Lightroom 1.1

Being under NDA with Adobe, I'm not in a position to discuss features and other things related to Lightroom 1.1. But seeing as John Nack has done the Camera RAW 4.1 and Lightroom 1.1 announcement, I will pull together things that are already out there.

With Camera RAW 4.1 available, Jeff Schewe from Photoshop News has done a wonderful article on the new features within. As John Nack has mentioned, these features will also be appearing in Lightroom 1.1.

Key things which were mentioned are Improved Sharpening (Jeff goes into great detail on this), Noise Reduction and a new control called Clarity. Clarity fits into the Vibrance scale of new controls. It's a local contrast adjustment and according to Jeff was originally to be called Punch. He won't say why it changed though!

Tom Hogarty, the Lightroom Product Manager, also weighs in on release times to let us know about when 1.1 may be available over at Lightroom Journal, the official Lightroom Blog. While no date is set, Tom explains "Testing and qualifying all those improvements is taking more time than it takes us to get the Camera Raw update tested and out the door. I believe that you’ll find it worth the wait."
More as we get it!

Offline Media

Lightroom photos can inhabit any drive they like, internal or external. The beauty of it is that unlike browser based photo editor/managers, Lightroom allows you to access your files when the external drives are disconnected. This is because of the database that is the heart of Lightroom. Offline drives and folders appear in red in the Folders Pane. If you have used Render Standard Previews on import or from the menu prior to disconnecting, you will also be able to work with a screen sized version of your offline image. If you have rendered 1:1 previews, it is even possible to get large size prints, using draft mode printing. Mac users can even recreate the missing image by using Preview from the Print driver to print to a new file. You can create virtual copies, add to collections and change keywords and metadata while the file is offline. One thing you cannot do though is actually edit the file. Develop creates a new preview when you change the settings and needs the original file.
This leads to one slow part of Lightroom. When you reconnect the drive to start editing, Lightroom takes a finite amount of time to check the drive when it comes online. A quick way to speed this along is a little unothodox: Restart Lightroom after you plug the drive in and it will find the drive much quicker.

Keyword Search Logic

Currently there are a few ways to find using mulitple keywords. The first one is to click on multiple keywords in the keywords pane. This acts as OR logic, ie images containing either keyword will be displayed. The AND logic is achieved by putting multiple keywords in the Find pane, in the Text box. In this instance an image must contain both keywords to be displayed. Finally, the NOT logic isn't quite as obvious. It requires putting an exclamation mark (!) before the keyword, eg If I want to see images keyworded with Majorca, but not those from it capital Palma, I would enter Majorca !Palma into the Text box in Find.
You can mix and match between these to create combinations of AND, OR and NOT logic in searching.

Simple Viewer Gallery

Matthew over at the turning gate has a new Simple Viewer Gallery. Excellent stuff. I wanted to do this but didn't because I couldn't figure out how to get over the issue of creating an external gallery.xml file, different to the one required by the gallery. I just wasn't thinking laterally enough. Matthew's solution is both simple and elegant. He creates it in the transformer.xslt file. I feel foolish for not thinking of this!
Anyhow, it works well and has the ability to be modified further. I'll probably be sitting on the edge of the pool in Majorca next week trying to bust it into shape for my website!
Cheers Matthew!
Update Matthew is up to version 1.2.1 now, with a cool look that emulates the Flash gallery. You can now change the internals of the SimpleViewer gallery.xml and add ID Plate, Watermark and contact information. I've learned loads from seeing Matthew's code.
Update 2 Wow! we're up to version 1.3 already. I've made a version for my own use at http://seanmcfoto.com/SVG3.zip. The ID Plate is not functioning correctly, but I'll modify it shortly (or maybe on the beach!)

Free Frames

Expanding on the ability to add frames to your prints through the undocumented use of the ID Plate, Mike Wong has expanded on the information I provided in my Frames video tutorial from the day before Lightroom was released. Scott Kelby mentions this in his Lightroom book also. Again cheers to Andreas Noren for discovering this useful workaround.
Being on the onOne team, Mike has access to a load of wonderful frames that he is providing free to use. Make sure you email him if you use them!
Update: Mike now mentions Andreas in his post! Cheers Mike!