Adobe have pushed Lightroom 3.2 and Camera Raw 6.2 out of the door.

The release contains new Camera Support for the following cameras: Canon EOS 60D, Casio EXILIM EX-FH100*, Fuji FinePix HS10, Leica S2 (DNG*), Panasonic DMC-FZ100, Panasonic DMC-FZ40 (FZ45), Panasonic DMC-LX5, Pentax 645D, Samsung NX10, Samsung TL500 (EX1), Sony A290, Sony A390, Sony Alpha NEX-3, Sony Alpha NEX-5, Sony SLT-A33, Sony SLT-A55V.

It also contains new Lens Profile support, direct publishing to Facebook and SmugMug is also available. For more information see Tom Hogarty’s announcement.

Here is a Keyword List of Damselflies and Dragonflies of the UK. This contains the official list provided by the British Dragonfly Society. The list contains migrant and vagrant species as well as UK extinct species.
The Latin names are included as Synonyms and are listed hierarchically.

I am releasing these as Donationware, if you have a use for them, please consider a small donation to cover the time to create. Anything over $1 is possible! Donations are via PayPal and are secure.

Here is a quick tip which is always worth bearing in mind when you are on a trip, or returning from a trip and thinking about merging catalogs or just generally tidying up; always rename files and folders in the Lightroom interface.

This prevents a lot of heartache if you’re tempted to rename files/folders in the Finder/Explorer. Rename in the filesystem and Lightroom will lose the connection to your images. You might then move on to do something else and then wonder what has gone wrong!

As is becoming the usual way before final release, Adobe Labs will be hosting Release Candidates of Lightroom 3.2 and Camera Raw 6.2, for you to try out.
You may be wondering where Lightroom 3.1 went, well it is an alignment of release numbers issue; Camera Raw 6.1 having been released shortly after Photoshop CS5 was released.

The new versions support the following cameras:

• Casio EXILIM EX-FH100
• Leica S2
• Panasonic DMC-FZ100
• Panasonic DMC-FZ40 (FZ45)
• Panasonic DMC-LX5
• Pentax 645D
• Samsung NX10
• Samsung TL500 (EX1)
• Sony A290
• Sony A390
• Sony Alpha NEX-3
• Sony Alpha NEX-5

There is one new Lightroom feature which is the ability to publish directly to Facebook from within the Library module.

Both releases also have support and updates for new lens profiles, see Tom Hogarty’s blog post at Lightroom Journal for details of those and the many bug fixes.

For those of you who have been using Lightroom since day 0, the name George Jardine has been synonymous with the product. A former Photography Evangelist for Adobe, the produced the series of podcasts which can still be found on the iTunes Store. Offering insights, interviews, tutorials and more, these Podcasts offered a fascinating view of the birth and early years of Lightroom Development.

George, after a long absence, has returned to Lightroom broadcasting with a new set of video tutorials. Entitled “New Adobe Lightroom 3 Video Workshop: 15 Tutorials on the Lightroom Library Workflow and Digital Photo Library Management” these tutorials offer 4 1/2 hours of Lightroom education.

The list of contents is as follows:

1. Photo Library Structure – 10:49
2. The Lightroom Catalog Overview – 6:23
3. The Lightroom User Interface – 15:21
4. The Pro Workflow Overview – 32:50
5. The Lightroom Import Dialog – 14:15
6. The Library Module – Part 1 – 23:42
7. The Library Module – Part 2 – 25:21
8. Keywords & Metadata – 19:57
9. File Renaming – 18:54
10. Editing Methods in Lightroom 3 – 23:35
11. The Lightroom Filter Bar – 12:29
12. Virtual Copies – 9:16
13. The Export Dialog & Publish Services – 13:35
14. The Lightroom to Photoshop Workflow – 17:09
15. Digital Photo Library Backup Strategies – 16:43
16. Working With Multiple Lightroom Catalogs – 20:15

Note these videos only cover Import, Workflow and Asset Management. More covering the Develop Module are coming soon.

