Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 / FAQ

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 software is a complete, end-to-end solution for photographers, both amateur and professional, who want to bring out the best from their photographs. It provides a comprehensive set of tools for any digital imaging tasks and uses the best of Adobe's imaging technologies, allowing photographers to achieve amazing image quality.

Lightroom 4 is designed for photographers who want the best possible images and an intuitive, all-in-one solution for their digital photography. It includes powerful yet simple automatic adjustments and features as well as state-of-the-art advanced tools, and it's used by photographers ranging from passionate amateurs to experienced professionals.

Lightroom 4 offers a host of enhancements to help you organize, perfect, and share your photos more easily than ever before. New tools give you more detail in shadows and highlights and let you make targeted adjustments of white balance, noise reduction, and more. Find and group images by location, automatically display location data from your camera or smartphone, and assign locations to images. Now you can craft elegant photo books and easily share your images on social media and photo sharing sites, including Facebook, Flickr®, and others. Enhanced video support lets you view video clips, make simple edits, and then upload HD clips to Facebook and Flickr.

Lightroom 4 supports the large majority of native camera raw file formats, in addition to DNG, TIFF, and JPEG formats — in other words, the formats primarily used in digital cameras. In addition, Lightroom 4 also supports the Photoshop PSD file format for enhanced integration with Adobe Photoshop. For a complete list of raw format support by camera make and model, see the camera raw page.

It is both. Lightroom provides what photographers need to organize, perfect, and share all their images in one clean, uncluttered, intuitive package.

Lightroom includes all the tools you need for most digital photography tasks in one intuitive solution. Lightroom helps photographers work faster and more efficiently with one image, a set of images, or a large image library. Adobe Photoshop software is the industry standard in digital image editing, with advanced tools used by photographers, graphic designers, and other graphics professionals when they need complete control to perform detailed, pixel-level editing and to work with multilayered files.

Adobe Bridge is designed to work with a wide variety of graphic, image, and video file types and to manage files in varied workflows involving all the component applications in Adobe Creative Suite® software. Lightroom and its file management functions are tailored specifically for the digital photography workflow. Lightroom combines all your photography tools, including image editing, in one intuitive application. Lightroom uses a catalog structure, which speeds up searches and enables Lightroom to store information about images and display them on offline media. Adobe Bridge cannot display offline images.

For some, it might. Having an interface that is 100% tuned to the photography workflow, along with some additional unique features, may mean some people will use Lightroom instead of Bridge. On the other hand, some photographers will want the broad capabilities of Adobe Bridge — such as integration with Creative Suite; the ability to preview documents created with Adobe Acrobat®, InDesign®, and Illustrator® software; and workgroup management tools. So many users will continue to use Adobe Bridge as well.

If you work with raw format photographs in Photoshop or Bridge, you use Photoshop Camera Raw to achieve the same kinds of editing as you would in Lightroom. In fact, Lightroom uses the same underlying processing engine as Photoshop Camera Raw, which delivers consistent and compatible results across Adobe applications. Adobe understands that individual photographers work in many different ways. We are committed to providing customers not only with the choice of which software to use, but also with the ability to use multiple applications together as needed.

Where the Photoshop Camera Raw implementation in Adobe Bridge or Photoshop has the same functions as Lightroom, you will find virtually identical options and sliders. That means you can move back and forth without confusion. Where Lightroom contains additional enhancements to raw processing, the enhancements you make will be recognized when the photo file is opened in Photoshop Camera Raw. A typical example is the Targeted Adjustment tool that is exclusive to Lightroom.

Lightroom and Photoshop Camera Raw share the same image processing technology to ensure consistent and compatible results across applications that support raw processing. These applications include Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Adobe Premiere® Elements for Windows®. (Older versions of some of these applications may not support raw processing.)

Adobe applications must be updated with the Photoshop Camera Raw 6.7 plug-in to ensure compatibility with Lightroom 4 Develop module settings. Photoshop users can update the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in automatically using the Update tool listed under the Help menu. The Photoshop Camera Raw 6.7 plug-in can also be downloaded and installed manually by visiting the camera raw support page. Follow the installation instructions carefully.

