The Lightroom 3 beta 1 was meh but beta 2 is AWESOME SAUCE (1 Viewer)

[Brian Kleinke]

Originally Posted by Sam Posten

CS5 just shipped, you can go get a FULLY FUNCTIONAL 30 day trial, no more half assed trials of Premiere!, at www.adobe.com

I'm currently downloading all 9GB of CS5 Production Premium =)

Premiere pro trial doesn't support audio in MPEG But I LOVE the speed over Premiere Elements when dealing with AVCHD.

Now I just need to learn these tools if I'm going to buy them

 

[Citizen87645]

Off to ebay!

Originally Posted by TonyD
[SIZE= 14px]Btw, I'm not really sure what I'd use it for since I'm not much of a photog.[/SIZE]

 

[Sam Posten]

It's out!

http://thomashawk.com/2010/06/adobe-lightroom-3-i-feel-the-need-for-speed-oh-and-the-most-significant-advancement-in-photo-noise-reduction-i-have-ever-seen.html

http://terrywhite.com/techblog/archives/5499

http://lightroom-blog.com/2010/06/lightroom-3-now-available.html

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/2010/06/08/whats-new-in-lightroom-3-0-final-release/

http://lightroom-blog.com/2010/06/lightroom-3-resources.html


More today:

http://www.peachpit.com/podcasts/channel.aspx?c=3fb38e18-6612-4f81-b0eb-e899b5813b57

http://www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom3

 

[Sam Posten]

Another review:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20006381-264.html

 

[Sam Posten]

Well it took 18 months but my uni is now set in the Adobe education program! In addition to lr3 I'm now in for CS5 production Premium, at the amazing $350 price point!

 

[Carlo_M]

Sam - how are you liking Lr3? I'm thinking of picking it up, primarily for perspective correction, lens distortion correction and de-noising (for low light high ISO shots). At my academic price of $99 it's hard to pass up...

 

[Sam Posten]

It's rock solid and a terrific value. Love the noise reduction in this rev!

 

[Carlo_M]

Cool - I'm really teetering on this purchase. I have Lightroom 2 but never liked the whole workflow aspect of it, seemed unintuitive but maybe I just didn't get to know it well enough.


I can buy Lr3 for $99, or Adobe CS5 Design Standard for $209, which would give me Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro. Am I correct in thinking most of what is in Lr3 is also in Photoshop CS5 (primarily lens and perspective correction and noise reduction)?


I guess now that I type it out I shouldn't be on the fence about which one to get...

 

[Sam Posten]

Right, get both!

 

[Sam Posten]

Right, get both!

 

[DavidJ]

I haven't upgraded yet, but definitely plan to. I love Lr and the workflow. I'll admit it does take some getting used to so I'd give it some more time Carlo. And, yeah, at $99 it's about as close to a no brainer as it gets.

 

[Carlo_M]

Sam (and other Lr3 users) can you do perspective correction on Lr3 or in PS only? I take a lot of museum art shots who, by nature of the positioning and size of the art on the wall, end up trapezoidal in my shots. I'd like to correct them to become square or rectangular. I know PS can do this. Can this be done in Lr3 as well? Thanks!

 

[Sam Posten]

They have but it's still in progress. I've only done it rarely in PS but it is super easy to round trip from Lr to PS if you have both so I haven't given it much work in Lr. They really beefed this up in the latest Lr but room to grow for sure.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/getting-started-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-3/lens-correction-perspective-correction/


I suspect that that is going to be a big focus of Lr4:
-Perspective correction + warping for effect

-Automated montage / pano stitching

-Single shot and multi shot HDR


All of which require PS now but you can see they are laying the tracks to make this portable over to Lr.


If you do a search on the web you will see some blue sky engineering videos of adobe doing focus stacking too, which allows for stitching / layering for an infinite focus effect. Will see if I can find it on youtube unless one of you pulls it first. For me the interesting thing isn't in creating greater depth of field but in using this tech to more accurately create subtle (and not so subtle!) defocusing to bring the subject into a thin slice of focus and automatically creating beautiful artificial bokeh which consumer zooms are currently incapable of doing. So you could make a convincing looking fake f1.2 aperture slice from a zoom that maxes out at f3.5 say.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh


Don't tell John Rice I'm geeking out over the thought tho! =)

 

[Carlo_M]

Thanks Sam, that was very helpful!


Maybe I'll just get Lr3 for now since with lens and perspective correction it really does most of what I want it to do. HDR would be nice but many people say Photomatix is still a better solution than the merge to HDR pro option in PS CS5. And really HDR is a tiny fraction of what I'm interested in. Just trying to figure out if my $200 is better spent on Lr3 + Photomatix Pro or Adobe CS5 Design standard.

 

[Carlo_M]

Sorry Sam, one more question: how is the noise reduction in Lr3 compared to PS CS5? If it's the same, I'll probably just spend the $99 on Lr3 now. I'm kind of in limbo as to whether or not my next PC will be a Mac or Windows machine so I would like not to commit to a CS purchase until I know if I should buy a Mac or Windows version. The nice thing about Lr3 is that I get both in one package!

 

[Sam Posten]

My basic understanding is they use the same code engine but Lr gives a simplified interface to it while PS retains its typical highly detailed UI.

 

[Carlo_M]

Cool thanks Sam. I did look online and see that Lr3 only had 2 sliders while PS had like 5 sliders so I figured the level of control wasn't the same. Still, given that I don't want to potentially end up buying CS5 twice, I'll just pick up Lr3 today and get to know that. Once I know what my next desktop will be, I'll invest in the appropriate CS5 package. I think Photomatix Pro is also cross-platform with one license, so if my HDR interests pick up I'll buy that in the meantime. If the noise reduction doesn't suffice for me I'll investigate a separate NR option like DeNoise or Noise Ninja (where do they come up with these names?).

 

[Carlo_M]

Okay I picked up Lr3 and have been playing around with it for a couple of hours.


I am impressed with the noise reduction so far. Very good at reducing noise while retaining a surprising amount of information. NR has come a very long way.


The auto lens distortion correction is cool, but I'm a little surprised it didn't contain the Canon EF-S 55-250 IS which I think is pretty popular. Oh well, at least it had my walk-around EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM, so that takes care of 95% of the photos I have. So far, so good, and it looks like I may have saved some cash by not buying PS CS5. Thanks for the advice Sam!

 

[Sam Posten]

Bah, I advised you to buy both! =p

 

[Sam Posten]

New set of free Lr3 tutorials from Adobe's George Jardine

http://mulita.com/blog/?page_id=2