January 9, 2012 by Mike Wong • 1 Comment
Attention Lightroom users! Adobe has just announced that the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Public Beta is now available for download. As with any Beta software (regardless of the developer), Caveat emptor. Make sure you have backups of any files you're working on and think twice about using it SOLELY as your only catalog during the beta period. For me, I'm using duplicates of my images while the originals are safe and sound on a separate hard drive and cataloged in Lightroom 3.
Okay, let's get on to some of the details you're probably most interested in. These are straight from the official Adobe Lightroom Blog. Please read through to the end because I'm going to discuss some specific items that relate to this Lightroom 4 Beta and the onOne Software products.
High Level Summary of What's New
- Robust Video Support
- Manage images by location with the Map Module
- Simplified Basic Adjustments
- Powerful new Shadow & Highlight controls
- Additional local adjustments including Noise Reduction and White Balance
- Soft Proofing Reinvented
- Elegant Photo Book creation
- Email from directly within Lightroom
- Publish videos directly to Facebook or Flickr
- Enhanced DNG workflows
- Adobe Revel export workflow
Supported File Formats
- JPEG
- TIFF (8 bit, 16 bit)
- PSD (8 bit, 16 bit)
- DNG
- Raw (Please visit http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html for a full list of raw file support. File support for Lightroom 4 beta, aligns with Lightroom 3.6 and Camera Raw 6.6)
Serial Numbers for Lightroom 4
Anyone can download and work with the Lightroom 4 beta for the duration of the beta program. There is no serial number requirement.
Be sure to read the full blog entry on the Official Lightroom Blog as they have, as you would expect, posted many more details about the Public Beta than I have summarized here. Also on their site, they have the all important download links for the Lightroom 4 Public Beta.
FAQ on Lightroom 4 Public Beta and Current onOne Software Products
Do any of the onOne Products support the Lightroom 4 Public Beta?
While we are excited about the Lightroom 4 Public Beta, the Perfect Photo Suite 6 and the individual products that make up the Suite, are only officially supported (and thus available for our free technical support) when used with Lightroom 2 or Lightroom 3. We don't expect there to be any problems with our products when used with the Lightroom 4 Public Beta, but we cannot offer support at this time until the final shipping version of Lightroom 4 is available.
When will your products support Lightroom 4?
Adobe has not announced the final ship date for the GM version of Lightroom 4. However, in the past, we have made every effort to have any updates necessary to make our products work with new versions of third-party applications, such as Lightroom, within 60 days of the third-party application shipping.
Will the Lightroom 4 compatibility update be free?
Since we started onOne Software nearly 7 years ago, it has been our policy to make non-major releases of our software available to registered users of the most recent product at no cost as a downloadable update. As such, we expect that if an update is required to any of our currently shipping products to make them compatible with the shipping version of Lightroom 4, these will not be considered major updates and will be made available as free downloads to registered users.
To be clear, here is a list of our currently shipping products that would be eligible for a free compatibility update.
- Perfect Photo Suite 6
- Perfect Resize 7
- Perfect Effects 3
- Perfect Portrait 1
- Perfect Mask 5
- Perfect Layers 2
- Focal Point 2
- PhotoFrame 4.6 Pro
Older products such as the Plug-In Suite 5.5 are not eligible for a free compatibility upgrade with the final shipping version of Photoshop Lightroom 4.
Update 1/10/12 : For further clarification, we have no plans to update PhotoTune or PhotoTools to be compatible with Lightroom 4.
When will Adobe ship the GM version of Lightroom 4?
Adobe has not announced when they will ship the GM version of Lightroom 4.
With that being said...
Last week, I installed the R20 release of Lightroom 4 (the same one you can download now) and installed it. Prior to that, I had been running the latest version of Lightroom 3 along with the Perfect Photo Suite 6.0.2 release and I'm happy to say, that without having to run another installer again, the Public Beta of Lightroom 4 automatically found and loaded the Lightroom versions of the plug-ins I had previously installed.
The reason is that Lightroom 4 is looking in the same common Application Support folder (at least under Mac OS X) that Lightroom 3 uses. So you shouldn't have to reinstall anything.
As such, the onOne products will show up under the Export menu as well. Select an image (make sure the image is available and not on an external drive that isn't mounted) and then go to File > Export. You'll see this.
You'll want to go to the Export To: drop down menu and change it from Hard Drive to one of the onOne products. Like so...
Once you select the product you wish to Export to, you'll get some product specific options. In the following screen shot, I selected Perfect Effects 3 and then I am able to choose from the list of Effect Preset Categories.
Which then allows me to pick a specific Effect Preset within that Category.
The Export option works great if you're batch processing. But if you want to just work on a single image and you don't know which preset you want to use, just select your image and then go to File > Plug-In Extras > Perfect Photo Suite.
How to Leave Feedback
If you download the Lightroom 4 Public Beta and are using our products, please leave a comment below on your experiences - good or bad. Our technical support team won't be able to provide you with any official support, but if you leave your comment here, I'll make sure our development team sees it and will also respond to you here in the comments. Please note, if you would like to leave a comment here, you'll need to register on the blog first.
