Adobe Releases Photoshop Lightroom 4, Slashes Price in Half to $149

adobe lightroom 4 boxAdobe today announced the immediate release of Photoshop Lightroom 4, bringing a number of new features and a lower price tag to the company's professional photo management and manipulation software.

Lightroom 4 introduces refined technology for superior shadow and highlight processing, ability to create photo books, additional local adjustment controls, and enhanced video support.

“Feedback from our customers is invaluable in developing Lightroom and the real trick to a great release is to combine these insights with Adobe’s unrivalled image processing innovation,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products, Creative Media Solutions, Adobe. “Lightroom 4 is a stunning new release that will enhance photography workflows and help photographs stand out from the crowd.”

Photoshop Lightroom 4 was released as a public beta just under two months ago, and Adobe has made several additional improvements since that time.

With the release of Lightroom 4, Adobe has slashed the application's price in half to $149, presumably responding to Apple's price cut on Aperture that saw it drop to just $79 when it moved to the Mac App Store with that marketplace's debut in January 2011. Pricing for Student/Teacher and Upgrade editions of Lightroom 4 is set at $79, with the Upgrade edition valid for any previous version of Lightroom.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
apple watch ultra 2 new black

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Finally Coming After Two-Year Hiatus

Monday June 16, 2025 8:45 am PDT by
Apple will finally deliver the Apple Watch Ultra 3 sometime this year, according to analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities Hong Kong (via @jukanlosreve). The analyst expects both the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 to arrive this year (likely alongside the new iPhone 17 lineup, if previous launches are anything to go by), according to his latest product roadmap shared with...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...
terminal macos tahoe

Apple's Terminal App Gets Colorful Redesign in macOS Tahoe

Monday June 16, 2025 4:12 am PDT by
Apple's Terminal app is getting a visual refresh in macOS Tahoe, and it's the first notable design update since the command-line tool debuted. The updated Terminal will support 24-bit color and Powerline fonts, according to Apple's State of the Platforms presentation at WWDC25. The app will also adopt the new Liquid Glass aesthetic with redesigned themes that align with macOS 26's broader...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...

Top Rated Comments

interrobang Avatar
173 months ago
It's a shame Adobe doesn't have as much competition for its other apps.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Steve121178 Avatar
173 months ago
I have always flat out refused to pay adobe's prices.
Now if they price Photoshop and Illustrator at points that don't make me wet myself laughing they might get some of my money.

To be fair, Photoshop Elements is a great product for non-pro users & is priced very reasonably.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dombi Avatar
173 months ago
Photoshop and Illustrator should be sold at this price.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RoelJuun Avatar
173 months ago
They feel the breath of Aperture's price point.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
adildacoolset Avatar
173 months ago
ipad 3 just tomorrow. Imagine...
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
HLX Avatar
173 months ago
Had Aperture for about 2 years now and I'm hoping for a radically new version. My (and clearly a lot of other people's) experience of running version 3 has been painful, and was only remotely stable for me at 3.2 . It is a monumentally unstable resource hog. It may have a better general UI and workflow than LR, but that's about it.

I've played with the LR 4 beta for a couple of months now and it's amazing. Its just better at editing photographs. Its brush and gradient level controls are simply way more powerful than Aperture, noise reduction and exposure being key examples. Aperture simply can't match it.

Having said that, I'd rather Apple get their ar*e in gear and give it the update it needs, than migrate my library into Adobeness on my Mac. But if Aperture 4 takes to long to appear (or just sucks), I might have to. Especially at that price.

Probably wouldn't be alone either. Frankly, a combination of PSE 10 and LR4 represents a ton of power for the price now.

Haha that sounds like an ad. But at least Adobe are having a real go in this space. Apple need to share their plans.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)