They are available for $29.95 and are sure to be well worth the money.

John Nack announces the availability of a GPS Data panel for Photoshop CS5.

Hopefully this sees the start of increased focus on GPS in Adobe products. They have plenty of support but not a fully coherent solution as seen in a product like Aperture.

However, the installation method leaves a lot to be desired, which seems to be a running theme with Adobe installers! I remember an update of Illustrator where you essentially had to open the Application Package just to put a small file in a specific place. The inverse of this is the latest issue with the Flash installer for Mac, where a traditional installer is wrapped in an Adobe AIR package.

Anyway here are the correct installation instructions for a Mac.

1. Download the Disk Image here.

2. In the Finder, press Apple + Shift + G and paste in this path:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/XMP/Custom File Info Panels/3.0/panels/

3. Create a folder called gpsData

4. Copy all of the contents of the Disk Image into the gpsData folder.

5. Restart Photoshop

After many months on beta testing both public and private, Adobe has released Lightroom to the world.

The major new feature since the last Public Beta is Lens Corrections. These were outlined by Tom Hogarty (Product Manager) in video form at the end of April and released as part of Camera Raw 6.1 on June 1st. But there are other features that have been added. These include:

• Profile-based lens correction that addresses:
  • Geometric lens distortion(i.e., barrel or pincushion)
  • Chromatic aberration
  • Vignette effects
• Manual geometric lens correction
• Horizontal and vertical perspective correction
• Improved Web templates for updated color and design options
• Additional Print templates to utilize the new creative layout options
• New develop presets for creative B&W and Color adjustments
• Focal length filtering available in the metadata filter
• Updated SDK with publish collection functionality and access to collection and keyword metadata
• Improved interactive responsiveness
• Ability to upgrade Lightroom 1, Lightroom 2 catalogs as well as Lightroom 3 beta or Lightroom 3 beta 2 catalogs
  • Images edited in Lightroom 3 beta or Lightroom 3 beta 2 will migrate to Lightroom 3.0 with little to no visual adjustments.  Minor sharpening adjustments may appear.
• Ability to migrate Photoshop Elements 6, 7 or 8 catalogs to Lightroom 3
• Updated print resolution limits of 720ppi for local printing and 1200ppi for printing to a JPEG file.

Camera support is now on a par with Camera Raw 6.1 and a full list of supported cameras is available here.

As usual the community has responded with many posts aimed at enlightening users to all the new features. Sean McCormack has a list of these. Adobe TV has 10 videos available to explain the new features. Victoria Bampton has an in-depth look at the new features on her Lightroom Queen blog. Jeffrey Friedl has a post on his Plug-in updates. Lightroom help is also available here.

Lightroom 3 is available for Mac and Windows on the Adobe site.

Camera Raw 6.1 (for Photoshop CS5) has been released after spending a short period in Adobe Labs.
Newly supported cameras in this release are:

• Canon EOS 550D (Digital Rebel T2i/ EOS Kiss X4 Digital)
• Kodak Z981
• Leaf Aptus-II 8
• Leaf Aptus-II 10R
• Mamiya DM40
• Olympus E-PL1

There are some bug fixes as well, but the main interest lies in the new Lens Corrections features which can apply profile-based corrections to accommodate geometric distortions, chromatic aberration and lens vignette effects.

Many lens profiles are included, and users can create their own with the Adobe Lens Profile Creator.

This is of particular interest to Lightroom users as the feature is coming in the release version of Lightroom 3.0.

Further information available at Lightroom Journal.

Sean McCormack has released a new web gallery LRB Showcase. It is designed for showing a small number of images in a scrolling gallery. It displays large images which automatically resize to fit the screen size.

A sample gallery is available here, and the price is €10 + VAT with a 20% discount until June 8.

Lightroom Blog has released version 2.6 of LRB Portfolio with a slew of fixes and a few new features.