By Rob Sheppard
Adobe just announced its next version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom as Lightroom 3 beta. That is exactly what it says, a beta, meaning it is unfinished. This is not a digital imaging workflow program to use for your main work as it has bugs in it and things that don’t work quite right yet. While Adobe tends to be very secretive about their plans for a final version of anything, I would expect the final Lightroom 3 to be available maybe by early spring next year.
Before I talk about some of the new features that you might find of interest, I should just talk a little about Lightroom and RAW converters. To be honest, I am not that interested in other programs. I find that Adobe Lightroom is the best image handling and processing program available today for most photographers. I don’t base that simply on my work with Lightroom (although I can tell you very honestly that I could not produce the books and workshops I do now at the pace I do them without Lightroom).
I also base this on working with many, many photographers in classes, workshops and even one-on-one consulting that Lightroom works very well indeed for photographers. Compared to Photoshop, it is interesting that when I do a Photoshop workshop, it can take a week before students really start to feel comfortable, yet with Lightroom, they are actively and confidently working on their own within 2-3 days.
I cannot recommend Aperture, for example, because it is missing some key photographic controls — you cannot check black levels with a threshold screen (which I consider vital to good image processing) and you cannot do dodging and burning non-destructively (you must use an export plug-in). Lightroom does dodging and burning non-destructively within the program and truly brings me back to traditional darkroom work.
Nikon’s Capture NX is a superb program, for another example, but it is only available for Nikon RAW files (though it can handle anyone’s JPEG files). So that makes Capture NX limited in use for only a select group of photographers.
Adobe Lightroom 3 has had its processing engine taken apart and rebuilt, from what I hear from Adobe. This is a big deal with RAW files as images from such files must be “built” from RAW data such as keeping the color pattern of pixels from the sensor as is (the color pattern from nearly all sensors is not the way the world looks and has to be “developed” in order to get a correct image). So having a better processing engine will mean better final results in many aspects for your Lightroom workflow, including a cleaner file from any camera. Some people are finding that the program is now giving substantially improved results from smaller sensor/many-megapixeled cameras that start to rival larger-sensor cameras.
One thing that is different is a new noise reduction set of algorithms (and this comes from the new processing engine). I was never much impressed with the noise reduction of any Adobe products. This now promises excellent noise reduction within the Lightroom workflow, which is a welcome feature. Color noise works in the beta, but luminance is not functional yet. I am still optimistic, given Adobe’s talents, that the final results will be quite good.
One thing I quite like about LR 3 is the new Import feature. Import was not bad before, but it is such an important function, and the old version didn’t give it the feeling of importance that it deserved. Consequently, many photographers breezed by many key import decisions. I think the new interface for Import is well thought out and uses a similar format to the modules of Lightroom, which elevates it to “module level” of importance. I think that is a good thing, plus the new Import interface makes it easier to make the right decisions for importing photos.
Another thing I really like about LR3 that has absolutely nothing to do with better photos is the change from Grayscale to Black-and-White. It’s about time. Grayscale was never a very photographic term. No one who worked with black-and-white photography ever said they were going to do some grayscale printing today! Grayscale is a computer term and an affectation for photographers who have no sense of history. Black-and-white continues the very strong emphasis that Lightroom has on being highly photography centric.
I have really liked the vignetting feature of LR2 that allows quick and easy darkening of the edges of a photo. Ansel Adams made a big deal about edge darkening in his books (and I still consider his book, The Print, a must for digital photographers — just skip all the chemistry stuff). In LR3, the post-crop vignette gains some new algorithms which have been described as giving a “more natural look.” Although I am not sure what a more natural look really means for such an effect, the new vignettes do look quite pleasing and you get some new options on how color and tone are affected.
A very noticeable new feature of LR 3 is the Publish Services in the Library. To be honest, I have not used this part of the beta. It is designed to make publishing photos to websites (such as Flickr) and other “off-site” locations easier.
Slideshows now get music that can be fit to the slides, plus you can save your slide show in a video form that keeps music with it. That is a big improvement, but still, the slideshow capabilities of Lightroom are pretty limited. If you are serious about slide shows, check out ProShow Gold from Photodex Software for Windows or FotoMagico from Boinx Software for the Mac. Even a simple video program such as Adobe Premiere Elements will give more flexibility with slide shows.
Note: Outdoor Photographer magazine's editor-at-large, Rob Sheppard, teaches many online photography workhops, including Guaranteed Better Photography and Successful Publication Photography. BetterPhoto's digital photography school also offers many other online
Photoshop classes, including Adobe Lightroom - A Comprehensive Look by Outdoor Photographer contributing editor Lewis Kemper.
