Lightroom Beta Feeback Loop Begins at Photoshop World

A year and a half ago, I wrote a post about Lightroom being the biggest deal at the Photoshop World keynote, and if you read Derrick's post last week (complete with video) you know that was once again the case. This year "Johnny L" (Adobe VP John Loiacono) introduced Lightroom PM Tom Hogarty who demoed some of the new goodies in Lightroom 2.0, which is available for download as a public beta as of late Tuesday night. The segment featured our own Mikkel Aaland, live on location in Tasmania, road testing the new beta with his crew of photographic luminaries and members of the Adobe LR team (and gathering photos, tips, and stories for his next Photoshop Lightroom Adventure book). Later in the day Mikkel posted this fun video by Leo Laporte of Day One of the Tasmanian Adventure. During the last adventure, feedback from the photographers went straight to Adobe engineers for next-day builds.

I realized throughout the course of the show that having a public beta really opens up the conversation about the new features to users in the same way. In O'Reilly author Tim Grey's session on Lightroom Thursday evening, Hogarty and Adobe Uber User (Is that your official title Jeff?) Jeff Schewe were in the audience. When an audience member quizzed Tim about a missing Keyword search feature, instead of just saying, "You can't do that in Lightroom," Tim raised his eyebrow and asked, "Jeff? Tom?" Turns out that the requested feature is built in (although currently broken) in LR 2.0 beta. Another query had Tom, mobile phone to his ear, telling the audience "I'll have an answer for you in two minutes."

You can read all about the new features, well-documented here on Inside Lightroom, including the post by Derrick with some actual footage of the keynote. Better yet, if you have LR 1.0 (or can get an invite from someone who does), download the beta yourself and check it out and don't be afraid to let them know what you think.