Archive for the ‘beta’ Category
There was a time when film grain was a problem for some photographers. That concern translated into a concern with digital noise. Many words have been written on the techniques in many applications to remove or lessen digital noise or grain in modern images. Some even seek to find ways to remove the grain from old film photographs.
Despite all of this, grain has its place in modern digital photography. Grain now brings with it the charm and nostalgia of bygone film days. When compositing images, grain can be the unifying effect bringing different images from different times together for a great composite. Adding grain to a black and white or sepia image can add a pleasing artistic texture to the work. Whatever the reason, many photographers add grain to an image. Sometimes after working diligently to remove digital noise! But, then, grain isn’t noise.
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Since Publish Services debuted in Lightroom 3 Beta 1, Adobe has adjusted some of the issues identified in the first beta. For a full description of what Publish services can do I refer you to my two previous articles Lightroom 3 Beta’s Publish Services – Part 1 and Lightroom 3 Beta’s Publish Services – Part 2.
The two biggest (and welcome) adjustments deal with how the Flickr Publish Service works. Previously, users who only had a free Flickr account had problems if a published image was deleted from the photostream in Lightroom or modified in any way, Lightroom couldn’t deal with the changing the image up on Flickr or removing the images from the Re-Publish or Deleted sections.
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Lightroom 3 Beta 2′s recent release brought with it a host of new features. In addition to tethering, its greatly improved noise reduction is at the top of my improved feature list.
Noise reduction is the focus of both hardware and software these days. Cameras like the Nikon D3, the Canon 5d Mark II or 1D Mark IV and others are touting their improved low noise handling.
While the cameras are improving, many still find themselves needing to reduce photo noise. In the past, this was kept to meager sliders in Lightroom, or sending photos to Photoshop in conjunction with other plugins like Noise Ninja.
Lightroom 3 Beta 2 changes all that – I now find that I can perform 95% of my noise reduction directly in Lightroom at or above the quality of previous plugins and tools. Talk about a productivity improvement!!
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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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Adobe today launched the help system for Lightroom 3 Beta! You can access it by pressing F1 while in Lightroom 3 Beta or by pointing your browser at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/3.0/Using/index.html . Commenting will be enabled shortly so get ready! for more details visit the article on Phosphors, the blog from the Photoshop, Lightroom, and Bridge teams!
In Part 1 we examined how to use Publish Services to control target folders on the hard drive using the Hard Drive Publish Connection.
There’s another Publish Service that comes with Lightroom 3 Beta. The Flickr Publish Service allows us to connect Lightroom to a Flickr account (or multiple Flickr accounts) and manage our photostream from within Lightroom. However, there are some pitfalls to watch out for. Remember, this is beta software, so as you come across issues or areas that can be improved please join the conversation over at the Adobe Forums and tell the Lightroom team about it. You can help make this a great release!
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