I’ve just received an email from Adobe to say that Lightroom Beta 4, their competitor to Aperture et al, has been launched for Mac and Windows. The additional features are apparently as follows:

*Groundbreaking changes in the way tone curve adjustments are made and displayed, giving you the highest quality results in an interface that’s easier to use than ever before. *More streamlined and elegant user interface – We’ve made several changes to the look and feel based on your feedback in the earlier beta releases. *Customizable interface – You can now display only the controls you want to be visible. *Precision white balance selection tool *Facility to easily rename and convert files to DNG after they’ve been imported to the Lightroom library *Increased interaction between Lightroom library organizational structure and the underlying file system *Filter and search presets to more quickly find the photographs you want *Better performance and improved interface for the Web module features

On first impressions as a Windows user it is significantly faster than Beta 3. The other really nice feature… if you’ve got time on your hands to be playing around with this stuff… is the “web” output stage of the workflow that creates HTML or Flash galleries that can be either saved or directly uploaded via FTP.

Download at: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/