Not wanting to be completely overshadowed by Apple’s recent release of Aperture 3, Adobe has just made the second beta for Lightroom 3 available for download. And while Lightroom 3 beta 2 might sound like a pedestrian point-upgrade, it actually packs in some major new features.
Photographers with video-shooting cameras can now store movies in the catalog alongside images. You can’t view them within Lightroom (clicking a file will launch it in your default video viewing application) but you can move them around, store them in smart collections and export them just like photos. One note: the weird AVCHD files from my Panasonic GF1 aren’t recognized.
Next up is tethering, which right now works with most newer Canon and Nikon DSLRs. Tethering is just what it sounds like: you hook the camera up via the USB cable and when you shoot, photos are pumped straight into Lightroom and displayed on screen.
The biggest change for processing images is the addition of luminance noise reduction. The first beta only corrected color-noise, which is the most annoying kind of digital noise: you’ll know it by the horrible multi-color speckles it adds to the shadows of high-ISO images. It did an amazing job, removing the speckles and leaving behind a very film-like “grain”. The new luminance option is nothing short of stunning.
On an ISO 6400 image (from a Nikon D700), the sliders remove all noise from the image with minimal loss of actual picture detail. Throw those controls all the way to the right and you’ll get some too-smooth artifacts, but with no effort you can get results that previously needed third-party software. The only real problem is that you have to choose between noise-free, or the rather good-looking grain if you use chroma-correction only.
Another huge addition is a proper point-curve in the curves section. What the hell is that? The “Tone Curve” is the small linear graph in the develop settings which you can drag around to tweak contrast settings. The new version adds a little button that lets you drag this curve wherever you want, just like Photoshop, instead of the limited adjustments before. This picture shows that powerful tools require some restraint from the user (see the photo above for proof).
There are more tweaks. The old, nasty vignette from LR2 is back (although you still keep the less ham-fisted new versions alongside). The slideshow module can now pre-render all images before starting a show, meaning it won’t choke midway through. Flickr export has more control over file-size. The print module gets some tweaks to the maximum print resolution and layout, and for those who insist on arrogantly plastering their name over their mediocre photographs, the watermark feature has a few surprises.
This beta is a big improvement on the last one, and is a lot faster overall. It feels like a finished product already, but Adobe says that there are a few new features still to come. Hopefully these will be along the lines of Aperture’s gimmicky but useful faces and places (facial recognition and GPS) functions, and perhaps a book-printing section (this is Adobe, after all). In all, though, I’d be happy with Lightroom 3 like this. Go download it today. It’s free.
Lightroom 3 Beta 2 [Adobe]