If you're looking for a list of non-Adobe web sites that are posting on Lightroom 4, be sure to check out this list on the Lightroom Blog.
December 27, 2011 by Brian Matiash • 4 Comments
We've just released our second maintenance update for Perfect Photo Suite 6. This update is recommended for all Mac and Windows users of Perfect Photo Suite 6. You can download the update installer by either going to the Help menu in Suite 6 and selecting 'Check For Updates', or you can use the links below to download the installer file to your computer.
Macintosh Perfect Photo Suite 6.0.2 Updater
Windows Perfect Photo Suite 6.0.2 Updater
This update includes improved performance and overall stability along with numerous bug fixes.
If you run into any issues with the updater, please submit a ticket request with our Technical Support team so that we can provide you with the best support possible.
December 4, 2011 by Brian Matiash • 2 Comments
We've been so excited over the amazing feedback and images that all of you have shared with us around Perfect Effects 3. The creative outlets that the new effects, blending modes, and effect options provide are nearly limitless. On my end, I have been spending tons of time exploring and trying to find unique ways to combine effects together and save them out as presets.
I went through my presets categories, picked ten of my favorites, and am sharing them with all of you to enjoy, too! If you already have Perfect Effects 3, all you need to do is download the file linked below and import them in. To make things easy, I put together a video showing how to easily get these presets imported. I've also put together a few before/after images showing the effect that these presets have. Just swipe left and right to see the change.
So go ahead! Download this preset pack, import it, and have a blast! Don't forget to share your results with us on our Facebook and Google+ pages.
Click to download Brian's Perfect Effects Preset Pack Vol. 1
October 25, 2011 by Brian Matiash • 3 Comments
Without a doubt, the most frequent question that we have been asked since announcing Perfect Photo Suite 6 in September at Photoshop World Las Vegas has been: "When will it be made available?"
Today, we are so pleased to announce that the wait is now over! Perfect Photo Suite 6 is available to download for those who have pre-ordered it and is immediately available for download to new customers.
To give you a taste of what you can expect, we've been posting new video clips of our favorite features from Perfect Photo Suite 6 every day in October and will continue on through. We've also got a fantastic line-up of photographers who will be holding new Webinars for our 'Perfect Photo Suite 6 All-Star Week' (starting on 10/31!)
To learn more about Perfect Photo Suite 6, just head on over to our website.
And, as always, we'd like to take a moment to thank all of you for your continued support of our products! We know you're going to love what you see with Perfect Photo Suite 6!
September 9, 2011 by Mike Wong • Comments Off
It has been a whirlwind of non-stop demonstrations of our new Perfect Photo Suite 6 here at Photoshop World this week. One after the other, we've had a lot of great feedback from those who have been able to see the live demonstrations.
Users of PhotoTools 2.6 can't wait to get their hands on Perfect Effects 3 so they can not only get the live preview of each effect on their own image, but also the ability to edit pretty much every aspect of each effect to their own liking.
Users of Mask Pro 4 are really excited about the new features and algorithm updates in Perfect Mask 5 that will make it easier for them to remove and replace backgrounds.
Wedding and portrait photographers have been floored by Perfect Portrait 1 not only by how easy it is to use, but by the quality of the results. We've gone to great lengths to make sure we keep skin pores and texture in tact so as not to produce that overly smooth mannequin look.
Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to write down all of the great comments we've received so far to share with you, but I can point you to two articles written in the last couple of days by some photographers who have seen the Perfect Photo Suite 6 in an early pre-announcement demonstration.
Andy Kruczek, a commercial photographer from the U.K. who does a lot of photo compositing and enhancing, got a sneak preview and here's a quote from his review.
"This, it’s fair to say, is not a simple upgrade. Many of the component parts of the Suite have undergone a total rewrite, new features have been added by the bucketload and the look and feel is now slicker and much more modern. The new features and layout make for an incredibly powerful set of tools. So powerful in fact, that I found myself questioning the need for Photoshop at all."
[ Source ]
Colby Brown, a professional landscape, travel and humanitarian photographer who teaches photography workshops and has been an instructor for National Geographic, wrote this post on Wednesday of this week.
"With this latest upgrade, I truly feel like onOne Software has taken post processing to the next level. As a partner of onOne Software, I was given the opportunity to check out PPS6 (Perfect Photo Suite 6) last week and I can honestly tell you that I was blown away by what I saw. I am so excited about many of the new features that I have already began to re-imagine my workflow when it comes to processing my images."
[ Source ]
I just wanted to share this with you in case you too are excited about the new Perfect Photo Suite but wanted to hear from a couple of photographers who have had a chance to see it in action. We'll be shipping Perfect Photo Suite 6 in late October so we'll keep the early feedback and sneak peeks coming until then.
If you'd like to see the Perfect Photo Suite 6 before it begins shipping, sign up for one of our Webinars as we'll be demonstrating it next week.
