Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta

[Photo-John]

Adobe just announced a beta of Lightroom 3. I haven't looked at or downloaded it yet but you can read a little more about it and find links to the site, here:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta Announced >>

If anyone here has tried or does try it, please let us know what you think. And post some screenshots, please!

[Canuck935]

I've downloaded it.. I'm going to install it sometime this weekend (I'll be busy upgrading my PC's to Win7 today and tomorrow) and give it a go.. I love the publish to flickr feature, and the color priority vignetting. I haven't actually tried it yet but I'm pretty sure I'm sold on it already.

[jetrim]

Thanks for the heads-up. Grabbed it just now and will load it up tonight. I'll try to get some screenies up before the weekend is out

[readingr]

as anyone managed to view the video's on the adobe LR Beta 3? My Vista, with any browser won't start them.

Roger R.

[SmartWombat]

Downloaded, installed, using it this weekend.
Seems to load quicker, but the new UI for loading is no good for me, it's slower to get wehat I want loaded!
So I still do it the old way
For the GH-1 and E_P1 at least, loading and generating the previews appeared quicker.
Will be testing Canon tomorrow I think.

[drg]

Yes, I have watched the videos. I've gotten them to work with Firefox and both XP and Vista.

The first video points out the widest range of information. It does dwell on the fact that this is a beta release and ADOBE wants feedback.

[readingr]

Well, I played with it. Still don't like the way watermarks work in LR even with the mods.

Loads quicker, imports quicker, and not sure about the rest yet. It searches dimensions now, but I would like it to allow me to specify which metadata items I want to search or exclude from the search. Will sort out the initial response to Adobe tomorrow.

Can't get the video to work on either Chrome, or IE, or Firefox on Vista. YouTube and BBC iPlayer works, so I am now stumped.

Time for bed said Zebedee.

Roger R.

[drg]

I have posted an overview of Lightroom 3 in the Articles Section:

Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta Overview

There are two screen shots of the Browser! This so far is my favorite new feature amid the various new items included for evaluation and testing.

So far it is faster the 2.5 on Windows. No comment on it running with Windows 7 (not loaded on the test machine) but it is very responsive on a Mac.

Links are there for video for introduction and feature announcements.


Comment here or on the Overview article as you see desire.

[Canuck935]

I have it installed on 64bit Win7 at home. Didn't get a chance to play with it much, but the color noise reduction is a huge improvement. Color priority vignetting is a nice touch. I'm not sure I like the new import UI either but I'm sure I'll get used to it. The bummer is that I couldn't open my Lr 2.5 catalog with Lr 3.

[drg]

I have it installed on 64bit Win7 at home. Didn't get a chance to play with it much, but the color noise reduction is a huge improvement. Color priority vignetting is a nice touch. I'm not sure I like the new import UI either but I'm sure I'll get used to it. The bummer is that I couldn't open my Lr 2.5 catalog with Lr 3.

That is odd that it did not just open your current catalog with LR3!?!

I mentioned that I have not tried it with W7 yet as I want a true side by side comparison in a familiar and known environment for testing but I'm wondering:

- Did any of your other files or application not transfer?
- Is Lightroom installed in the 'default' directory or was a custom install performed to put the program and data files in a special place or on a different drive?
- Can you open the catalog from LR3 by navigating to it?

Be sure to tell Adobe as they may not be counting on W7 as part of the field beta environment. I haven't been to the forums since early yesterday so I don't know what the latest is today.

Please let us know and this makes certain I am temporarily holding off on transferring any more work to W7.

[jetrim]

I'm on XP and had the same catalog problem, with a bit of research this already appears to be a well documented phenomena that LR2 catalogs are incompatible with LR3. Also a bit of an irritation that ITPC keywording that was applied outside of Lightroom is apparently stripped away upon import (unless this a user error problem-quite possible)

[Canuck935]

- Did any of your other files or application not transfer?
.

I started with a clean install so I had to reinstall all my programs. Lr 2.5 automatically found my catalog and loaded it without problems. Lr3 didn't.

- Is Lightroom installed in the 'default' directory or was a custom install performed to put the program and data files in a special place or on a different drive?
.

It's actually a custom install to a non-default path. Again, Lr 2.5 had no problems locating and loading the catalog whereas Lr3 didn't find or load anything.

- Can you open the catalog from LR3 by navigating to it?
.

No. I can navigate to it in Lr3. It will want to close and restart to load the catalog as usual, but it will give an error that the catalog is incompatible when it tries to relaunch.

I'm on XP and had the same catalog problem, with a bit of research this already appears to be a well documented phenomena that LR2 catalogs are incompatible with LR3. Also a bit of an irritation that ITPC keywording that was applied outside of Lightroom is apparently stripped away upon import (unless this a user error problem-quite possible)

Ok I'm glad this a known problem so they can fix it. I heard about the keywording issue too, though it does not affect me as I don't use keywording.

[SmartWombat]

I'm secretly glad that a beta which might trash my data won't open my LR2.5 catalog
Having used it a bit more on the laptop, I can now say I hate the new file browser.
Plus the new colour noise reduction turned all my colour noise into white snowspots.
So far 2.5 has it 2-1 on points.

[drg]

This is truly strange. The working LR2.5 catalog (rather large) imported when I installed the beta, but will not import anymore. I get the error box about incompatibility. The working catalog contained lots of various combined/merged catalogs . . . This is on 32 bit XP. I wonder how much it didn't really bring in... I hand picked several images and individually imported them from a variety of libraries for print testing and did not pay attention to everything. But they all imported via the browser painlessly. I do have new .lrdata files for LR3b separate from the previous files. Everything was backed up anyway and it is my 'test' machine that is a copy of another box. But I still don't want to trash it!

Paul (Smart Wombat's) comment about the Color Noise Reduction is interesting as I wasn't impressed with much change being visible with any loaded test image.

64-bit XP and Vista didn't import anything! So manually I tweaked a few more images into the programs. These are for more testing and printing.

A Mac running 10.5 wouldn't run the beta at all. No message, nothing. Just didn't run the app. Machine specs sent to Adobe.

It is a beta after all and merely a test platform and not a working freebie!

The Adobe Forums are reporting a wide range of experiences that really don't probably apply to the end product. This is to see if we like certain features or not. The original beta for LR had some real strange behaviors and when the product was released a lot of terminology even changed.

This new rendering is going to get a side by side test this evening. I've got a couple of images that should show changes clearly. Will post a few samples.

[jetrim]

I heard about the keywording issue too, though it does not affect me as I don't use keywording.

Not a show stopper, just irritating as it would have made setting up new "smart collections" infinitely easier. I don't go crazy with keywords but when you're searching for a photo you took sometime last year but can't remember exactly which month, cutting the exercise down from 10,000+ pics to 50 or 60 makes things go a whole lot faster!