Check out the video below:

Pretty impressive.

Lightroom 3 and ACR will ship with a selection of lenses for automatic correction of distortions, chromatic aberrations and vignetting but the really powerful feature is the profile editor, which will allow the creation of profiles for any camera/lens combination, very useful when dealing with third-party lenses or old models.

My only complain is that the perspective correction is not good enough; having three sliders for X, Y and Z-axis rotation is cumbersome compared to DXO keytoning feature.

Overall, it’s a very important upgrade.

New Painting engine

This is something directly aimed at Corel Painter and its ‘natural media’ painting. It’s still not quite there in terms of sophistication as Painter but it’s a big improvement.

Color picker and painting

Puppet Warp

This has been present in After Effects and Flash for quite some time, but it’s nice to have in Photoshop when the Liquify doesn’t cut it. I’m especially thrilled about using the ‘pins’ for controlled image distortions as they illustrate at the end of the video:

New smart selection tools

The selection is getting smarter when there are fine details like fur over complex backgrounds. This stuff has been possible for some time via plugins, but it’s nice to see it integrated (not to mention that it forces the plugin makers to innovate).

Content-aware fill

Remember the healing brush and the patch tool? How amazed you were when you discovered them? Then prepare to be amazed once more:

Overall, Photoshop CS5 is shaping as a solid release, well worth the upgrade.
Of course, we’ll have to wait for the official announcement, but these features are pretty much confirmed.

What follows is the official announcement for the availability of Lightroom 3 beta 2. I’ll start playing with it right away and report my findings. I am a bit disappointed that there’s no word on any optical corrections, but I won’t judge anything for now.

Adobe today released an update to its Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta software, available immediately through Adobe Labs. Building on the success of the first Lightroom 3 beta, which was downloaded by more than 350,000 photographers, Lightroom 3 beta 2 incorporates feedback from the first iteration of the beta while offering users several new features and greatly improved performance throughout the application.

New features in this release include tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon cameras, the ability to import and manage video files from DSLR cameras for a streamlined workflow and additional behind-the-scenes architecture enhancements for faster importing and loading of images. The addition of luminance noise reduction to the color noise reduction options already available in the beta helps photographers achieve overall exceptional image quality from high ISO images. The import experience and watermarking functionality have also been modified to reflect feedback received from the Lightroom community during the first beta period.

The input from the photography community has been extremely valuable and Adobe would like to thank everyone who has participated in the beta program. Adobe encourages photographers to test this new selection of features and provide the product team with feedback so they can produce the highest quality final product.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is the essential digital photography workflow solution, helping serious amateur and professional photographers quickly import, manage, perfect and showcase all their images in one intuitive application.

Pricing and Availability
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta 2 is available as a free download to anyone on a Macintosh or Windows platform and is available in 12 languages. Visitlabs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/ to learn more and download the second beta. Feedback can be submitted on the Lightroom forums:forums.adobe.com/community/labs/lightroom3/.

Photoshop Elements 7 for $59.99

Photoshop’s ‘little brother’, Elements, is a great tool for photo enthusiasts who can’t justify spending ten times as much for the full-featured Photoshop. If you don’t need CMYK, HDR, 16bit support (or don’t care what they are) then Photoshop Elements may be for you, especially since there are many plugins and tutorials on how to add functionality to Photoshop Elements. Below are some of them:

• Add Photoshop brushes, shapes and actions in Elements
• Layer Mask, Channel Mixer, Transform Selection, RGB Channels and more
• A list with more add-ons and tools

The offer ends on April 23 2009 and it’s valid for North America store.

$200 discount for Creative Suite 4 upgrade

Adobe’s sales for CS4 have been less than stellar, but the suite itself is very good, and for the Web Premium for example, the improvements in Photoshop and Flash alone make the upgrade worth it.

This offer ends on April 30 2009 and it’s valid for North America store.