Lightroom 4 Review

As some of you know I am a huge fan of Lightroom.  My friend mentioned it to me when I first got my DSLR and I do not know how I would exist as a photographer without it.  Especially since I do a lot of outdoor photos where the sunlight can be overwhelming, and also indoor events where I need that extra boost to remove noise and lighten without losing quality.  I have been using Lightroom 3 for about 2 years now.  I first started using it when it was still in Beta form, and then received it as a Christmas gift once it was live.  You can imagine my excitement when Lightroom 4 was announced!  New means better, right?  I downloaded the trial last week and started editing right away.

Here is an example of a what I was working on in Lightroom 3:

The sliders I find most useful on the right there are Recovery, Fill Light, Clarity, Vibrance, and Blacks.  These are great for correcting over and underexposure.

Here is an example from Lightroom 4:

Missing are the Recovery and Fill Light bars.  This really makes it hard for me to get the same result I could easily get with LR3.  Replacing those two options are a second set of tonal controls: Highlights and Shadows, and also a new slider called "Whites" that barely does anything, at least in a low light photo.  The blacks slider used to really bring out the black pixels and you would only slide up to maybe 5-10 as it was very sensitive, but the new version you slide the opposite direction and can go to a value of -30 and very little seems to happen.  I keep looking for the fill light and recovery slides!!!  Whites does not fill light.  Exposure now also seems to do something different.  It used to just bring up the exposure of things that were already exposed.  What I mean by that is if you look at the first ballerina photo from LR3 you can see that the ballerinas became lighter when I raised the exposure, but the background actually stayed fairly dark.  That's what I used fill light for, to let me control how much the background would lighten.  Now in LR4 the exposure seems to lighten everything at the same time!  Not liking that!  I find that I now need to use the brush Adjustment Brush for everything (at least in the darker ballet photos) so that I don't overexpose the entire picture!  

Speaking of the Adjustment Brush, that is the one feature that so far I like better than LR3.  If only I could meld the two versions together and pick and choose what I want.  Here is a side by side comparison of the Adjustment brushes, LR3 vs LR4:

I love that I can control the temperature of just a part of the photo.  And also the noise and tones.  But I'm not sure that its a fair trade.  

In conclusion, I don't think I will be scrimping and saving to puchase the upgrade to LR4 anytime soon.  Its $79 and I would rather use that money towards a lens or filter if I had it.  I am not knocking the product exactly, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed.  I am sure there are ways to "recover" and "fill light" in LR4 but they cannot be anywhere as easy as they had been.  I also do not have the time to sit and watch tutorials on how to use it seeing as I already spent a lot of time watching the LR3 videos!