Lightroom 3 Public Beta now available!

Great news for all you Lightroom fans out there: Adobe has just put the Beta version for Lightroom 3 available for download on Adobe Labs. In this (extra-long) blogpost, I will guide you to the most important new features of this public Beta.

The fine print

But before getting to the fun part (What are the exciting new goodies?), this caveat: please note the following:

• This public Beta (in the rest of this article referred to as LR3B) is meant for testing and feedback purposes. For example,  LR3B will not allow you to upgrade an existing LR1 or LR2 catalog (the final shipped version of LR3 of course will). Also, develop settings applied in LR3B are not guaranteed to transfer correctly to the final LR3 version.
• You can install LR3B alongside your working copy of LR2 or LR1
• Although data loss is not expected, it’s always advisable to work on duplicates of files that are securely backed up.
• Minimum system requirements
  • Windows
    • Intel® Pentium® 4 processor or equivalent
    • Microsoft® Windows® 7, Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (certified for 32-bit and 64-bit editions), or Windows XP with Service Pack 3
    • 2GB of RAM
    • 1GB of available hard-disk space
    • 1,024×768 display
    • CD-ROM drive
  • Macintosh
    • Intel based processor
    • Mac OS X v10.5 or 10.6
    • 2GB of RAM
    • 1GB of available hard-disk space
    • 1,024×768 display
    • CD-ROM drive
• Installation of LR3B: no serial numbers required for this Beta, so anyone can download and work with the program, for the duration of the Beta period (please note though that the Beta version will expire some (not yet disclosed) time after LR3 officially ships). You won’t get to keep using the software for free
  • Mac
    1. Download Lightroom 3 beta from labs.adobe.com
    2. Unzip the download then open the disk image and double-click the Lightroom Beta 3 package in the resulting window then follow the on-screen instructions
  • Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
    1. Download Lightroom 3 beta from labs.adobe.com
    2. Unzip the download then double-click the Lightroom Beta 3 installer then follow the on-screen instructions

As this is Beta software, there are a number of known bugs and issues. The Program Notes list those. If you encounter a problem, please refer to the bugs listed in the Program Notes. Your bug may be a known problem.

So, what’s new?

You probably skipped the previous paragraph and headed straight here, didn’t you? Well, I won’t keep you waiting. This release had two main features in mind: Performance (to help photographers cope with increasingly large catalogs, filled with increasingly bigger files) and Image Quality. So, LR3 is all about the two most fundamental parts of the software. Managing your pictures and developing them in the best possible way. To that effect, the raw processing engine received a big overhaul, allowing for better sharpening and noise reduction results. Try it yourself!

Library Module and Import

• New import dialog

If you’re one of those users that never really seemed to be able to import their files to the location they wanted, you’ll love the new Import Dialog Box: not only does it look an afwul lot nicer, it also unequivocally shows you where your imported pictures will wind up. Of course, you still have the possibility of working with renaming presets and the like.

• Publish Services

Think of Publish Collections as a sort of interactive Export to Flickr. If you have a Flickr account (some features will only work with Pro Accounts), you can automatically have your pictures uploaded to your Flickr Photostream. You could already do so with the Flickr Export Plugin, but Publish Collections go way further: you can make Smart Publish Collections (just like Smart Collections) and if you rework some of your images, you can choose to upload the reworked images. Lightroom keeps track of which images need to be re-uploaded and which not. You can even ‘download’ Flickr Visitor Comments to your images in Lightroom. iPhone users will love the fact that you can also make Publish Collections that publish images to their iPhone sync folder with drag and drop simplicity. If you’re one of those photographers that has a digital portfolio on his iPhone, you’ll love this feature!

• Backup has moved!

As per many users’ request, the backup procedure has now been moved to the point where you quit Lightroom. You can now also choose to Optimize your Catalog from the dialog box.

