Testing out Lightroom 3 Beta...I Like It

Lightroom 3 Beta is available for download. I am thrilled and jumped on the opportunity to try it out. I have never used Lightroom until now so this blog is not about comparing the features of the current version and to the features of newer Beta version but rather my experience as someone new to the Lightroom image editing software. This is a standalone program so one does not need to have Photoshop CS to use it, although it certainly would be nice to run them side by side.

Having tried it out for 2 days rather thoroughly I might say, I found it to be very easy to use, and that says a lot since I was to Lightroom until this point. I was able to quickly import my pictures onto the library, at which point I could "develop" it, i.e. post process the image to my heart's content (adjust for exposure, brightness, vibrance, saturation and the likes, add vignetting and other creative stuffs). Adding watermark was a breeze, Open "Edit the watermark", type in your text, position it where you want, save and you have it as a preset. When you export the file, you can select to export with the presets or filters. You can add Photo title, add keywords, save keywords to be used later on another image. On the Print menu one could make frame border, select border color, and the Web feature comes with numerous templates ranging from simple single image to html and flash, allowing one to prep files for online upload to your server.


This photo (canoes on a lake taken by my sister) was further tweaked in Lightroom 3 Beta. I adjusted the "black" and "vibrance" channels slightly to enhance the effect

All in all, I like it. The Beta version expires in April 2010 essentially giving everyone a great editing software to use for free for 6 months. I would encourage everyone to do so (link below). A word of caution, the file is rather large, 120MB and you will need some RAM to run it smoothly. I am using it on my laptop which has 3GB RAM and 250HD and at times it seemed a little slow particularly on large files. That is the only issue I encountered thus far.
Link to Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta download

Lightroom 3 won't be available until late Spring next year. If you can't wait, must have one now :) you can order the very popular Lightroom 2 for $263.49 from Amazon Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

or from Bhphotovideo Here for about the same price