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Provides: The whole shebang for getting an image from your camera, to your computer for enhancement, to print or digital distribution.
Format: DVD
Developer: Adobe
Requirements: Mac OS X.4 or greater, PPC or Intel Mac, DVD Drive, 1 Gig of hard drive space
Processor Compatibility: Universal
Retail Price: New: $299 – upgrade: $99
Availability: Out now
Version Reviewed: 3.2
This new update for Lightroom 3 is rather unique in a very good way. Rather than building on its predecessors with a plethora of new features, this release has a plethora of significantly updated features. In fact, the only thing that's really new is a tethering feature, and a variation on new is the ability to upload to social media and image sites. This major "improvement" focus as opposed to major "new" focus is something I wish more applications would do; vastly improving already existing features to the point where they are as good as new features. In effect, this LR update is sort of like PS-CS5's JDI (Just Do It) plan, but on steroids.
I did not start with Lightroom until version 2 so I came into an already developed application. As such, I was initially taken aback by the completely different architecture and workflow from what I had been used to with applications like Bridge and Photoshop. However, once you get past the workflow and user differences, you can whip through your images at a wonderful clip. Be advised that Lightroom does require a commitment for use. This is not only because it is a DAM (Digital Access Management) that will let you sort, organize, and find all of your images, but now even more enhanced as a workplace center where it is easier to publish your images within your own site as well as Flickr and other social media sites.
So, let's do this module by module:
The Library Module
When you first import your work with LR3,you will encounter some of the initial improvements: a significantly improved importing structure. The new Import feature has two views, a simple one that is divided into three panes. On the left hand side, LR displays where the images are coming from, in the middle you see where and how you want to add them to your catalog, and on the right you see where they will be located. Part of this is also includes automatic Metadata additions and you can create simple, through very complex Metadata templates. My only complaint with the Metadata templates is the same problem with PS's templates that the copyright is always defaulted to "Unknown." This is a legal inaccuracy because any image you take is automatically copyrighted. [You created it, you own it.] The image may not be registered, but it is copyrighted. As such, the copyright status should be "Registered" or "Not registered." [In the USA, for more information on how to register your images, see the ASMP website (American Society of Media Photographers) as they have tremendous amount of great information on this.]
In addition to the simple import design, there is also the expanded Import window who's three panes have on the left a tiered view of your hard drive, in the middle you can see the thumbnails of your images where besides seeing the images you can also check which images you do (or do not) want to import, and on the right are the File Handling details where you can not only add any Metadata as above, but also add any preset development options. All of these selections can be saved in an importing preset that shows up in the bottom bar that can be seen in either the small or extended Import view.
[I still have my wish from LR2 where if you add an image from the Finder into a folder that had already been imported, you have to manually import the new image. What I still would like to see is an "Update" button so that any images that are in the folder that were not there at the last import would be imported with the same structure as the original images.]
[An additional aside: I recently purchased my first iPhone and the fastest, easiest way I've found to get my images from my iPhone into my computer is with the Import feature in LR. It's almost worth getting LR for that it's so fast and easy.]
There are several bonafied "NEW" features in LR3, one of which is also related to getting the images into your computer (and into LR) is tethering. Tethering is where you plug your camera (via a USB cable) and the other end goes into your computer. Then from the File menu, select "Tethered Capture," that's it. (This is limited to either Nikon or Canon cameras directly from LR, other camera brands may have a plug-in that you'd need to install). At this point, as you take photos, the images are sent directly to your computer. The plus here is that it lets you review your images on a screen of reasonable size as opposed to the 3-4 inch screen on the back of your camera. If you are shooting for a client who may not be used to fully appreciating small images, this could be critical. The negative is that this process does slow things down considerably. If you are shooting raw, each image could easily be 7-16 MB in storage size (depending on camera's resolution and complexity of image) and it simply takes time to shove all that down a USB wire. It's probable that USB 3 will speed this up but until USB 3 is included on both cameras and computers, it's a mute issue.
I found this feature to be a charmer. I have a Canon 30D which worked flawlessly with the process. I plugged one end of a USB cable into my computer, the other end into my camera and selected Tethered Capture. Then in a moment, a new Collection had been initiated and the Tethered Control Bar (shown below) displayed my camera type and I was ready to go. I could either press the camera's shutter or click the button on the far right of the control strip. Just in case you are not looking at your settings, your white balance, f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO (and any development settings) are all displayed on the control strip (you cannot adjust any of these from within LR, but you can see them without having to examine your camera). While I am not a studio photographer, I can really see the benefits of this feature. When you combine the power and strengths of LR with the direct import of your images into your computer, you have a powerful combination.
The other new feature in LR3 is also located in the Library module and found in the bottom of the left-hand Column and is called Publish Services. After having selected various images you want to show off, you can post them to Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug, or any other image hosting site that provides plugins to LR. What is very cool about this is that LR essentially holds a link between the site and what you've sent. Thus, if you send a file and get some comments that instead of a blue sky, the images would have looked better with a green sky, you can change the color of your sky, upload that file and that file will now have a green sky. In addition, any and all comments will be stored within LR for your perusal. This maintains a link from LR to Flickr and back.
