Lightroom version 2.0 has officially been released. Obviously there’s the official Adobe page, but the “Lightroom Journal” blog run by the Lightroom team also has some more info. There’s plenty of other stuff floating around the web  already, and the release is covered on sites like John Nack’s blog, Scott Kelby’s blog, and Lightroom Killer Tips.

More specifically, there are feature reviews on computer-darkroom.com [edit: page no longer live], lightroomnews.com. John Nack has promised to keep his list of resources up-to-date, so it’s probably worth checking back there fairly regularly. In terms of tutorials, you’ve got the NAPP LR2 Learning Center [edit: now defunct], some free videos at PhotoshopCafe.com, and a demo of the new retouching features by Terry White. There are loads of lessons on the Kelby Training website, which apparently offers a free trial, but I’ve not tried it so I don’t know how much you can view before having to pay. And of course, there’s some info on the Adobe website itself, including a complete list of all new features, and some helpful videos in the “Design Center“.

Lightroom 2.0 can now use Export Plugins, along with Develop presets and a variety of web galleries. You can find these new Export Plugins along with the more familiar presets and galleries at the Adobe Lightroom Exchange site. There are only 16 listed at the moment, but it looks like this could be quite interesting as people find different uses for them.

In the midst of all the Lightroom 2.0 excitement, it’s probably worth noting that Adobe have also released a couple of other bits of software at the same time. Camera Raw has been updated to v4.5, and now supports edits made in v2.0 of Lightroom. In addition, it adds support for DNG Profiles. These are a new feature which allow you to tune the default Camera Raw rendering of your raw files. For example, you could set up presets to match the JPG presets on your camera; it could be a really useful feature if you’re not a big fan of the default ACR settings. Instructions on how to create custom profiles are on the Adobe labs site.

Finally, it turns out that it costs more to download the 1.0 > 2.0 upgrade than it does to actually have a physical box/CD posted to you- go figure!