Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0: 64-bit Power Under Windows And OS X
San Jose (CA) - Adobe today announced Lightroom 2.0, Adobe’s first native 64-bit application using OS X Cocoa APIs. The new version of the workflow and photo management software, is first out of the gate in this discipline, ahead of Aperture, Apple’s own photography post-production application that remains at 32-bit for now.
Lightroom 2.0 delivers the widely expected 64-bit support for those who run the 64-bit version of Windows Vista or OS X Leopard (64-bit out-of-the box). This means that the application can address more than 4 GB of RAM to enable more image data to reside in the memory, which should result in a noticeable performance gains as less swapping from and to the slower hard drive is required.
Besides the arrival of 64-bit, other new features include support for multiple monitors and configurable image workflow and workspace across them, a new plug-in architecture that extends out-of-the box functionality with specialized third-party plug-ins, more precise brush placement during 
photo enhancement and a Library feature to organize large images across multiple removable media with an ability to work with the high-resolution previews even when the original master file is offline.
Printing is also enhanced with new algorithms that optimize images for screen display or print, resulting in crisper images and optimized ink usage. Adobe said that it is now possible to automatically arrange several images of multiple sizes on one or more pages. New support for the RAW format, currently in beta, allows photographers to create their own, highly customized camera profiles. Adobe claims that the default camera profiles that come with Lightroom "closely emulate the visual looks that photographers are used to seeing from their favorite camera.
Lightroom 2.0 is priced at $299 for the full version and at $99 for the upgrade
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It's always nice to see 64-bit software coming to market to help push 64 bit computing. 64-bits are noticeably faster than 32, and more secure. We've had x86/x64 processors for years now and still haven't made the switch. MS is partly to blame for that. Hopefully Windows 7 will be all 64. MS is afraid of losing customers, but going to 64 bit and releasing a limited OS to developers a year or two ahead of time is a great strategy that should have been implemented a long time ago. There's a reason they have MSDN.
It's always nice to see 64-bit software coming to market to help push 64 bit computing. 64-bits are noticeably faster than 32, and more secure. We've had x86/x64 processors for years now and still haven't made the switch. MS is partly to blame for that. Hopefully Windows 7 will be all 64. MS is afraid of losing customers, but going to 64 bit and releasing a limited OS to developers a year or two ahead of time is a great strategy that should have been implemented a long time ago. There's a reason they have MSDN.
MS could have made the OS more transparent to 64 bit rather than having separate 32 and 64 bit versions. Like Apple did with OS X. The Windows installer should just detect whether the CPU is 64 or 32 bit and installed the appropriate components. Heck OS X not only automatically installs appropriate 64/32 bit support but also x86 or PPC support. While MS whom is supposed to have so much experience with so many various hardware types could not even make an OS that could install appropriately between 64 and 32 bit.
Umm, no it shouldn't. What it should do is it should have instructions detailing to the end-user which version they will likely want to install. Which version you want to run depends on your software and applications, not your hardware.
The majority of people are using 32-bit software. In fact, there are very few mainstream applications that run in 64-bit mode. XP Pro x64 uses a 32-bit emulator of sorts. It has two registries, one for x86 and for x64.
You were right when you said they need an OS that can run both. They have that. It's XP x64, the only problem is that they never released it mainstream because of the conflicts. Not all 32-bit apps will run on it, and hardware/driver support was pretty horrible on release (and still is a bit lacking).
What they should have done is marketed the switch to 64-bit in the media, i.e. television. Make the masses of home users excited about 64-bit computing with a commercial. Announce what it does with security, state its speed increase, and the fact that it lets you use up to 16GBs of ram and how that can be of benefit. If home users use it, then businesses would surely use it because of the benefits stated. The switch to Vista could have been delayed another half a year and been 64-bit only, giving extra time to hardware vendors to write new drivers.
I misspoke. It depends on both your hardware (because obviously you need to have the right hardware to run x64), AND your software. If you don't have 32-bit applications and you want a lot of ram or more speed or better security, or bragging rights in benchmarks: run x64.