So how do you want the Grad Filter presets named?

I've expanded the range of the current LRB Grad Filter presets. When I upload them after a little voting here, there'll be an additional Middle to go with each Top third and Bottom third, and 9 new Sunset Presets.
Current they are named by:
Colour Strength Position Hardness Orientation e.g. Blue 0.3 Top Hard Landscape (or an abbrev, thereof)

Matt K argues that 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 should be replaced with -1, -2, and -3. While it is indeed accurate, my naming is based on conventional Resin filters, which carry the notation 0.3, 0.6, 0.9. In fact Cokin calls them ND2, ND4, ND8 instead.

Which is the more critical for you the user?
And which order?

Strength Position Colour
Strength Colour Position
Colour Strength Position
Colour Position Strength
Position Strength Colour
Position Colour Strength

(The hardness and Orientation are the filter folders anyway, but are needed for Lightroom to distinguish them)

Each has advantages.
The last option for instance groups the Tops together, then individual colour, then strength of that colour. Or is Strength more important here than colour?

Where to keep your Lightroom Plugins.

There's been some questions and concern expressed in a few places about the where you should keep your Lightroom plugins (I'm not referring to Web Engines here, they do have a specific place).

The SDK tells us that Lightroom looks in a specific place for Plugins.

In Mac OS (current user) ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules
In Mac OS (all users) /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules
In Windows XP C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules
In Windows Vista C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules

Plugins located here are automatically loaded and can be both enabled or disabled by the Plugin Manager, but not removed.

This lack of removal is causing pain for a number of users, so a few Lightroom users/gurus/developers were talking about this a while ago. We bantered back and forth about how we work around this limitation. In the end we figured on a simple solution. Manually create a folder beside Modules called 'Plugins' and store your plugins there. This allows you to have a central repository for all your Lightroom plugins, and to be able to add or remove them using the Plugin Manager. This isn't any kind of mandatory or definitive solution, but may be of use if you feel you need to be able to remove plugins without losing them.

Updating Lightroom 2.1 to Camera Raw 5.1

As this is in a comment on the last post, I thought I'd mention this:
Lightroom does not use Camera Raw as a plugin. The two applications share the same codebase and are generally released at the same time.
In the About Lightroom box for 2.1, it states Camera Raw 4.6. This merely indicates that the 2 are compatible for use with Edit in Photoshop.

Where people are getting worried is with the fact that they don't know that Camera Raw 4.6 and 5.1 are actually compatible.
Camera Raw 4.6 is the final Camera Raw release for Photoshop CS3. Camera Raw 5.1 updates Camera Raw 5.0 for Photoshop CS4 to be compatible with 4.6. This means that, for now, users of Lightroom 2.1, Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS4 are in sync for Raw processing.
When Lightroom updates to 2.2 and Camera Raw to 2.2 (I suspect this will happen for historical reasons, if nothing else), then Photoshop CS3 users will be left behind. Of course the DNG convertor will be updated and you can still access changes that way.

So don't worry about updating Lightroom 2.1 to Camera Raw 5.1. It already is.

LIghtroom 2.1 and Camera Raw 5.1 announced

Both Lightroom 2.1 and Camera Raw 5.1 will be available later today. Both are free to existing users of Lightroom 2.0 and Camera Raw 5.0 (5.0 shipped with Photoshop CS4). There are 15 new digital cameras supported in Lightroom 2.1 and Camera Raw 5.1 including the Canon EOS 1000D, Canon EOS 50D, Fuji FinePix IS Pro, Kodak EasyShare Z1015 IS, Leaf AFi II 6, Leaf AFi II 7, Leaf Aptus II 6, Leaf Aptus II 7, Nikon D700, Nikon D90, Nikon Coolpix P6000, Olympus SP-565 UZ, Pentax K2000, Sigma DP1, and Sony A900. For CS3 users feeling left out in the cold, these are already supported in Camera Raw 4.6.

CS4 ships

Photoshop CS4 is now available, along with Camera Raw 5.0, a new generation of the Camera Raw pipeline. Version 5.0 doesn't contain all the new camera updates from 4.6, but 5.1 will be released shortly to being them to par.
For Lightroom users, CS4 will automatically replace CS3 in the Edit in Photoshop menu item. To continue to use CS3 from there, you can select it as an external editor (note that an intermediate file is created with external editors).

For more info see Lightroom Journal

Tuesday speedlinks

David Ziser has a cool video on mixing Light and Lightroom for killer images.

Matt Kloskowski has a video interview with Scott Kelby about his new Lightroom book.

Keeping the Inside Lightroom blog alive, Michael Clarke has a excerpt from one of his newsletters for us to read.

Yanik Chauvin has an Adjustment Brush video to view on Vimeo (my preferred video upload site!)

So waddya working on?

Well I've a few things on the go at the moment. Parallel processing isn't a human task, so it's literally one at time until my attention span gives out (easily done, I'm afraid).

LRB Portfolio 1.03 was released yesterday

I'm working on a new website plugin based on 1.03 but very different. Check out the first sample website.

I'm back working on an eBook on making your own galleries. My designer came in with a nice InDesign layout (now I need to learn InDesign!).

I'm still working on the next installment of the tutorials for Lightroom-News.com. Mostly done, but I need to make up the gallery pages again to make sure it all works!

I know Tom is keen to get a music player in galleries, and while I have created a little flash player and have the code for the tunes buried in the galleryInfo.lrweb file, I can't get it to sit in right without frames, which don't seem to be working right in PC Lightroom.

LRB Portfolio updated to 1.03

Initially created to fulfill a user request for longer thumbnails LRB Portfolio has now been updated to version 1.03. Additionally a second request for an option to open external links in a new window was also fulfilled.
A feature I've wanted since the beginning was also implemented: only files required by the gallery are generated. I mailed in some possible conditional code for the manifest.lrweb file to Lightroom engineer Andy Rahn. Andy was kind enough to expand on it and so I was able to get this feature in. Thanks Andy!
Use the download link you received when you purchased to get the new version. If you have used the 5 downloads, reply using the download email and I'll reset it.

Update: I've changed to 9 downloads to help with this. Also there was a silly typo (which noone seems to have seen yet!), so please redownload this if you got it earlier today.