Lightroom 2.0 released: Choose the colors that make up YOUR world

There's a sequel that has the whole world talking … OK, it's The Dark Knight. But there's one that has photography geeks talking today, and it's Lightroom 2.0. Many of the changes we've already seen in the beta, especially the adjustment brush, have been refined, and there are a slew of new features as well. For example, you can now brush in sharpness and contrast as a localized adjustment, and there's even a powerful "smoothen skin" tool, which gets my vote as Most Likely to Be Overused, making subjects look like Final Fantasy characters.

Perhaps most exciting, though, is the addition of Color Profiles. While Lightroom renders color fairly well, it renders it differently that a camera's own JPEG processor, which can lead to unwanted surprises. Lightroom has also historically had problems rendering some colors, such as turning some shades of red a pale pink and rendering underexposed tungsten light as a sickly yellow instead of a blazing orange. Now you can download profiles that closely match your camera, and even make your own! Already this is saving me from having to open Nikon Capture NX when I want my reds to come out really nicely. Here's a comparison between the default Nikon profile you can now load (top), versus the old-school Lightroom one (bottom).

 

While talking about rich photographic color is different online since everyone's monitor is calibrated differently, it's easy to see how much less sickly the highlights of her dress look. The good news is you can download a 30-day trial here and see how it works for you.