It may be the end of April Fool's day, but this is no joke. Today marks the start of the public beta of Lightroom 2.0 which introduces localized corrections as well as the ability to run on multiple monitors. As well, the beta includes Smart Collections, some pretty impressive new Photoshop CS3 integration, and improved print sharpening. As well, Lightroom now includes 64-bit support, which means that it can take advantage of the latest hardware and results in a bit of a performance boost. The beta is good from now until August 31st, 2008.

A few really important things to note before you jump in. First, Lightroom 2.0 doesn't upgrade your current catalogs. This means that you'll need to add photos to a new catalog for use in Lightroom 2.0. The reason for this is that the beta is intended to be used for testing purposes and not production work. As well, there's no guarantee that localized correction settings will translate into the final version of Lightroom 2.0. This is a beta after all.

In other words be careful, but enjoy playing with all the new features in Lightroom and be sure to provide feedback to the Adobe developers. So far, my favorite new feature may be the new Filter Bar which replaces the Command-click dance in the metadata panel with a better way to winnow down your images to just the ones that you are looking for. Or it may be output sharpening for screen images. I'm sure I'll change my mind a few more times after playing with the beta for a few more hours.