With the release of the public beta for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0, many photographers are eagerly diving in to check out the new features. So lets take a look and some of whats new. All screenshots below are from the Windows version because here in Taiwan, a Windows machine is half the price of a comparable Mac. As always, click on the image for a larger view.

One of the biggest new changes in this public beta is native 64 bit support. For Mac users, that means an Intel-based machine with Leopard (OS X10.5) and for Windows users, Vista-64. The key advantage of this is that it allows Lightroom to access more than 4GB of RAM. There is some discussion in the comments on John Nack’s site as to whetherit will work with Windows XP-64. I’m running XP64 and it seems to be working smoothly for me.

Moving on to Importing images, and LR2 now supports images with dimensions up to 30 000 pixels. There’s also a new preview option to use Embedded and Sidecar previews, which should see a boost in workflow speed.

Like Lightroom 1.x, Lightroom2.0 beta supports direct editing into Photoshop. At this stage, it’s limited to Adobe Photoshop CS3 (10.01) and allows the user to open the image as a smart object, allowing non-destructive editing in CS3. A key speed boost here is that the image doesn’t need to be converted into a PSD or TIFF file first.

One of my favorite new features is support for dual monitor systems. This is one thing that I, and I assume many other, photographers wished we had in LR1.xx. For me, this support alone will make the upgrade worth it when the final verison is released. To access this, you can use F11, or add the SHIFT key to the usual keyboard shortcuts (Shift+G for grid, Shift+N for survey, Shift+E for loupe and Shift+C for compare views). Shown below are grid and survey views.

The metadata filter has moved to the top of the screen and also been expanded. It allows images to be viewed and selected by a variety of preset and custom methods.

Keywording sees a couple of changes with a new “suggested keywords” feature. The keyword panel has moved from the left of the screen to the right and the suggested keywords bases itself on existing keywords applied as well as images that are close in capture time.

Collections also sees some upgrades, with new icons used to distinguish between collection sets, output collections and smart collections.

Smart collections allow a user-definable series of rules to be used in order to create the collection.

In the Develop module there are a few major changes. Starting off, we see that the various tools have been relocated from under the image to the right side under the histogram. Clicking on any of the icons takes you into the options for the selected tool.

It’s here that my other favorite new feature can be found – Local Correction. This tool allows one to paint the desired correction onto a localised part of the image, meaning more highly defined areas can be adjusted separately to the overall image.

You can change the brush tint by double clicking on the largest color box to the right.

The final new feature I want to look at is the Detail and Vignettes panels. The Detail panel is where you’ll now find Chromatic Aberration and Defringe, which are under Lens Correction in LR1.xx. Detail also now includes a 1:1 preview window. The Vignettes panel houses two vignetting features, one for Lens Correction (correcting light fall-off etc), the other for Post Crop which can be used for edge darkening and vignetting within cropped images.

I haven’t covered all of the new features, just the main ones that strike me as being useful for my workflow. You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned the changes in the Print Module – that’s because I don’t do a lot of printing. As such, I’m not all that familiar with the Print Module, so I elected to leave that out of this post.

My final thoughts : Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta has a lot of potential. The dual monitor support and the local correction tools are, to my mind, big enough improvements on their own to justify upgrading when the final verison of LR2.0 is released.