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The Lightroom 3 beta 1 was meh but beta 2 is AWESOME SAUCE - Page 2

post #31 of 45
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.
post #32 of 45

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!

post #33 of 45
Thread Starter 

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!  =)

post #34 of 45

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.

post #35 of 45

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!

post #36 of 45
Thread Starter 

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.
 

post #37 of 45

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?).

post #38 of 45

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!

post #39 of 45
Thread Starter 

Bah, I advised you to buy both!  =p

post #40 of 45
Thread Starter 

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

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

post #41 of 45

FYI - I bought PS Elements 9 from Amazon a few weeks ago ($57.99 after $20 MIR), and just got offered a code from Amazon that brings the LR 3 price to $99.99 (it's a promotion that runs until 5/14/2011), so I went for it as well after having demo'd it previously.

 

 

post #42 of 45

Adobe is running that same promotion...I ordered PSE late last year and just received an e-mail from Adobe the other day offering a full version of LR3 for $99. I'm an Aperture guy, so I won't be using it. If anyone is interested, shoot me a PM and I'll forward the e-mail.

post #43 of 45

Does Lr3 do pretty much everything that the current version of PSE does?

 

Saw that Amazon's Gold Box Deal for today is for Lr3 at $119, so I'm considering it (after sticking w/ old, pre-Nik/NX, Nikon Capture 4 plus PS CS1 forever now)...

 

I can probably continue to get by w/ my combo of NC4 + PS CS1 at least until I'm ready to upgrade my camera again, but I'm intrigued.  Probably shoulda upgraded PS CS at some point when I still had the chance, but oh well...

 

_Man_

 

post #44 of 45

How are PSE's organizing, search and filtering features? Besides the processing tools that's the main benefit of Lightroom.

post #45 of 45

Hmmm...  Maybe it's time I do trials of both PSE and Lr since it sounds like PSE9 does do some things that Lr3 does not -- too bad PSE9 doesn't seem to offer the same NR capability as Lr3 unless I'm mistaken.  The current PSE rebate apparently runs thru end of the year, and it seems like the Amazon Gold Box price for Lr3 might well show up again at some point in one form or another...

 

_Man_

 

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