NZ Photo Info

I upgraded my version of lightroom last night from 1.0 to the new version 1.1. The most notable feature that is benefit to me is the ability to work with Olympus E-410/E-510 ORF files (there are also some other new cameras supported). I should be getting my E-510 in the next few days and didn't really want to do a DNG conversion and then an import into lightroom.

Another little annoyance that has been corrected is that during import folders were incorrectly tagged with the date based on GMT rather than the local time on the computer. With Lightroom version 1.1 this problem seems to be gone.

Adobe have also made some other refinements to the user interface and now have some additional sharpening controls, including:

Clarity - is all new and in the Basic Panel (with Vibrance and Saturation). Clarity adds "depth" to the image by increasing local contrast. When you use it, zoom in to 100% or more. To "do it right", increase it until you see "halos" near the edge details, and then reduce the setting slightly (till they just disappear).

Sharpening Improvements - There are now four controls available in the Detail panel. The zoom level must be set to 100% or greater in order to view the effects of these controls.

• Amount - Adjusts edge definition
• Radius - Adjusts the size of the details that sharpening is applied to.
• Detail - Adjusts how much high-frequency information is sharpened in the image and how much the sharpening process emphasizes edges.
• Masking - Controls an edge mask.

You can now load a snapshot or history state into the Before view by ctrl-clicking or right-clicking it in the panel.

There are also some refinements to the Slideshow module, Print module and Web module.