http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/

Some of the new features included for you to play with in the Lightroom 3 beta are:

Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*

Some nice new features in there - I particularly like the export of slideshows with audio and improved Noise Reduction

But NO MENTION OF SOFT PROOFING!!!!

CMON GUYS!

# Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
# State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
# Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
# Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
# Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
# Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
# New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
# More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)

The first two items look interesting. The others not so much.

The videos (here -> http://tv.adobe.com/show/what-s-new-in-lightroom-3-beta/ ) are worth watching.

Whoa...please someone say it ain't true! It has to be there....must be there......???? Maybe not in the public beta? I would be pretty shocked if it wasn't available in the final release.

Todd in Chicago

Wasn't mentioned in the "What's new" videos. So I think you're screwed.

No way.

I refuse to get lathered up over this. Really. I'm pretty sure. I think.....

Just downloaded the beta and poked around and indeed, couldn't find anything regarding softproofing. I'm sure the boys in the programmin' department are just putting the finishing touches on it...I'm sure of it....I think...maybe.... ;-)

Todd in Chicago

If true it's sad, that adobe doesn't get it. So far no reasons for an upgrade perhaps except the new "performance". However first it has to be proven that it really is faster.

After trying and using it for a few hours I'm SHOCKED. What in hell deserves the 3.0 ? No lens correction, no soft proofing, no real improvements to the pixel based editing.

It seems that they have done a lot of work on the demoisacing and fine detail handling.

If true, I will look at Lightroom again.

Cheers,
Bernard

I haven't really had a chance to explore 3.0, but I'm also disappointed at the lack of a lens correction feature. It would be nice to get rid of PTlens and keep everything as RAW data in the one application.

Soft-proofing is not a feature that really affects me (though it can be useful to see when I've clipped saturation vs colour simply being outside my monitor's gamut) but it will be very disappointing if it doesn't end up in 3.0. I suspect it will be there though, maybe just not in beta 1.

That said, image quality seems drastically improved over Lightroom 2, at least with the high ISO images I've had a look at.

Here's a 100% crop from an image that was particularly bad in Lightroom 2:


And Lightroom 3's rendition:


It's a smooth white wall being hit with two different coloured lights, if you're wondering—I'm sure people will find much better examples, this was just an image that I remembered looking particularly bad.

This is with zero sharpening, no luminance noise reduction and 20 chroma noise reduction in each. All I did was import the image into Lightroom 3 and enable the new processing.


In the past I've also had quite a lot of images from my 1000D that showed a very obvious pattern in Lightroom 2, hopefully the new demosaicing will have removed that as well.


The only downside I've seen so far is that I'm going to have to redo my sharpening presets as it looks completely different now. (but it seems like it will be better)

I very much like the way you can choose in LR3 wether to convert your previous legacy RAW files that may have had substantial raw adjustments to them with the new RAW demosaic algorithm or not. Thats very cool. In other words... LR will not automatically update all my existing RAW files with its new algorithm that have been processed but not rendered out - which given there are going to be visual differences in the processing is a very good thing. Thats good support for existing LR users.

The improved demosaicing and noise reduction do indeed at first blush seem a very worthwhile improvement. As does the new import dialogue.

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

I wont install the BETA on my main mac pro image editing machine - but I have seen enough of it on my laptop that I think the upgrade is worth it for the improved algorithims alone.

The lack of soft proofing in the BETA is very disappointing howvever and I do hope Adobe is just teasing us and that it will be in the final 3.0 release 'Adobe says... Oh ye of little faith!' (well.. thats my hope anyway).

All good and well, but I still have the feeling that C1 has the edge to raw conversion. So no point in using Lightroom. Still need to do some more testing, just have a few limited raw files here.

I think especially real lens correction features should have been in 3.0. Softproofing would have been a kind of nice bonus.

Not seeing this big improvement in high ISO images, still blotchy, still baseline NR that cannot be turned off..sigh. Raw therapee and C14 still miles ahead of it in this dept.
No softproofing
No distortion or perspective correction
The new import interface is just plain annoying IMO

But wow they add film grain..gasp!

Any word about non-destructive third party plug-ins?

I think thats a big 'Wait and See'.

I use the Portraiture plug in from Imagenomic in my daily workflow - so I will not be upgrading to 3.0 on my main editing machine until support from Imagenomic catches up with LR3.0.



