Yup – Adobe is ready to unveil Lightroom 2 to the world, in beta form. After their very successful first version, a lot of photographers are anxious to see what kind of improvements they can expect from the next iteration of Lightroom.

Keep in mind that while the Lightroom 2 beta is free to download and try out, it’s still in a very early stage and shouldn’t be considered as production software. This is strictly for testing and providing feedback to Adobe, and shouldn’t replace your current photo software at this point.

You can download the LR2 beta from here.

The “magic lens” is Adobe’s first crack at manufacturing camera hardware. The company is well known and respected as a software developer, but this could signal a shift towards gear, or it could end up being a one-off experiment for Adobe.

The lens (video of it after the jump) is actually 19 lenses piled together and aimed at slightly different angles. The result is an image that lets you control the perspective (a little bit) and the depth of field in post processing. » MORE

Geotagging is a fairly new phenomenon, which is only maturing as the GPS, Digital SLR, and Internet world grow and evolve. It’s extremely practical to know where some pictures were taken, and many photo sharing websites will actually use this data to help group pictures together geographically. Plus, it’s just fun.

Some higher end SLRs (like the Nikon D300 or D2X) allow you to actually connect your GPS unit to the camera and automatically geotag your pictures with latitude and longtitude information.

However, this means having to attach the GPS to the camera, usually through the use of a specialized cable… and not every camera has this function. Though it’s handy (since the information is recorded “on the go”) there is another way which is a little more work, but a lot more flexible. » MORE

There are those of us who want vivid color, and those who want accurate color. These two factions battle with each other from time to time, and when they do, it’s epic. It’s like Spock and Kirk in the Amok Time episode.

For accurate color, Adobe Camera Raw has a great feature that will let you calibrate your color, through the use of a ColorChecker chart and the AcrCalibrator script from Chromoholics. » MORE

There is a popular plugin for Photoshop called LucisArt which lets you enhance details in bright and dark areas of an image simultaneously. It’s a look that is best exemplified by their Whyeth effect, which looks almost like a what happens to an image when you apply an HDR (or High Dynamic Range) technique.

While nothing can match the real deal, you can do a good job of reproducing the LucisArt Whyeth look in Adobe Lightroom. Bring up a picture into the Develop view and perform the following steps on it.

Remember to trust yourself… this will look ugly before it looks good.

• Under Basic adjustments, slide Recovery to 100%
• Fill Light up to 100%
• Blacks to about 20-50, will adjust more later.
• Contrast to 100%
• Clarity to 100%
• Vibrance to 100%
• Now drop your Saturation to -20 and bump it down as needed to get rid of some of the gaudy color we’ve introduced.
• Go back and play with adding some Blacks and adjust Exposure as needed.
• If one particular color is overpowering, you can visit the HSL palette and adjust it’s saturation.

At this point, you can continue manipulating it by adding noise reduction or some lens correction to add a nice vignette. You can also adjust the Saturation and Vibrance sliders to get the right amount of color. Because this is an artistic look – there’s no right and wrong way to adjust the settings, but like with any effect, too much and you can overdo it. Use some restraint and find those pictures this looks best on.

Photoshop is still the defacto photo editing application for many people, despite the fact that Lightroom and Aperture have stolen some of its thunder in the photography market. If you use Photoshop to edit pictures, you may be interested in a few of these shortcuts which will save you some time and effort when performing some of the most common tasks.

While Photoshop may still be the “industry standard”, Adobe Lightroom is quickly making inroads and also has a few quick keys that may make working on photographs a little easier.

Photoshop

• Pressing Space Bar will get you the Hand Tool while you hold it down.
• Pressing Tab will make your tool palettes disappear/reappear.
• F will toggle between standard, maximized, and full screen mode.
• Holding down the Alt (or Apple) key will let you zoom with the scroll wheel.
• [ and ] let you increase or decrease brush size. Holding down shift while you use [ or ] let you do the same with softness.
• 1->0 will let you change opacity on a tool starting with 1 (10%) up to 0 (100%). Quickly following it with another number will let you fine tune the opacity change.

Lightroom

• 1-5 will let you set a rating for the photograph.
• P, U and X will let you set flags. P for Picked, U for Unassign Flag, and X for Reject. (see here)
• Tab will show or hide the display panels.
• L will toggle through Lights Out mode, first a dim background, next a totally blackened background.
• G will take you to Grid mode.
• E will take you to Loupe mode.
• ~ will toggle between Loupe or Grid mode.

Learn them and use them, they’ll save you a ton of time when working on images.

If you’re a designer, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to color. You find one or two color combinations that you really like and work for you, and it becomes difficult sometimes to break out of that habit. Most often, it just requires a little inspiration… which can come from anywhere. If you’re still having a hard time though, you may want to try Kuler.

Kuler (pronounced “color”) is a new online application from Adobe that let’s you browse popular (and unpopular) color combination choices for use in graphics or design projects. Most designers (ones worth their salt) will likely have a good concept of how certain colors compliment one another anyways… but it’s always nice to see what other people are doing to stay on top of trends.