John Beardsworth has produced another two Plug-ins for Lightroom.

Search and Replace is the first.

The latest is Open Directly which allows a Raw file to be opened directly with another Raw editor (rather than sending it as a TIFF when you use Edit With …)

With the growing popularity of D-SLR’s being able to shoot video, Lightroom’s lack of import/management for these file types has become a limitation. Jeffrey Friedl has created Video-Asset Management a Plug-in to allow a small amount of video management within Lightroom.

Jay Kinghorn has a piece at Creative Pro magazine about adding drama to your photos with Lightroom’s Graduated filter.

You can buy an extensive set of Graduated Filters from Sean McCormack’s site. Sean has created a vast number of grads, both hard and soft, horizontal and vertical.

Adobe have released Camera Raw 5.4 to the Adobe Labs site.

This contains support for new cameras:

* Canon EOS 500D (EOS Rebel T1i)
* Epson R-D1x
* Hasselblad CF-22
* Hasselblad CF-22MS
* Hasselblad CF-39
* Hasselblad CF-39MS
* Hasselblad CFH-22
* Hasselblad CFH-39
* Hasselblad CFV503
* Hasselblad CWD
* Hasselblad H2D-22
* Hasselblad H2D-39
* Hasselblad H3D-22
* Hasselblad H3D-31
* Hasselblad H3D-39
* Hasselblad H3DII-22
* Hasselblad H3DII-31
* Hasselblad H3DII-39
* Hasselblad H3DII-39MS
* Hasselblad H3DII-50
* Kodak EasyShare Z980
* Nikon D5000
* Olympus E-450
* Olympus E-620
* Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1
* Sigma DP2

This release also includes new DNG Compatibility conversion options. These choices are explained on the Adobe Labs web site and help address the additional options available with an upcoming revision of the DNG Specification.

<via Tom Hogarty>

There must be something in the air! Sean McCormack is the latest developer to release a Plug-in for Lightroom. Release Forms allows you to tag an image with a Model Release or a Property Release.

Some new Lightroom plug-ins have been released which perform specific and useful functionality.

BeardyFolderSize by John Beardsworth simply tells you how big folders are, which is useful if you want to burn DVDs and need to know whether you have too many images in a folder or not.

PseudoRatings allows you to print star ratings in contact sheets

Find Missing Files checks whether images are available or not.

and André Messier has written Focal Extender, which allows you to add metadata about a Lens Extender and the effective focal length of the lens when using one.

Mr Plug-in, Jeffrey Friedl has produced two more for Lightroom. The first is Folder Watch for better auto-importing. The second is Megapixel Sort, to enable you to categorize and sort your images by the Megapixel size.

On of the most asked questions in the Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw world is about compatibility with new cameras.

New cameras are generally released every 3-4 months.Once they are out Adobe needs to profile the Raw files that the camera produces. This doesn’t take much time, but if there are a few cameras released in the same time period, then Adobe will bundle the release together. This creates a ‘panic gap’ – the time period between users buying the camera and the Raw file being supported by Adobe. Unfortunately, you just have to put up with it! Adobe rarely get advance models of the camera; they have to wait in line just as the normal buyer does!

Generally Adobe Camera Raw, the DNG Converter and Lightroom are released 3-4 times a year. A major release number is tied to a Photoshop version, so the current 5.x releases belong to Photoshop CS4 and recent Photoshop Elements versions.

If you are using an older version of Lightroom (a 1.x version) or Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3, you can’t use the latest Plug-in to provide Raw support for these newer cameras.

However, Adobe hasn’t just abandoned you. The answer for backwards compatibility is the DNG Converter. It is a free download from Adobe; by downloading the latest version you can convert your new camera’s Raw files into DNG and use these DNGs in older versions of Adobe software.

You don’t get the benefits that the new software can offer, but you can use and edit the files with your current software’s capabilities.

Sean McCormack has released LRB Portfolio 2.0, with a new website to boot.

Matt Dawson, who has previously given us the Export Backup Plug-in has now released Metadata Entry which aims to simplify common Metadata entry into Lightroom.

Martin Evening has updated his previous video on Greyscale Conversions to take account of Lightroom’s better noise reduction in version 2.

A new Plug-in, LR-Blog from Timothy Armes, designed to post images to Blogs that use the MetaWebLogs standard for upload.

[Hat tip: Lightroom News]