No doubt that will come (I am kind of surprised its not in 3.0 Beta, but would not be surprised if Adobe is holding an ace or two up its sleeve for official 3.0 release such as soft proofing or lens correction) - I am sure Adobe knows it is loosing customers to DXO in this dept.

Snip - From LL home page article (Hope Michael doesn't mind, but its an important statement)



Something else in 3.0 that is really nice is the ability to view images on other hard drives or in other folders from the import dialogue like a file browser ala Bridge.

Edit - Whats with the high level Flickr integration? Are Pro's really using Flikr to share images with their clients? (I think my clients would find that most unprofessional).

Barry, if you are examining existing files (i.e., files with previous image settings), they will still be using the older LR 2 processing. You need to update to the new process version to use the newer LR 3 public beta rendering. In Develop, take a look at the histogram, specifically, the region to the top-left above the histogram. If there is a little gray warning icon there, then you're using the old rendering path. You can click that warning icon to move over to using the new processing. If you're still seeing problems, please post an example raw file and I'll take a look.

And in general, folks, please ... it's an early public beta. It's not feature complete. I understand some of you are not happy with what's not available at the moment, but I do genuinely believe it would be more productive and constructive to discuss the things that are there.

No, Soft Proofing isn't there at the moment.

And I agree with Eric, recognize that this is still a product in development, and check out what is there rather than what isn't.

Michael

Erik I have been switching between process version 1/2 as per the settings tab. I can see a notable difference in chroma noise reduction, much better with LR3. However there is only a minor difference in luminance noise, a little better than LR 2.5, but there is still obvious signs of base level NR going on (this is much more obvious when you increase sharpening), the artifacts are clear to see. Try this with other software vendors, such as C1 4, and the free Raw Therapee, which do not appear to be attempting to do any base level NR.

My point remains, I do not want "ANY" base level NR, nothing zero. Reasons are this, if I want to apply NR myself, it's lot more effective to remove very fine grain, than pre processed larger ones.

Appreciate it's not feature complete, however, I just want to point out distortion and perspective controls are long overdue.

anyone notice that the mac version is 68mb and the windows is 120mb ?

different architectures, sure. But double the file size, whats up with that ? (in Ethiopia download = 12hours+ )

After wasting 6 hours of my time on the phone, 9 emails, and billing be incorrectly for my
last upgrade which took 12 days to complete. I'll be switched if I'm heading down that road
again. Adobe's customer no service is one of the worst I've encountered. I'm sticking with
DxO and NIK with my workflow, which is far superior to anything in Lightroom or Photoshop.

They have brought the force to colorsync bug back with the LR 3 beta.

I will never understand the Adobe Lightroom team. Why after all the issues with the print module forcing colorsync in the drivers instead of No Correction do they continue to release software like this. I would have thought you would have learned their lesson with LR2.3RC and then when they fixed this with the 2.3 final release.

The current version of LR and the current version of PSCS4 do not have this problem. They properly turn off color management in the printer driver when application manages color is selected. So why release this LR3 beta bringing back the old behavior of forcing colorsync once again in the driver.

Doyle

Deleted. Just seen the update re LR3 tutorial on LL.

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?  

This is correct but I've also heard that you'll have to purchase Lightroom 4.0 AND 5D Mark iV at the same time to get those features. Upgrades will not be eligible for the MLU menu item.

.

I had hoped version 3 would include the ability to use layers...for compositing and panoramas. Then I could dump Photoshop completely!

Eric

In LL beta review - Michael says "What we do know is that LR3 Beta is a 64 bit application and runs in this mode under Mac OSX 10.5 and 10.6, and Windows 64 bit systems, including Windows 7. " this implies those with 32 bit systems are either out or limited!

Jpegman

Interesting beta.
I’m not sure what to make of it so far. It doesn’t seem to have any ‘wow must buy it’ features so far.
Faster performance ? not here, but then it’s a beta so all bets are off…
Better importing ?.... I never had a problem with the old UI anyway.
The new custom printing package is welcome and will save using the hacks, but lacks the ability to put photo info data or any other custom text on the page, so doesn’t really cut it fully yet. Hopefully this will be added for release?

The new noise reduction functions look like being good, and may be the ‘must have’ feature, but it’s difficult to really see how good it is without the luminance option available<d’oh>.

