Lightroom 3.0 Beta Now Available!

[knweiss]

The film grain sliders... well.. I could have lived without those.

Well, I like the grain sliders. Especially for b&w conversions.

However, I also would love to see some good color filter presets (yellow, red, blue, green) for b&w conversion in LR3. The Black&White Mix sliders are powerful but not very useful if all you want to do is to (quickly) try which of the usual color filters gives the best result. I know there are free color filter presets on the net but IMHO they should come out of the box.

[NikosR]

Been testing this today with some high iso (1600) pics from a just acquired Lumix GF1. LR2 rendering of these pics makes them almost unusable from my point of view due to 'blotchiness'. Similarly for the out of camera jpegs. LR3 rendering is significantly improved. No traces of baseline NR. Tight small uniformly distributed grain easily manageable with some good 3rd party sw. Color noise reduction seems very good. Can't wait to see how Luminance NR will be handled. So thumbs up on this front.

Performance is horrible but I reserve judgment due to this being a beta version.

Question to Eric Chan. Is there any difference in the way LR3 handles so called baseline exposure offset or compensation? In my view this was problematically inconsistent and off in LR2 (at least for the Nikon cameras I'm using).Plus it was not documented at all.

[Ed Bacon]

IT WOULD BE USEFUL TO CONCENTRATE ON DISCUSSING WHAT IS THERE INSTEAD OF WHAT ISN'T YET.

Here, here. The new way of doing software development is to work on a feature set until it is good enough to put in the hands of end users in order to get their input/feedback. A few things to note, the user feedback may change the behavior of the final product. The features that are good enough for an end-user to tryout may not be all the features planned for the release. Some of the planned features may not be yet be coded or may not yet be in a state of good enough for non-developers to use. The point of the beta is to make comment on the features that are in the release and not on what isn't yet released.

[NikosR]

So, I guess that means you haven't downloaded and used the beta 3 huh...ok, well that's not terribly useful...


For the rest of you folks re-read what Mike and Eric have said...(or let me repeat it)

THIS IS AN EARLY BETA....

THERE ARE STILL MANY FEATURES YET TO BE FINISHED AND ADDED...

WE CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT ALL IS YET TO COME BUT IT WOULD BE FOOLISH TO PRESUME THAT THIS BETA IS ANYTHING LIKE WHAT THE FINAL VERSION WILL HAVE.

IT WOULD BE USEFUL TO CONCENTRATE ON DISCUSSING WHAT IS THERE INSTEAD OF WHAT ISN'T YET.

And the best place to discuss is really at the Lightroom Beta 3 Forums.

I hear ya, but I would have heard you even if you didn't SHOUT at me.

[madmanchan]

Performance is horrible but I reserve judgment due to this being a beta version.

Can you please elaborate on this? Do you mean, for example, the speed of import? Preview generation? Scrolling in Library mode in Grid view, etc.?

Question to Eric Chan. Is there any difference in the way LR3 handles so called baseline exposure offset or compensation? In my view this was problematically inconsistent and off in LR2 (at least for the Nikon cameras I'm using).Plus it was not documented at all.

I am fairly certain that it has not changed. Just FYI, for better or for worse, I do not foresee this changing for existing supported Nikon models, for backwards compatibility reasons. What I can say is that I have read all of the discussion on these forums and elsewhere regarding the baseline exposure concerns and will try to do what I can to address them for new models going forward.

[NikosR]

Can you please elaborate on this? Do you mean, for example, the speed of import? Preview generation? Scrolling in Library mode in Grid view, etc.?




I am fairly certain that it has not changed. Just FYI, for better or for worse, I do not foresee this changing for existing supported Nikon models, for backwards compatibility reasons. What I can say is that I have read all of the discussion on these forums and elsewhere regarding the baseline exposure concerns and will try to do what I can to address them for new models going forward.

Thanks for the reply. Performance creating previews was much slower. Performance of screen rendering (both 1:1 and less) was also slower. Performance applying color noise reduction changes was also significantly slower. Haven't really tried much else and I haven't tried exporting either. That was in two different Win XP 32bit environments (quad core, dual core, 3GB). Haven't tried on Mac yet.

PS. Regarding the baseline exposure offset. Well, if you can't / won't fix it, at least DOCUMENT the damn thing... so I don't need to search forums to find out what this is in order to try creating my compensating-the-compensation presets. On top of this, providing a switch to inactivate it can't be that difficult and certainly won't interfere with backwards compatibility.

[NikoJorj]

I'd expected the quick collection to be listed in the collections box (which seems logical and intuitive to me).

I'd also wish (already before this beta, of course) that quick collection could be accessible from the print and web modules.

Not more to say about the beta for the moment except a big "keep up the good work"!
And yes, we're breathlessly waiting for more ))).