I have to take a step back and comment that I am completely at a loss as to why these are located in the Library module. One of the things I like about LR is the user interface guides you into a process that moves from side to the other (in this case, from left to right). It's hard to go wrong and not know where you are or should be. With Lightroom, one starts in the Library mode to gather the images, then to the Develop module to process the images and make the look better, and to then finish the process by either creating a sideshow, or print, or publish on the web. Publish Services seems to be a variation on the Web publishing but I suppose greater minds than mine have mulled on this and feel that this is the best place for it. It seems like a slippery slope to me, but it is what it is.
Another new feature semi-related to Import is that now LR can "see" movies. That is, since more and more digital cameras (and high-end digital cameras) can create movies, Adobe provided access to them in LR. Now, when these movies are imported into LR, rather than be ignored as in the past, LR "sees" the movies and you can see a thumbnail from the movie from within LR. At this point you can do pretty much what you can do with other images such as rate, prioritize, etc. If you double-click to play the movie, what will happen is that whatever application you have on your computer that plays movie images (e.g., QuickTime) will start to play the movie.
On the other hand, LR 3 still has no clue what a radiance image (.hdr) is. Radiance images are one of the native formats used for 32 bit HDR images. Since so many plugins exist for creating HDR image in LR, and HDR is becoming more and more common, to not let these images be displayed is simply wrong. Even a simple generic icon would be better than nothing, which is what we have now.
The Develop Module
Now that you have your images into your computer and in Lightroom, the next step is to process the images in the Develop module. By the way, as I make this transition to the next Module, one of the new items available in the Develop module is that on the left side your Collections panel from the Library Module can now be accessed while in the Develop Module. This is a classic example of one of those simple little things that can make big differences in productivity.
There are two big important developments in the Develop Module, and the biggest one is Lens Correction.
Owning its own new sub-section, Lens Correction has two different modes of operation, automatic and manual. If you have a camera that's been calibrated, all you have to do is to find your camera and the specific lens used (unless it's been automatically detected) and your image will snap to a better quality image with distortion, chromatic aberration, lens vignetting fixed in one click. If your camera and lens are not listed, you can experiment to see if something that is included provides a range of improvements and/or you can select the Manual option and tweak away. What is missing is any mechanism to save any custom settings. Even if the settings are not relavent to the next image, they could be used as a starting point for subsequent images.
If your lens is not included and you feel adventurous and consider yourself photographically proficient, you can create your own lens profiles by using Adobe's Lens Profile Creator software. It's free and of particular value if your lens is very esoteric, no longer made, and therefore not likely to ever be profiled by Adobe.
The 2nd biggest development is only if you shoot raw images: there's an updated demozaicing algorithm for raw processing.
I should take a step back here and point out that while I've referred to raw images several times (so far) in this review, I should acknowledge that LR does also work with TIF, JPEG, and PSD images. If your camera cannot generate anything but JPEG images, you can still get significant use out of LR. Nonetheless, if you do shoot raw, you will find that the new demozaicing algorithms are significantly improved from the first algorithms first introduced in 2003. It's safe to say that if you shoot raw, the updated demozaicing algorithms really are reason enough to purchase LR 3.
[Note: demozaicing is the process where the individual gray scale images from the red, blue, and green biased sensors are combined to create an RGB image. This is also called "color reconstructing."]
While I knew that the demozaicing in both LR 3 and ACR 6 was significantly better, a friend of mine, Lee Varis, pointed out some specifics that display the differences extremely well. As you can see in the image below, you are looking at the same section of an image blown up 300%. On the left the image is using the 2003 algorithm, while the image on the right is using the 2010 algorithm. If you look at the brown regions of the tree branches on the right, look for them on the left and you will see that they are almost all green using the older algorithm. Simply, the earlier abilities to discern and focus in on small detail is not as good as it is now. Note the level of detail and shadowing found on the leaves. This level of detail has been missing for essentially 7 years. [This same demozaicing update is also available in ACR 6 that comes with Photoshop-CS5.]
When you open an image that has already been processed with the earlier version, there is an exclamation point (!) displayed in the lower right-hand corner of the image. Clicking on that will convert the image to the new algorithm. Alternatively you can scroll down to the Camera Calibration option in the Develop module and from a dropdown menu can either select the 2010 version or return to the original if so desired. Lastly, if you convert an image to the 2010 version a small window will pop up asking if you want to convert the entire folder of images to the 2010 version or only that one image. My suggestion is that you convert all, the only reason not to is to maintain the look if you need to supply more images to a legacy collection.
One of the side benefits of converting to the new 2010 algorithm is that you now have access to LR's new Noise Reduction. This is the same Noise Reduction released with Photoshop's new ACR Noise Reduction and is remarkable and wonderful. As shown below, from a screenshot of the new Detail panel, the Noise Reduction now shows both Luminance AND Color control. Note that in the image below, until you start to increase these two sliders to the right, the "Detail/Contrast" options in Luminance and the "Detail" option in Color are not active until you increase both individual sliders.
