It was Lightroom 2 Release Day, and I’ve put together a roundup of what our friends in the web world are saying about the latest version of Adobe’s photo management and processing tool. See what actual Adobians, The Digital Story, Scott Kelby, and the leader of the Lightroom 2 Adventure (one of my authors; yes, Deke, there are others) are finding interesting and cool about the new release.

• First stop, check out the Lightroom Journal maintained by Adobe’s Lightroom Product Manager Tom Hogarty. Nothing like getting it straight from the source. Tom gives an annotated list of each of the major new improvements; pay particular attention to the Develop Module where they’ve added the ability to make selective edits. If you’ve been playing with the Lightroom 2 beta, scroll to the bottom to get a quick update on the differences between the public beta and official release versions. For good measure, there’s also an update to Adobe Camera Raw, which provides the same raw processing engine (albeit without the cool new Adjustment brush.)
• Speaking of Tom Hogarty, over at The Digital Story, Derrick’s got a fun and informative audio podcast interview with Tom and Lightroom Marketing Manager Frederick Johnson. It was recorded just a few days ago at Adobe in anticipation of this release, and Derrick gets the guys to jump straight into a discussion of the features they’re most excited about.
• If you’re curious about what kind of amazing photo processing can be done with Lightroom 2 in a real world setting, check out the beautiful galleries created during the Lightroom Adventure in Tasmania. Author and photographer Mikkel Aaland put together a group of amazing photographers for a trip down under designed to road-test the new version of Lightroom (much as he did in Iceland for Lightroom 1). I’m actually editing the book, Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure, due out in September and it doesn’t suck to have such amazing photography and practical advice to work with.
• On August 23, Photoshop Guru Scott Kelby is planning a multi-city simultaneous “Photo Walk” where groups of photographers get together for a little competitive street shooting. Not only do you get to spend the day shooting with a group of comrades, but the person with the best photo in each city (as determined by Scott’s group of hosts) will win Scott’s book. The best photo overall of the day, (as chosen by Scott, I believe) will recieve what is being called a “mega prize package.” Details are here, (although I don’t know how many photowalkers outside of Dubai are going to have a chance encounter the Jumeirah Hotel at sunset.)