Develop Module

• Sharpening and Noise Reduction

Sharpening and noise reduction have been totally reworked. For the time being, Luminance Noise Reduction is disabled in the Beta (but will of course be enabled once the full version ships).

• New Grain rendering engine.

Some want less noise, some want more. Want to give your images a cool, old-school film look with lots of grain? You can now do so with the new grain engine. Gone are the days that you had to export a file to Photoshop just to add a little grain layer.

• New Post-Crop Vignette

Vignettes are incredibly popular (IMHO a little too popular) in Lightroom. In LR1, photographers used the Lens Correction tool to give their images a vignette. The problem was however that, if you cropped your image (especially if you cropped it in a non-centered way), your vignette did not follow your crop. To correct for this, LR2 introduced the Post-Crop Vignette, but I (and according to the user forums, I was far from being alone) never really liked the quite artificial look of the Post Crop Vignette. Enter LR3B, where the rendering engine of the post-crop vignette has been reworked to give a more natural look. You even get to choose between two modes: Color Priority and Highlight Priority.

• Process Version

Attention everybody, this is an important, albeit technical one! Since there are quite a number of elements (demosaicing, sharpening, noise reduction, post-crop vignette) that have been significantly changed with this Beta release, since the Camera Raw plug-in was introducted in 2003, LR3 now uses the concept of ‘process version’. This process version specifies which version of certain Camera Raw image processing elements should be used when rendering and editing files. Think of it this way: suppose you have already worked on a picture and applied noise reduction to it in LR2. Now suppose, once LR3 ships, that you upgrade your LR2 Catalog (remember, LR3B won’t allow you to do this). The noise reduction engine has been changed considerably and the same absolute value of a slider (e.g. 25) can have a totally different effect on your picture. Without the concept of a ‘process version’, importing the picture into LR3 would simply apply the absolute amount (25) of the NEW denoising engine, which might be too much or too little, but certainly different than what you had decided to be correct while working in LR2. Hence the concept of process versions. By default, LR3 will leave previously processed images just as they were (which might be fine enough for you), but if you want to take advantage of the latest processing technology (and thus prepare your images for the future), you’ll have to update to the current process version. You can update to the latest process version by selecting the notification triangle that includes an exclamation point above the left hand side of the histogram, or from the new Settings -> Process Version file menu available in the Develop module.  By default, all new files in LR3B will receive the latest process version. This is actually the best possible compromise: for new pictures that you import into your LR3 Catalog, you will get to develop them with the ‘latest, greatest’ state of the art raw processing engine, while the older ones, that you have so carefully tweaked will be left untouched (unless you want to update them to the new ‘process version’, in which case you will probably have to tweak some sliders to get them looking like they were. My advice would be to only do so for very important pictures (or pictures that were problematic and where the tools that are now improved failed to do a decent job). I know I would certainly not want to re-process my entire old catalog, but maybe I’ll take a look at what LR3 does to my 6400 ISO pictures…

• Collections now also available in Develop

In my Lightroom Workshops, I always stress the importance of working with Collections. The fact that the left pane in Lightrooms Develop Module now incorporates a Collections Panel, only makes me feel stronger about this point. One of the grieves of users is that they have to switch too much between Develop and Library. Well, if you’re using Collections, you will have to do a lot less so!

Slideshow Module

• Slideshow Export

You can still export your slideshows as JPG’s or PDF, but a cool new feature is the ability to export your slideshow, and the accompanying music, to video, using the popular H.264 format! I can already see some wedding and senior portraits photographers very happy with this one! The music will even fade out automatically. There’s one downside, however: us Mac users no longer have the ability to select an iTunes playlist as a soundtrack. You can only select one song (of course, you can mix multiple songs into one longer soundtrack using third party software). Too bad…

Print Module

• Custom Print Package

A lot of people (including me) had hoped that LR3 would feature some kind of book layout facility, like Aperture does. Well, the new Custom Print Package is a nice step in this direction, but we’re not yet making photo albums straight out of Lightroom. Custom Print Package combines features of Lightroom’s two other packages: Contact Sheet/Grid and Picture Package. The first allowed to print different photos, but all had to fit within the same bounding box. The second allowed to print different sizes, but of the same picture. You might have guessed it: the third actually allows to print different sizes of different pictures. You might use this as a starting off point for creating page layouts for albums, and then printing  those to JPG in order to finalize your layout in Photoshop.