Better de-mosaicing ? Intriguing certainly. There seems to be less jaggies on diagonals and a generally smoother look, but somehow some fine detail is appearing to get a little lost. Evaluation isn’t helped by a subtly different tonal rendition between the two versions. Maybe some clever work with sharpening and contrast enhancement might improve things, but it’s not exactly a clear cut advantage on the files I’ve compared so far.

At first mention a grain effect seemed an odd addition, but some experimentation suggests this might be a really nice feature to have available. Carefully used it seems to take out the ‘digital’ look of some images and give them a more natural look. I’ll need to try printing a few samples out to see if this translates as well to print.

Collections appearing in Develop is great, but is the lack of the quick collection a bug or an omission ?

I would still like the option to backup when starting LR, rather than exiting (too easy to forget to do it or it might slow down shut down).

Overall an improvement, and some useful little tweaks across most of the package, but I think a lot of people were hoping for significantly more. I guess Adobe will keep a lot back to keep us buying 4&5.

Barry, I can assure you that with the new demosaic method in LR 3 public beta, there is zero baseline noise reduction being applied (meaning that when the Color slider is set to 0, color NR is entirely off, and luminance NR is completely off), with the exception of hot/dead pixel elimination. In fact, this property came precisely out of request that you and others have made, coupled with our own internal developments on the engine. If you have an example raw file that you can use to demonstrate your concern, I'd be happy to study it.

Rhossydd, you should be able to access Quick Collections by bringing up the Film Strip at the bottom and choosing the Quick Collections from the popup menu above the thumbnails.

jpegman, there may be a bit of miscommunication here. Michael was saying that LR 3 public beta is capable of running on those systems. However, LR 3 public beta (and the final release) will also work on 32-bit systems. There is absolutely no intent to lock our or limit users of 32-bit systems.

(I believe the only architecture that LR 2 supported that LR 3 will not support is PowerPC.)

Thanks Eric.
I never work with the filmstrip open, so hadn't looked for it there. I'd expected the quick collection to be listed in the collections box (which seems logical and intuitive to me).

A few features seem to be arriving that aren't easy to find, eg the overall amount of a local adjustment going from a slider to only being accessible by clicking on the pin, or being able to move images in the cropped boxes in the print module by Ctrl drag.

I hear you, Barry. As a photographer and user (not just developer) of LR myself, I want those controls. The most I can say for now is that we are not ignoring the requests. Same goes for some of the other Big Items mentioned in the thread.

Again, I understand that folks will look through the press release and public beta bulletpoint list and check for all of their personal wishlist items. It's what I'd do myself, as a user. But we already know what your wishlist items are. What we don't know is whether or not you like the things we've done in the public beta so far. The other discussion we're having regarding your concerns about baseline NR may be helpful in figuring out what you don't like about the new rendering.

Hi Rhossydd, I believe the Collections in Develop was intended to work the same way as it does in the other 4 modules, i.e., since Quick Develop doesn't show up in Collections in Library module, it doesn't show up there in Develop module, either. My understanding is that Collections was intended to show the user-created collections (i.e., your personal collections).

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.

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.

Hi Rhossydd, I don't know the thinking behind it. For myself, though, I guess I never considered that because whenever I want to use Quick Collection, I just use the shortcuts: B to add/remove an image from QC, Cmd-B (or Ctrl-B ) to switch to or switch out of QC, and Cmd-Shift-B (or Ctrl-Shift-B ) to clear the QC. I do use the QC all the time for organization but prefer to use the shortcuts, because that way I can keep the left panel hidden and maximize screen space.

I had heard it is there is 3.0 but,currently, unreleased as it interferes with the 5DMkll's cream dispenser.

Apparently it's going to be wireless MLU

I think I am seeing an increase in intuitiveness to Lightroom with this version....an effort has been made to clarify further the distinction between what the database (Lightroom) is seeing, and what the file system actually holds.

Toward this end, in regard to keywording, I dearly wish that the keyword tag panel would show the string, or hierarchy, of the words applied. Alphabetical listing does not allow the user to see in a glance which root categories and following chain of specific words within are applied.

Is this something that could be done, or to forestall argument, could there be a choice of how the listings are displayed?

.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 ))).

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

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?

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



HAHAHAHAHA! OW! My Sides! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!