By default, the Develop module settings in Lightroom are stored in the Lightroom catalog. To ensure that Lightroom Develop settings can be viewed by Photoshop Camera Raw 6, the settings must be written to the XMP metadata block for that file. This metadata is stored in an XMP sidecar file (Imagename.xmp) in the current image directory of proprietary raw files or stored directly within DNG files. To update images with the latest Develop settings, choose the Library module and select the group of target images. Choose the shortcut Command/Control+S to save the settings to the XMP metadata block.

Sidecar XMP files are required only when working with files with both Lightroom and Adobe Bridge or Photoshop for use in Photoshop Camera Raw. If you prefer, you can simply wait until the files need to be used with Adobe Bridge or Photoshop, select the photos in the Library module in Lightroom, and then choose Metadata > XMP > Export XMP Metadata To Files.

Yes. Photoshop CS5 (or later) can be updated to use Camera Raw 6.7, which will utilize the same processing technology available in Lightroom 4. This means that not only will raw images look the same in either application, but also that changes you make in Lightroom can appear in Camera Raw and vice versa. To complete this interactivity, changes in both Camera Raw and Lightroom need to be written to XMP metadata. This is so that each software application can recognize the other's edits. This functionality is set in the preferences in each product.

Lightroom 4 is a completely nondestructive editing environment because, in fact, your photographs are never changed. Instead, the changes you make to your photographs are stored in metadata as a series of instructions. Whether you are viewing them onscreen, creating a web gallery, or making prints, Lightroom is simply applying those instructions to the original, untouched photo file. This provides you complete flexibility, control, and creative exploration, with the knowledge that any change you apply to an image is 100% reversible at any time — today, tomorrow, or years in the future.

Yes. Lightroom 4 contains the same features and delivers the same professional, best-of-class results, no matter which platform you use.

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Subject to the terms of the software license agreement, the primary user of the computer on which Lightroom is installed may install a second copy of the software for his or her exclusive use on either a portable computer or a home computer, provided that the software is not used on both computers at the same time. Lightroom is sold as multiplatform software, which means it can be installed on either Mac OS X or Windows.

Yes. Adobe is proud to support teachers and students with reduced pricing for Lightroom. Other licensing programs are also in effect — see Adobe Volume Licensing for more details.

Yes. Adobe is a leader in delivering high-quality localized versions of its software. Lightroom is available in English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, and Chinese Traditional versions.

Yes, Lightroom 4 is included in Creative Cloud membership, along with Photoshop CC, Adobe Premiere® Pro CC, Adobe Muse™, and many more applications and services. Learn about Creative Cloud ›

Creative Cloud includes everything you need to organize and share your images and videos — and enhance, edit, and composite them with pixel-level precision. Access Photoshop CC, Lightroom 4, Adobe Premiere CC, and more.

For one low monthly price, Creative Cloud membership gives you access to the latest industry-leading photography and video tools —Photoshop CC, Lightroom 4, and Adobe Premiere Pro CC— plus all other Creative Cloud applications, Adobe Muse web design software, powerful services, the ability to sync with Adobe Photoshop Touch (purchased separately), and more. It’s everything professional photographers need, including new media tools and business infrastructure support. Learn more ›

For Windows

• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
• Microsoft® Windows Vista® with Service Pack 2 or Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1
• 2GB of RAM
• 1GB of available hard-disk space
• 1024x768 display
• DVD-ROM drive
• Internet connection required for Internet-based services¹

For Mac OS

• Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
• Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7
• 2GB of RAM
• 1GB of available hard-disk space
• 1024x768 display
• DVD-ROM drive
• Internet connection required for Internet-based services¹

Lightroom 4 is designed to be easy to use so that photographers can focus on their images instead of on technology. Lightroom includes a comprehensive Help function. Additional materials can be found on the Lightroom product pages, on Adobe TV, and on the Lightroom YouTube channel.