Lots of Adobe news lately and this time it’s the announcement of the Lightroom 2 public Beta available on Adobe Labs.
The first item to make an impact with me was the ‘getting started’ wizard you’re greeted by the first time you launch the application. Aimed at IUE (Initial User Experience), the getting started wizard is nothing new, but Adobe’s added a wrinkle — as you click through the wizard various elements described in the wizard are highlighted in the actual interface. It’s common to see lots of videos and written guides thrown at the user, so it’s nice to see the wizard be actually integrated within the projects. As a user I feel much more connected to the software and there’s no disjointing experience of having to switch between apps to view the IUE information.
Tight hooks into the application in order to provide IUE is something that Adobe’s latest efforts have put a lot of work into. Photoshop CS3 provides a ‘workspace’ which highlights elements that are new with the application as you work in it.
The other thing that jumped out at me was the location of the tools when in the ‘Develop’ module.
It’s way too late for me to stay up and play more, but John Nack gives the full run down on what’s new and improved.