• Background Color

A small but helpful feature is that you can now change the background color of a page. In LR2, you had to use all kinds of bizarre and devious techniques (making a black file in Photoshop and using it as an Identity Plate, below your pictures). So, no more black magic needed!

New and available in Print Module, some Web Templates and Export: Watermarking

LR2 lacked a good watermarking tool, especially for watermarking pictures before putting them on the internet (eg via the Web Module). The new watermarking tool (Lightroom => Edit Watermarks for Mac or Edit => Watermarks for Windows) allows you to watermark your pictures more extensively before putting them online. For almost endless watermarking versatility, you’re still better off with a plugin like LR2/Mogrify, though.

Some other things that have improved or changed.

Library & Import

• A volume can be ejected or un-mounted from your system directly from the volume browser in the Library module.
• Collections can be created directly within a collection set by right-clicking on the collection set
• Images can be sorted by aspect ratio
• The name of a collection is displayed when an image is added to a target collection
• Erasing with the spray paint tool now requires the use of the Alt key
• Select a folder in the Library module and choose a new option “Import to here” to launch the import dialog with that folder preselected as the destination
• The import dialog provides source folder and destination volume capacity information
• The option to include items from subfolders has been included in the primary Folder panel drop down menu
• Choose Library -> Show Missing Images to locate offline or missing files
• Filters are now longer automatically ‘sticky’ on folders or collections. Instead, a lock icon has been added to the metadata filter bar in the Library module to make filter selections ‘global’ or ‘sticky’ across folders or collections
• An icon has been added to grid thumbnails to indicate that an image is part of a collection.  Click on that icon to view and/or visit the collection
• Favorite sources can be added to the filmstrip source pop-up menu for quick access to specific collections or folders
• Flash state is now included as part of the smart collection filter criteria. So now you can easily make smart collections of ‘strobist’ vs ‘available light’ photos
• When the ‘spray can’ is used to add an image to a collection, the collection name is now displayed upon application
• The optimize catalog feature is now available in the File menu
• Lightroom now imports CMYK files.  Any output, with the exception of export original, or adjustments to these images will take place in an RGB color space

Develop

• Crop presets choices have been edited for clarity (e.g. 2:3 and 4:6, which are the same essentially, now occupy one line)
• A checkbox has been added to the toolbar to turn on/off overlay visibility
• All adjustment brush and graduated filter sliders can be reset by holding down Option/Alt and clicking on Amount
• The color setting for the adjustment brush and graduated filter clearly display an ‘x’ overlay when no color is selected (it used to be white, which could lead to interpretation problems).
• The targeted adjustment tool is deactivated when switching to a new Develop panel
• The local adjustment brush and graduated filter panel have been simplified to a single mode (Previously there was a button and slider ‘mode’)

Slideshow

• Click the track duration to sync the length of the slideshow to the length of the music track Print

Slideshow & Print

• The Identity Plate can be moved in small increments by selecting it and using the arrow keys

Export

• The file extension case(UPPER/lower) can be selected in the export dialog (important for some browser/file management systems)

Final note: working with LR3B and Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw

Normally, Lightroom and Photoshop Camera Raw share the same image processing technology to ensure consistent and compatible results across applications that support raw processing (hence the fact that updates always are more or less simultaneous).  Since LR3B uses the a new ‘process version’, LR3B will process files differently than Camera Raw 5. You are invited to join the discussion at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/ to find and share information on the Lightroom 3 beta.