Archive for March, 2010
Since the beginning of Lightroom we’ve wanted a watermarking capability that was more powerful and more flexible than the anemic watermark of Lightroom 1.x or Lightroom 2.x. We had some creative possibilities with the identity plate feature but even that was limited and quirky.
With the release of Lightroom 3 Beta 1 we saw the beginning of a new watermarking feature. A welcome change but still not much better. Now, Lightroom 3 Beta 2 bring the watermark a long way! There is still some way to go but this new feature is great.
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Tired of only having a parametric curve at your disposal? Good news! Lightroom 3 Beta 2 introduces a point curve to the Develop module! That is fantastic news! Many users asked for point curve capabilities in Lightroom and Adobe has delivered.
Lightroom’s parametric curve has some great features. I like the visual feedback it gives for the logical limits of each tonal range (Highlights, Lights, Darks, and Shadows). While it has many uses and some strong points it does limit your ability to make adjustments by forcing you to stay within the boundaries of each tonal range. That’s where a true point curve shines! It gives you the creative freedom to adjust at will and to any extent your vision requires.
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A few weeks ago I posted my top list of items I’d like to see in Lightroom 4.
The recent release of Lightroom 3′s second public beta made one of those items – tethering – a reality! Read on for more on this exciting new feature.
About Tethering
Tethered shooting allows you to connect a USB cable from your camera to your laptop and, while shooting, have the images show up instantly on the computer. More advanced tethered programs add features like seeing the camera settings (f stop, shutter speed, etc.) in the software, see a live view on the screen of what the camera is seeing and the ability to trigger the camera from the software.
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It’s here! Adobe released Lightroom 3 Beta 2 earlier and there are some nice goodies to play with in Beta 2. Grab it from Adobe Labs now! And if history teaches us anything, Adobe is saving a few tricks up their sleeves for the final release of Lightroom 3. There’s still no official information regarding the release date for the final version or what the eventual pricing might be. But in the meantime we have new features to try out.
One place to watch and get up to date Lightroom information is over on the Lightroom Journal Blog published by the Lightroom team. Stop by for news.
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With Lightroom 3 Beta already out, we’ve seen a number of great new features including better import/export, improved noise reduction, print and slideshow coolness and more.
With a great feature base in place, there’s certainly always room for improvement, though. The following are a few features I would like to see in future versions of Lightroom.
Tethering
Tethered shooting allows you to connect a USB cable from your camera to your laptop and, while shooting, have the images show up instantly on the computer.
Lightroom sort of supports this today using watched folders. It does require, though, other software to transfer the pictures from the camera to the computer. I’d really like to see all this integrated into Lightroom as one full package.
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Aside from Halloween shots those glowing red eyes in images don’t belong. Of course, the best way to deal with red-eye is to avoid it altogether. So how does it happen?
When the light from your flash enters your subject’s eyes it bounces back from the retina. The retina is rich with blood vessels and colors the returning light red. If your flash is close to the lens (as are many on camera flashes) that light bounces right back into the lens and the eyes appear red. The farther away from the lens you move your flash the more you decrease the chance of red-eye. So the best way to fix red-eye is to get your flash off of your camera. I think more people are beginning to realize this.
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