Lightroom 3 Beta Is Here!
Yes! It’s here! Head on over to Adobe Labs and download the Lightroom 3 Beta! Adobe continues its laudable practice of releasing Lightroom as a public beta to get important feedback from its users! Thanks Adobe!
First, a word of CAUTION. This is a true beta. DO NOT use this in production! Make copies of any images you intend to work on inside the beta. There are still known, and perhaps unknown, issues to be ironed out before Lightroom 3 is ready for production work.
Whew! Now that we have the warnings out of the way let’s dig in and see what’s new!
Watermarks
Finally! Useful watermarking comes to Lightroom. The new watermarking functionality let’s you use text or graphics based watermarks. You can control the size, position, opacity, color, and rotation. You can also save watermarks so you can choose which one to apply.
Watermarking is available in the Print and Web modules. You can also apply them during export.
Slideshow Movies
Lightroom 3 Beta adds the ability to create a movie in H.264 format. The movie will include any music you have chosen for your slideshow.
Print Packages
You are no longer tied to one image per page when laying out your custom print packages. Now you can use multiple images and different sizes on one page or across multiple pages.
New Import Dialogs
Getting your images into Lightroom 3 Beta is a whole new and improved process. There are now two different import dialogs: compact and full. The full dialog covers nearly all of the Lightroom interface and will show you where the images are coming from, what images are being imported and where the images are going. Add to these three main areas all of the expected frills such as keywords, metadata presets, backup copies, selection check-boxes, and the ability to save import presets and you have one powerful import tool!
A nice feature of the full dialog is the ability to zoom an image so you can examine it more closely before deciding to import.
The import presets become very useful as workflow enhancers. If you have regular sources of images that you regularly send to the same destination then you can set up the preset and call upon it in the compact mode.
The compact mode of the import dialog is much smaller and quicker.
Publish
This is a great new feature! Lightroom 3 Beta comes with a Publish connection to Flickr. More will be rolled out later (yes, Jeffrey Freidl is hard at work!)
Publish let’s you create a connection to an online site (or a folder on your drive). Images added to the publish collection are uploaded to the site. If you make any changes to an image it rejoins the “ready to publish” queue and will upload the changes.
But wait! There’s more! Call before..sorry I just got carried away! It’s not just a one way street. When comments are posted online they will download into Lightroom and appear with your images!
Stop back in a few days. I’ll be posting a short tutorial on using the Publish feature.
Some Develop Module Enhancements
Lots of tweaks here. Improvements have been made to the capture sharpening and color noise reduction algorithms.
The problem with the post-crop vignette has been solved by letting you choose whether to vignette using Color Priority or Highlight Priority. Some photographers didn’t like the unnatural look of just adding black or white to the edges and this addresses that.
Now I know you try your best to shoot so your images have as little noise as possible. But sometimes we yearn for the days when fast films had visible grain. Enter the Grain Tool! Now you can add as much grain as you like and adjust the size and roughness of that grain. Give your images some texture and edge!
Because so much has changed under the hood, Lightroom 3 Beta introduces the concept of Process Versions. Whenever major changes are made to the RAW processing features, a new Process Version is created. Now, instead of just updating your image automatically, you can choose which Process Version you want. No more mysteriously changing images!
Other Tweaks
There are so many things going on here and I’ve only scratched the surface!
A few simple changes such as the appearance of Collections in the Develop module makes getting to images much easier. Also, filters are now lockable. When you change from one collection to another you can lock the filter so it will apply wherever you go.
Well, this is getting to be a long winded post. I’ll be back with more about Lightroom 3 Beta.
Now It’s Your Turn
In order to make this a great release Adobe needs your feedback. Play around with the beta. Let them know what isn’t working or could work better. Join the conversation over at Adobe Labs and be part of making Lightroom the best it can be!
Additional Resources
Aside from Adobe Labs check out posts from these fine Lightroomers: Victoria Bampton, Ian Lyons, Jeffrey Friedl, John Beardsworth, Clicio Barroso (in Portuguese), Richard Earney, Seán McCormick, A.J. Wood, Lightroom News, and The Lightroom Journal.