[thomas_moran]

Have spent a solid 6 hours or so playing with all the new features and here are my thoughts. New import is nice and clean but saying that I had no problems using the LR 2.5 import dialog. Seems to be further refinement of a already ease to use part of LR. I'm now certain I'm seeing a small but still appreciable gain in the detail of hight frequency images. Very impressed with new imaging processing in general. Speed seems improved in most areas and a little slower in a few others like healing and cloning but not to worried about that as this is a beta... All in all there are some very cool and real improvements that have allowed me to revisit some images that I was not totally happy with and was able to improved them by a decent amount. Would give an A to all the major new features and am looking forward to some of the big features that I'm sure will be available upon release and hopefully in the coming betas.

Will be heading to gallery tomorrow to see how nicely LR 3 plays with HPz3100. Will report back...

Thomas

[barryfitzgerald]

I'll have a look back over various raw files, aka noise and differences v LR 2.

Whilst I am here, might be a low priority, but what about a Linux version?

[DarkPenguin]

I'm pretty enthused about the rendering.  Looking good so far.

Whilst I am here, might be a low priority, but what about a Linux version?

HAHAHAHAHA!  OW!  My Sides!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Schewe]

Whilst I am here, might be a low priority, but what about a Linux version?

Why?

Seriously other than falling into the "it would be nice for a few thousand people" category, how can you honestly think a Linux version of Lightroom would be a commercially viable application?

[john beardsworth]

Yes, I've worked that out ;-) Although I've never understood why the quick collection is regarded as a separate concept from the saved ones.

Maybe someone would like to consider that using a quick collection to just gather together images that may need some work or a quick print job after import and review without having to save it as a 'proper' collection might be a beneficial workflow addition. It's half way there now and I can't see any reason why it shouldn't be added to the normal collections box.

Set up a target collection, and use it instead of the Quick Collection. The QC was a nice idea for a version 1, but is much less flexible than 2's target concept.

[barryfitzgerald]

Why?

Seriously other than falling into the "it would be nice for a few thousand people" category, how can you honestly think a Linux version of Lightroom would be a commercially viable application?

Well Bibble seem to think it's worthwhile, they support Linux, others include Lightzone, Picasa, Raw Therapee.
That kinda says something. Maybe you need to check Linux out, it's come on a lot in the last few years, truth is, I would gladly get shot of windows if more applications were on Linux.

[Schewe]

Well Bibble seem to think it's worthwhile, they support Linux, others include Lightzone, Picasa, Raw Therapee.

And their combined market share is what?

Seriously, Linux is not a viable platform for mass commercial software...

[John.Murray]

Any truth to the rumor (that I just made up) that LR 4.0 will have a mirror lockup button, and the Canon 5D mark IV will have soft proofing?  

thanks eric!  ya made my day....

[rosemanbridge]

Fingers crossed for Geotagging support.

[Andrew Fee]

Wow, the demosaicing is massively improved over Lightroom 2.  I had a hard time taking an image where the maze-like patterns would appear (which is ironic as it seemed to be showing up all the time when I wasn't looking for it) and ended up having to take a photo of my CRT monitor to get them to show up.
 
In this example, it's actually in a section that's also suffering from moiré, but I think it still does a good job showing off the improvement Adobe has made.
 
Lightroom 2:



Lightroom 3:


This artefact did not only show up with moiré though—I've even had it happen with critically sharp portraits taken using my 1000D.
 
At this point, I think I'd be upgrading to Lightroom 3 for these improvements alone, and it sounds like there's still more they haven't shown us yet—hopefully lens corrections and soft proofing. (am I right in thinking that lens corrections are part of the DNG spec now?)

[DarkPenguin]

Wow, the demosaicing is massively improved over Lightroom 2.  I had a hard time taking an image where the maze-like patterns would appear (which is ironic as it seemed to be showing up all the time when I wasn't looking for it) and ended up having to take a photo of my CRT monitor to get them to show up.

I agree.  It doesn't show up with every image but I've some TRNP grassland images that suddenly have detail.  Very enthused.

[RobertJ]

Will the next version of ACR have the choice to switch to the new rendering engine, along with the the new sharpening/noise controls, or is this strictly available in Lightroom only?

[photodan]

Brief one-shot Sony Alpha 900 comparison of LR2.5 to LR3Beta

I compared  one low-ISO landscape photo done with a Sony Alpha 900, processing the raw file with LR2.5 defaults and the same with LR3Beta defaults.  I saw an improvement in noise handling with LR3Beta. Detail was pretty much the same, although 2.5 gave the impression of possibly being very slightly sharper, but if there is a real difference it wouldn't be practically meaningful for me.

Unfortunately, for my eyes, the color looked the same, and there are no camera presets for the Sony Alpha 900 in either 2.5 or 3Beta. So, for the color rendering purpose, I'll still be using Raw Therapee awhile longer (for the Sony Alpha 900 photos), as I prefer how colors are rendered. In the past I have unsuccessfully tried, for hours on one shot,  to use LR 2.5 to get the look that Raw Therapee produces. Perhaps I'm not expert enough with LR yet.