by Gavin Seim: Adobe wasted no time getting out of the beta phase. It seems they wanted cha’ching sounds a ringing.

Lightroom 4 is hitting desktops as we speak. Thankfully Adobe did drop the price a good bit to $149 ($79 for upgrades). Something we can probably credit to the Aperture price drop in 2011. Thanks Apple.

All told. LR4 looks pretty good. Not Earth shattering. But good. Sadly there seems to have been few changes from the beta. There were areas some were hoping would get more features. But LR4 has some new develop tools, some refinements and some new modules that will keep us busy.

A few major things to look for include…

• Changes to the Develop settings, including Shadow, Highlight, White Point and more.
• Video playback and basic editing support.
• The book maker module (limited but interesting).
• More control over Brush and Gradient settings, including localized White Balance.
• Built in maps module.

Of course there’s more. I’ll be back with some thoughts soon. For now go check it out and let us know what you think in the comments.

More detailed review in the works. This post will be updated… Gav