In a long PhotoshopNews post Jeff Schewe describes the new controls available in Adobe Camera Raw 4.1. It's a nice appetizer for what's going to be in Lightroom 1.1.

I'm on the fence about the value of the Clarity slider, a wide area sharpening contrast adjustment. Apart from preferring the original name, “Punch”, I suspect it's going to be almost as overused as Fill Light or Photoshop's Shadow/Highlight. We'll see.

For me the most interesting features are the much-improved sharpening controls which, once they're in Lightroom, will further reduce the need to take pictures through Photoshop. I prefer his explanation here:

Detail
Adjusts how much high-frequency information is sharpened in the image and how much the sharpening process emphasizes edges. Lower settings primarily sharpen edges to remove blurring. Higher values are useful for making the textures in the image more pronounced.

Masking
Controls an edge mask. With a setting of zero, everything in the image receives the same amount of sharpening. With a setting of 100, sharpening is mostly restricted to those areas near the strongest edges. Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while dragging this slider to see the areas to be sharpened (white) versus the areas masked out (black).