering a few more tools to tweak photos, plus the ability to organize, share, print and even display your photos.

Lightroom just got a free downloadable update, version 4.1, that fixes a few bugs, enhances some tools and adds compatibility to RAW files from the latest cameras, including the Canon EOS 60Da and the Nikon D800 and D800E.

One of the things I like about Lightroom 4 is that it talks new users through its menus, tools and options. The program includes tips that pop up on the screen each time you go to a new section within the program. The area discussed in the tips will be highlighted in yellow. You can cycle through the tips, or simply close them to start working on your own. If you know the program, you can turn the tips off. (An example of the tips can be seen on the “Tech Spotlight” Facebook page.)

Lightroom has seven sections within it: Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, Web. The first, Library, allows you to organize your photos more efficiently. You can group them by keyword, date or through other methods. This comes in handy later.

Develop contains tools to further edit your photos. They’re meant to work with photos you’ve already edited in Photoshop or Camera RAW, but they can be used on unedited images as well. Many of Lightroom’s tools are presets designed to give your photo a certain look. For example, you can change your photo to black and white, or give it a more antique tone. You can change it to cooler colors, with more blues and greens, or you can reduce the color so it looks less saturated. The presets are very impressive, but if you don’t like them, the tools on the right will allow you to tweak your photos further.

Map keeps track of where your photos were taken, while Book allows you to put your photos in one of several templates to create your own picture book. The book can be sent off to an online printer, and the prices vary.

Slideshow not only allows you to put photos in a slideshow that can be shown within Lightroom, but you can even create a movie file, so your slideshow can be shared on Internet sites like YouTube or Facebook. Print allows you to prepare your photos for professional printing. A great feature here is the ability to see what your photos will look like if printed on a certain calibrated printer (Lightroom provides a list). Finally, Web allows you to create sophisticated Web galleries to display your photos online.

Adobe has made great strides in improving its tools to fix fringing, or chromatic aberration. This is when you get a line of color around edges in the photograph.

While defringing tools are available in Adobe Photoshop and Camera RAW, Lightroom 4.1 really delves into repairing this problem with several sliders that remove all kinds of fringe. The other programs work mainly with blue, yellow, red and green fringe, the most common types. As it turns out, the photo I needed to fix didn’t have any of those.

I needed to fix a photo I had taken of a waterfall that had a very nasty turquoise fringe to it. The blue fringe repair tool in Camera RAW didn’t really get all of the color away from the edges. I still had that turquoise glow along the top of the waterfall and around the leaves of the trees that touched the sky.

Lightroom has a box that says “Remove Chromatic Aberration.” Checking that box may fix the problem. If not, Lightroom offers four sliders that fix fringe based on two colors, purple and green. Adjusting the hue on these colors can home in on the true color of the fringe, then you can use the Amount sliders to take that fringe out. (You can see before and after pictures on the “Tech Spotlight” Facebook page. A link is below.)

Lightroom is a great tool to really take your photos further. There aren’t a ton of tweaks to version 4.1, but the things that are enhanced are great additions. Lightroom is great for pros or even for not-so-pros who are looking to show off their photography skills and share them with family and friends. Melissa L. Jones can be reached via e- mail at mljones72@me. com.