Related posts:
- Publish Services Gets Some Attention in Beta 2
- Watermarks Take A Big Leap Forward
- Lightroom 3 Beta’s Publish Services – Part 1
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Lightroom 3, News, beta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
About the Author: Gene McCullagh
Contact Gene
Gene is an Adobe Community Professional and and Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop, and InDesign, and an avid Lightroom fan. He belongs to the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Gene also the Co-Founder, Manager and a frequent blogger for the Dallas Fort Worth Adobe User Group (DFWAUG).
In addition to running Lightroom Secrets, Gene also contributes to O'Reilly's media blog, moderates on the Adobe forums, and helps out on lightroomforums.net.
October 21st, 2009 at 11:21 pm
[...] Gene’s Lightroom Secrets http://lightroomsecrets.com/2009/10/lightroom-3-beta-is-here/ [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 am
[...] — Подробное описание в блоге Lightroom Journal. — Пост в блоге Lightroom Secrets с несколькими скриншотами. — Пост в блоге Скота [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:09 am
Looks prommising. Just a shame that they didn't incorporate yet the great feature picasa has namely face recocnition.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:48 am
[...] Friedl’s Blog (Plugins) Victoria Bampton – Lightroom Queen Gene McCullagh – Lightroom Secrets Melissa Gaul – Melissa’s Twitter Ian Lyons – Computer Darkroom John Beardsworth [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:05 am
If anyone knows how to make multiple pictures on the Lightroom 3…it is really important for me…I need to do a lot of crops of one images and for some reason I cant find how to do it
Thanks everyone
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:58 am
[...] features such as the Publish Services & Watermarking for improved workflows. You can check out Gene McCullagh’s blog for a quick summary of features or watch some videos over at NAPP (Nation Association of Photoshop [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:41 am
[...] Friedl’s Blog (Plugins) Victoria Bampton – Lightroom Queen Gene McCullagh – Lightroom Secrets Melissa Gaul – Melissa’s Twitter Ian Lyons – Computer Darkroom John Beardsworth [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
The easiest way is to create virtual copies. You can then crop each of them differently.
Select the image in the Grid, then either press Control ' (or Command ' on a Mac) or go up to the Photo menu and choose Create Virtual Copy. You can make as many as you like.
October 22nd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
[...] Gene McCullagh na úžasném webu Lightroom Secrets http://lightroomsecrets.com/2009/10/lightroom-3-beta-is-here/ [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
[...] Highlights of the release [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
[...] – Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog (Plugins)Victoria Bampton – Lightroom QueenGene McCullagh – Lightroom SecretsMelissa Gaul – Melissa’s TwitterIan Lyons – Computer DarkroomJohn Beardsworth [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:26 pm
[...] Lightroom Secrets [...]
October 26th, 2009 at 4:16 am
I assumed that the first connection will be Picasa, but no. I missed it.
October 26th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
when I watch the RAM usage after editing a few picture on MAC, it uses all free RAM and slows severely. This also happens in LR2. I am running Snow leopard. I was hoping for better memory management in LR3.
October 27th, 2009 at 5:21 am
Interesting. What kinds of edits are you doing? I am also running LR3 on Snow Leopard and am seeing vastly improved memory management over LR2. LR2 did appear to leak memory severely the more you edited. I'm not seeing that at all in LR3.
I encourage you to give that feedback to Adobe. I know the team is hard at work under the hood right now and feedback can have a much greater impact during this beta period.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:17 am
[...] Gene McCullagh http://lightroomsecrets.com/2009/10/lightroom-3-beta-is-here/ [...]
October 31st, 2009 at 7:45 pm
right click on image and click create virtual copy
November 10th, 2009 at 7:21 am
There are two things missing in the new release which I would have liked to have seen.
1. In the export properties, I would have liked to have seen “Save as a PDF”, as a lot of publishers in th UK still ask for these.
2. The perspective ability from the transform in Photoshop to help my workflow on some of the architectual shots I do.
What do you think?
November 10th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
PDF would be a useful export format. It's worth suggesting to the team. You can do that at https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?...
As for perspective correction let's see what happens. This is only the Beta and if we've learned anything from the previous two public betas, there are always some features that show up in the final release that weren't previewed in the beta. Maybe perspective correction will be one.
