Adobe Lightroom 3 Public Beta

I did not see a thread on it so wanted to share with those that did not know that Adobe has a open public beta of the new Lightroom 3 going on.

Takes 60 seconds to register and download it and its a full version until the Beta expires when the retail product comes out.

Get it HERE

I have never used lightroom I have always done all my adjustments in photoshop, but I hear over and over that lightroom is the way to go for productivity though most agree that photoshop has had more powerful filters than lightroom (2) but it seems many of the filters have been vastly improved in lightroom 3.

Protip from me, dont forget about Adobe Camera Raw! I just recently found out you can open tiff/jgeg images and not just RAW images with it and it has a ton of very great adjustments, including the vast majority of what Lightroom has.

Id love to hear feedback from other users about how you feel about the importance of lightroom as compared to photoshop and camera raw.

 

It is good, I want to buy it. I don't use Photoshop or Camera Raw (use Corel PSP X1 and Picasa). I really like how it can fix noise in photos, I have tried it on many photos and it works great! Once I upgrade my camera (from current Panasonic ZS3 to GF2) I am sure it will be even more useful.

 

Noise reduction is supposed to be a huge improvement on this version.

I found this article on it last night: http://modifiedphoto.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/lightroom-3-beta-2-noise-reduction-test/

Also with a educational discount LR3 is only $99.00 vs the $300 so that is alot easier to take down.

Im not so sure I will get it, most of my pictures come off my camera the way I want them. I do not ever do any mass adjustments to pictures and I think thats lightrooms speciality. I usually just take a handfull of pictures and may edit them for print/web and I can do those adjustments in photoshop or ACR.

 

Only $100? Sold!

 

Camera RAW has been around before too - I just use Adobe Bridge... then edit my images with Camera RAW only (too lazy to properly learn Photoshop... )

Looking at that thread you linked, I'm not sure I like the noise reduction feature...

Also - is camera RAW more powerful than Lightroom? Just from those screenshots it looks like this.

I did a personal comparison of ISO 25600 on a 5D MK II once - just out of curiosity - actual "RAW image" - Digital Photo Professional (Canon) and Camera Raw 5.x (not sure, might be 5.7) - I think Camera RAW was best and DPP is pretty close.

So personally I don't need lightroom...

 

Is ACR more powerful than LR?

I have to say its a mixed bag. The newer version of ACR have added a ton of stuff that I think actually came from LR.

I think overall LR is going to have more that it can do from a general photo adjustments standpoint and a few extra things it can do for organization wich is a big deal for somebody that takes a lot of photos.

However the Bridge + ACR combo is a very valid alternative for LR I think.

 

So I did more poking around today.

While not an extremely educated conclusion since I am new to Lr I feel like this.

Lr IS ACR but they have different workflows.

I feel if your going to work with photoshop than using Adobe Bridge in conjunction with Adobe Camera Raw + Photoshop is the best way to go. As Bridge seamlessly links ACR to Photoshop making it easy to adjust things send them back and forth, keep originals over write originals.

There is a lot of power there.

Lr however seems be be more of a stand alone program. You cant see LR adjustments in Bridge, you have to open them with LR. If you want to have any tangable files with adjustments you have to export the image. I also dont like how you need to import files rather than just browse for them like you can with Bridge.

There is an "open in photshop" option hidden away in there so it does link to photoshop but here is the funny thing. It said I need ACR 5.7 to import the file into photoshop with the changes. So that means its actually using ACR to do the LR adjustments. Also there is no version 5.7 currently the update only lets me get 5.6 so that means the Beta of LR is using a newer engine that will probably also be present in ACR 5.7 when it comes out.

I have to say for the editing I find ACR to be easier to use, It has a more photoship like interface that I am familiar with.

I was able to get almost identical results with a few photos between the two programs, though my LR files seem to have come out looking a tad better first time, for ACR I had to go back and tweak it some to try to mimic the LR adjustments.

This is probably because LR is doing more "work for you" with simple adjustments while ACR is very hands on requiring you to tweak more stuff individually.

Example: I had this photo of me on my mountian bike on a trail.

In LR from top to bottom I
added +30 to the color temp as my white balance was a tad off
added +5 to recovery just a subtle change for more detail
added +5 to fill light to lighten it up a tad
added +40 to contrast to make the image pop and give it more tone
added +20 to vibrance to make the greens more green

Thats all I did and it gave me amazing results.

I made similar changes in ACR and it just did not look as good, it had a "haze" to the image I had to figure out how to get rid of.

It involved the same adjustments as above but also had to do some black level tweaking and use a different contrast setting.

Just a little bit of relivent information here in this short thread: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=160351

Seems that the pro's say same as I concluded that ACR = LR they use the excact same processing engine. Its just the interface that is different.

LR is more of an all in one tool or organizing, adjusting, printing

the ACR + Bridge combo is more hands on but I feel gives me more flexibility since I am a heavy PS user.

 

Wow - that's a great analysis ViciousXUMSC - many thanks, I'm sure many more people will find it very informative

Thanks.

(+ rep - it must have cost you a lot of time)