Adobe has released Lightroom 2. Lightroom enables users to view large numbers of RAW or other format photos at a time and to work with photos in groups for editing, tagging, printing, or exporting.

What's New in Lightroom 2

Lightroom 2 adds the following features to the original Lightroom, according to CNet:

• Panorama creation and merge to HDR when used on a system that also runs Photoshop CS3
• New metadata API that permits third-party applications like Flickr to work with Lightroom metadata
• Styles to create JPEG-like images from RAW files
• Dual-monitor support
• Metadata filtering to help find photos faster
• Improved image-sharpening technology licensed from PhotoKit that improves picture quality for printing
• Smart Collections uses tags to create photos by rating and tags

Additional new and enhanced features listed on the Adobe Lightroom 2 website include:

• New local adjustment brush (touch up specific areas of a photo)
• New extensible architecture through plugins
• New volume management enables you to work with high-resolution previews even when the original images are offline
• New print package support
• Enhanced nondestructive photo editing and batch processing

However, the biggest news is 64-bit Windows Vista and MacOS X support.

To learn more about Lightroom 2 and how it relates to other Adobe software, see the Lightroom FAQ page.

Cha-Ching! How Much to Buy (and Try) Lightroom 2

First-time buyers will pay $299 for Lightroom 2. Upgrading from Lightroom 1.x is $99. A free 30-day trial is also available.