November 14th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
[...] Friedl’s Blog (Plugins) Victoria Bampton – Lightroom Queen Gene McCullagh – Lightroom Secrets Melissa Gaul – Melissa’s Twitter Ian Lyons – Computer Darkroom John Beardsworth [...]
November 15th, 2009 at 3:09 am
i'm having the same problem as srinivaskjanardan. on avg it's using 1.25 to 1.39 GB of Real RAM and 2-4 GB of virtual RAM
November 15th, 2009 at 6:16 am
Hi Maruf! AS I said I am not seeing this on either of my Macs. There's still time to report it to the development team though. Let them know at http://forums.adobe.com/community/labs/lightroom3
November 25th, 2009 at 10:35 am
It would be great to see a feature for export that allowed full control over the metadata contained within the exported files, including individual selection of keywords.
I add keywords to my files that have personal relevance to me, including client or personal names, and workflow words. I don't want these in images I send to stock or other such places, however at the moment don't know a way of dealing with this other than individualy editing files.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
I'm unable to do a 2-way sync with my flickr account. ie. when I delete my pics on flicr/facebook they still show in the lighroom set/album. any advice?
November 25th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
LR controls the connection. If you want to delete it from Flickr and LR is tracking it, you need to delete it from the feed in LR NOT in Flickr. Only the comments are 2-way.
November 25th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Unfortunately a keyword is a keyword. Individual edits are the only way. You might consider incorporating the client/workflow terms into the filename template you use. Then you could easily rename on export to remove this data and leave the keywords alone.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
[...] Gene McCullagh provides http://lightroomsecrets.com/2009/10/lightroom-3-beta-is-here/ [...]
December 25th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Have you tried the 'Create Virtual Copy' function? In Develop mode, just right click the image and create a virtual copy.
December 30th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Will the beta 3 virsion contain all the Lr2 functionality?
March 15th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
I have also found LR3b almost useless on Snow Leopard on my older MBP 2.13 C2D. I love the processing, especially the noise reduction for Mark IV files!
April 12th, 2010 at 11:27 am
Is it possible to correct distortion or like using the transform in PS to correct bldg distortion
April 12th, 2010 at 11:28 am
does the new beta include distortion similar to the PS transform correction?
April 12th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Not directly in LR. You still need to go to PS.
April 12th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
No.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Hi:
Is there anyway to export to the parent folder instead of the folder containing the pictures. Example, you are in folder A with 50 DNGs in a folder called DNG FOLDER. I want to export the DNG to jpg and add to the library in a folder called JPG FOLDER that resides in folder A rather than inside DNG Folder.
May 10th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Hi gorji!
Yes. When you are setting up the export you can choose where the exported files will go. Just point them to the JPG FOLDER in folder A.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:32 am
I apologize for my post. I should have been clearer. Gene I know what you are talking about. I should have mentioned that I would like a default set available instead of opening the finder and finding the appropriate folder for the export. I would love to see an additional “parent folder” in addition to the “same folder as original” option.
May 11th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Ah! Well you can already accomplish this by setting up Publish Services to your hard drives. If you have several places you like to send jpegs to set up a publish service for each location. Then just drag and drop your images to that service and press publish. You'll get the conversion you've set up and all the results will go to the folder you targeted.
Not exactly what you are talking about but a great time saver if you have regular export workflows.
May 13th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
THANK YOU!!!!!
June 12th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
I’m using it too right now, and, for one reason or another, when I updated my LR3 catalog, all of the settings I had made to older pictures went completely wrong,with lots and lots of blownout parts as a result. I don’t know if thi’ll happen to anyone else, but be careful and back up please. Mark designer of hemorrhoids treatment team.
June 12th, 2010 at 7:05 am
I’m using it too right now, and, for one reason or another, when I updated my LR3 catalog, all of the settings I had made to older pictures went completely wrong,with lots and lots of blownout parts as a result. I don’t know if thi’ll happen to anyone else, but be careful and back up please. Mark designer of hemorrhoids treatment team.
August 4th, 2010 at 7:39 am
This is exciting, post more often!
I must say great website. I have just googled it nice info out there.
August 4th, 2010 at 7:39 am
This is exciting, post more often!
I must say great website. I have just googled it nice info out there.