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Last night at exactly midnight NY time, I was able to download the very first version of the Lightroom 2.0 beta. I did this after I'd attended Adobe's on-line meeting and listened to everything Tom Hogarty had to say about the program.

Today, almost all day, I played with the new beta to try to get an idea of how much more control the program offers above and beyond what we could do before. The short answer to that question is: A LOT. The first image here is a screenshot of the Develop module showing one of the Open Second Window options.

Some of the long answers come below. I prepared this blog by making a list of all the announced new features. I then "played" with each of these new features and wrote a few sentences about my reactions and suggestions. I want to emphasize, though, that this blog is an impression; not a scientific study. The one thing I'm absolutely sure of is that I still have a lot to learn and discover. No, that's a lie. There's another thing I'm sure of: I'm very happy and excited to see what I see.

One of the first "warnings" I read was that I shouldn't use any of my existing catalogs while testing Lightroom 2.0 beta because Adobe couldn't insure that those catalogs would stay intact in Lightroom 1.3 or even in future betas of Lightroom 2.0. So here's the workflow I "invented" for creating an experimental catalog for use with this beta. I'm sure there will be other images I'll want to adjust this way, but I'll just put them all into a Collection and then export the collection, so that the originals remain saved and untouched. Anyway, here is the workflow I used:

1. Create new catalog on another drive so as to protect any Lightroom work I’ve already done.

2. Create from Collections to immediately show most challenging images

3. Create a different folder on the outside drive for each collection. Also add LR_TST to the beginning of each folder name so that the purpose of those folders can be readily identified from then on. At least, it's some protection of the original files should there be some conflict with how well the two programs and other programs "talk" to one another.

4. Use Export and Edit how filenames are created so that I could add my initials and the purpose to the beginning of the filename. That way, it always identifies itself with something I've "messed with".

5. Converted everything to DNG, as I usually do these days. Should be able to spot any differences in a test or two.

6. Back up the conversion to a gold DVD.

Okay, now that you've downloaded the beta and made it safe to play with, here are the new features, along with my notes as to what I've discovered and as to what my impressions are so far.

There are some very nice design refinements. Adobe calls it a ";more focused" interface. The wonderful news is, however, that you'll still know what to do and won't be spending your time trying to invent a whole new workflow. There are, however quite a few new "touches" and features that really make moving up to this new version worthwhile.

Now, here's the really big news: Non-destructive local corrections: You can use a feathered brush to "paint" areas and instantly change those area's Exposure, Brightness, Saturation, Clarity (sharpening or softening), Tint (meaning you can paint whole areas a different color), and Vibrance. Once you've "painted" an area, if it's over or under-done, you can drag the big slider at the top of the panel to intensify or reduce the effect to match either your taste or the surrounding image.

Here's an image that shows the difference you can make with all the localized corrections. Nothing here has been done in Photoshop!

By painting these adjustments, you can reconstruct highlight detail and not loose shadow detail. You can paint in areas with a brush to lighten or darken, sort of like traditional burning and dodging. But you can also lighten or darken the stroke after the fact. Furthermore, you've actually adjusted the image as if you'd done so with a masked Photoshop Adjustment Layer--not just make the area more black or white. You're actually increasing/decreasing exposure in a given area. You can also do several corrections with a single brush stroke.

I'd like this operation for "painting" the above mentioned adjustments to feel more intuitive. If the program could "talk" better to a Wacom tablet, brush size and adjustment intensity could be controlled by the pen pressure and you could erase mistakes with the pen's eraser tool. It may be that is possible and I just haven't found out yet how to implement it.

I'd also really like to see a Freehand Lasso that could simply have an interactive feathering circle added to it and that you could change according to the way the result looked after you did it. Then you could just use the sliders to change the intensity of what was inside that mask.

I really wish there were non-destructive perspective correction in this version. It's nearly impossible to shoot a building or a product shot that doesn't need at least some perspective correction. That's a huge part of many professional photographer's workflow.

At least, the Photoshop integration with Lightroom has been much improved. The delay in going back and forth between the two has been much reduced. You can open any file as a Smart Object, so it can then be integrated with other image files. You can also select a series of images and choose to merge to a panorama, HDR, or layered single image. The image below has had numerous localized corrections made exclusively in Lightroom 2.0, then Photoshop CS3's Free Transform was used to correct perspective. The image you see here was automatically sent back to Lightroom, where you could choose to continue editing the corrected version non-destructively and don't have to import it as a separate operation.

The Library Module organization has been improved. Now we've got: dual monitor support, it's a LOT faster moving files to and from Photoshop.

Image management is a bit slicker, too. When you enter keyword, Lightroom 2.0 suggests related keywords that you have entered before that are associated with that keyword.

Smart Collections can be made automatically according to various keyword and rating criteria. So you can designate a collection, then enter a bunch of criteria, then automatically collect images that had any of those qualities or Metadata. It would be very easy to go through a collection made this way and simply delete what didn't belong in the collection. So you could collect everything that was shot at an aperture wider than f-4 to collect examples that demonstrated shallow DoF, for example. For images that then didn't fit the collection but might fit another, you could add a keyword before you deleted it from the collection.

The Print module is more flexible, too. You can print to a JPG for use at an outside lab. You can prnt a multiple page collection of images that have been scaled to different sizes and layouts. Output sharpening has been added, using routines from Pixel Genius. I sharpened all the images for this blog using the web sharpening that's in the new Export dialog. For what it's worth, I do think these look better than they did before, but I'm not sure you can tell if you don't have something direct to compare it to.