In the previous blogpost, I promised that the next post would be in English. And boy, is it an important post! Adobe have just released a second beta of Lightroom 3, adequately called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta 2 ?.
The beta is available at Adobe Labs.
Before we get into what’s new in this new beta, some technical stuff: you should of course check out the release notes, but here’s the most important things
- as it is meant for testing LR3B2 will only upgrade existing LR3Beta Catalogs, not your current LR2 or LR1 Catalogs. The final version will of course upgrade those older catalogs as well.
- it’s a beta: while data loss is not expected, you should always work on duplicates of your files. There is, for example, this known bug (exporting jpgs to jpgs with ‘overwrite original’ checked results in a loss of the original file, so beware of that!)
- Installing LR3B2 will not overwrite your existing LR2 or LR1 installation
- You don’t need a serial number to use the beta. In fact, even if you don’t own LR1 or LR2, you can still use LR3B2. Of course, after LR3 ships, the beta program will be ended.
Some known issues:
- iDVD is unable to burn or encode videos created by the Slideshow module video export
- Exported H.264 Slideshow video playback on Windows XP and Windows Vista is not guaranteed to
- work properly with the default media players available on those operating systems. You should download Adobe Media Player for full compatibility: http://www.adobe.com/products/mediaplayer/
- Sometimes tethered capture (yes, Lightroom now supports native tethered capture for selected Nikon and Canon cameras!) on the Windows platform with the Canon 1D Mark III camera may stop working. If so, please try turning the camera off then on again or disconnect and reconnect the USB cable.
Supported File Formats:
- JPEG
- TIFF (8 bit, 16 bit)
- PSD (8 bit, 16 bit)
- DNG
- Raw (Please visit http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html for a full list of raw file support.
- As for as supported cameras are concerned: file support for Lightroom 3 beta 2, aligns with Lightroom 2.6 and Camera Raw 5.6 with the following exceptions. The following preliminary support has been added to Lightroom 3 beta 2:
- Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i / Kiss X4 Digital)
- Olympus E-PL1
- Panasonic G2
- Panasonic G10
- Sony Alpha 450 (A450)
- Important File Format Support Exceptions (Formats not supported):
- PSD files saved without a composite image. (Saved without “Maximize Compatibility” setting)
- Files with dimensions greater than 65,000 pixels per side
New in Lightroom 3 beta 2
- Improved stability and speed
- Native tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon DSLR cameras. This is a great new feature! At present, the following cameras are supported:
- Canon
- EOS 1Ds Mark II*
- EOS 1D Mark III
- EOS 1Ds Mark III
- EOS 1D Mark IV
- EOS 5D*
- EOS 5D Mark II
- EOS 40D
- EOS 450D (Digital Rebel XSi/EOS Kiss X2)
- EOS 500D (Digital Rebel T1i/EOS Kiss X3 Digital)
- EOS 7D
- EOS 1000D (Digital Rebel XS/EOS Kiss F)
- Nikon
- D3
- D3X
- D3s
- D300
- D300s
- D5000
- D700
- D90
- Canon
*Tethered support is not available on Windows 64-bit Systems for these cameras.
- Luminance Noise Reduction
The outstanding colour noise reduction is now being joined by Luminance noise reduction so you are now able to completely address noisy pictures in Lightroom. The improvements in NR are strong: if you have a high ISO picture that you could not ‘denoise’ well enough with LR2, I’d advise you to give it a try (on a copy, remember this is beta software!) with LR3 and you may very well find you don’t need special noise reduction plugins anymore.
- Import videos:
Lightroom now lets you download video files that you took with your DSLR into the Catalog. Although at present, you can only playback those files (there’s no editing possibilities) it’s still a nice feature because it lets you empty your media cards in one go (before, you had to import your photos into Lightroom and then copy any video you shot using Finder or Explorer, running the risk of forgetting there was video on your card). You can tag, rate and filter video content, put video files in collections or smart collections and use the video filter to quickly show only your video files.
- Some import improvements:
- You can now browse folders even better by double-clicking or ‘docking’ a folder to minimize the hierarchy view.
- You can now also use the Import Loupe feature when importing from cards
- Point Curve
Lightroom now supports a Point Curve, which lets you control contrast much more drastically than the standard Lightroom Tone Curve. Especially Photoshop users will appreciate this possibility, as the new Lightroom Point Curve is more similar to Photoshops Curve. The new Point Curve allows for effects such as solarisation.
- Crop Orientation
Up to now, changing the crop orientation (e.g. making a portrait crop of a landscape oriented image) was kind of a top secret Lightroom trick (and not easily explained in words). Now you can just tap the X-key to change the crop orientation.
- Process Version.
Since there were a lot of enhancements made to the camera raw engine, there’s a new process version. In order to take advantage of the latest and greatest in raw conversion, you have to switch to the latest Process Version. For more on PV, check out this previous blogpost.
Process Versions have been renamed into Process Version 2003 and Process Version 2010.
- Watermarking
Watermarking, a very needed addition introduced in LR3B1, is further improved with, amongst others, shadow options for text (Mac only, as of now).
Watermarking is now also an option in Slideshow module, which is nice if you want to export your slideshows but protect your pictures while doing so.
As you see, there’s quite a lot of exciting new features compared to Lightroom 2 or even the ‘old’ Lightroom 3 beta. Adobe is interested in your opinion, so please join the discussion at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/ and remember Lightroom Rule Number 5!
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