What is it about the last couple of weeks? OK, I got good news about the lump - it is edible - but then my internet connection fails, another chunk of time goes down the drain, and I'm forced to go down to the pub and use its wifi…. It does 2 of its own beers and right now the whole place smells of brewing. Oh well, maybe it's not so bad to lose my home internet.

Anyway, with Lightroom 2 out in beta, I thought I'd make a small - pint-sized - post about an easily-overlooked but nice little change to Clarity in Lightroom 2 Beta. You can still use Clarity as before to add punch to the picture by dragging this slider to the right, but you can now drag the slider to the left too. These minus values make the image softer, while preserving edge detail. Combine this effect with the new Post Crop setting in Vignettes - increasing the vignetting - and you can produce some soft, romantic looks.

If you like the effect, here's my soft vignette template for LR2.