The results, shown below in both 100% (and below them, 200% screenshots), clearly slow the significant improvement that the new LR Noise Reduction sliders can provide.
Below are the 200% images. I could have de-noised it up even more, but at a certain point, the image begins to look like plastic wrap. The good thing about what Adobe has provided here is that you can work back and forth with the noise reduction (both luminance and color) and the respective Detail slider to get a very happy compromise.
Another feature that LR shares with the new ACR is the "Post Crop Vignetting." Now there are three options: Highlight Priority, Color Priority, and Paint Overlay. Before we had just the latter, but with the new options we can select from the three to obtain a more desirable result. The Highlight Priority does the best of the three in attempting to duplicate the vignetting created in the camera lens. Unfortunately one of the problems with Highlight Priority is that there can be a color shift. If there is, you can then select Color Priority. On the other hand, if you want to re-create what previous versions of LR had, you can select Paint Overlay. This might be particularly important if you need to match images that had been created some time back and you either can't, or do not want to redo past images with the newer options.
The Slideshow Module
Moving over to the Slideshow, there are two big enhancements beginning with Watermarks. You'll be seeing this new feature again and again as we continue through to other sections of LR. These are new to the Slideshow module and its presence is very welcome. The difference between the Watermarks and the earlier "Identity Plate" are significant. Despite the fact that this is Watermarks first iteration, it's impressively developed. If you've already created your own graphic, it's easy to import it in. Otherwise you can use the Text option as shown below. You can type in whatever text you want in the box below the image, and can then set its display characteristics with a variety of controls. You can resize the text one of two ways, either using the size slider controls shown toward the bottom on the right or you can drag the control handle as I'm doing in the screenshot below. Curiously, while you can resize the text with your mouse, you can't move the text location and are limited to doing that with the "Inset" next to the bottom. Note in the image below you can set the anchor point. This provides the control where the Watermark is located regardless of the orientation of the image. My only wish/complaint is that there are no Blending Modes or Layer Styles capabilities (e.g., embossing). Hopefully for LR 4.
Additionally, you can create and save many different image and/or text Watermarks and use them as needed for future use.
Using your computer's music in a Slideshow isn't new, but there are a few new features including a major step forward accompanied with several major steps backwards.
Below is a screenshot of Lightroom 2 & 3's Soundtrack option. Note that in LR2, you could select Soundtrack and then select a playlist from your iTunes catalogue. The good thing about this is if you had a LOT of photos, you could get a nice mix of sound to keep your friends and neighbors delighted to watch each and every photo ever taken of your newborn child.
Maybe it was because of that issue that Adobe chose to limit you now to one song, you can't even select two songs. Nonetheless, once you've got your song, you can now click on the "Fit to Music" button and the Slide Duration slider automatically adjusts to the proper time for each slide to display so that your entire slideshow and the music finishes at the same Time. Cool!
Also note that there's a new option "Prepare Previews in Advance." This helps prevent stuttering of the images or sound. This is particularly important for large, and there for processor-heavy, transitions. Keep in mind that this can take a LONG time to generate, so you do not want to tell your audience "Hey, check out these images," then click this button. Otherwise you might have a sudden desire to see how well your hand shadow tricks look. By the way, if your a big fan of fancy slide transitions of cubes, flips, and spinouts, sorry. All you have with Lightroom are faded transitions where all you can vary is how fast or slow the fades are.
Another frustration with this feature is that there's now no direct link to iTunes. You need to weave your way to your music via the standard Mac Finder windows. This may be good or bad depending on how your hard drive is organized, but once you get to your music, all you see in the Finder window are your songs. Unless you know about how long a song you want, you'll have to go into iTunes first to look for songs in the time length you want and then select which song you want prior to the song dig from within LR.
Oh, if you have any music you've purchased that doesn't have full DRM (Digital Rights Management) release, you can't even access that music AT ALL, even if your desire is to play the slideshow on your own computer. Once you've purchased the somewhat more expensive versions of the music, you can access the songs with no problem.
My last frustration with this feature is a bit amplified because of something that Adobe did to spoil us. As mentioned earlier, you can now access collections from the Develop module and this saved us going back and forth from the Library module. But when you are in the Slideshow module, you can't sort the order of your images by date, name, whatever. If you do want to do such sorting, you need to go back to the Library module, do your sorting, then go back to the Slideshow module to finish the processing.
Before I leave Slideshows, let me also point out one more new feature: In LR2, you could save a slideshow out as JPEGs or PDFs and that was it. Now you can export into video and can vary the size from as small as 320 x 280 or as large as 960 x 540 including both 720p and 1080p. These will include full transitions and any music selected. On the other hand, there are no options to control the codec nor any mechanism to customize the output. (I have a strong hunch that it's this movie record feature that limits the user to not be able to access music without full DRM authority. This makes sense, but there are no popup warnings or comments about the issue.)
The Print Module
Finally into the Print module we see more of the evolution of Lightroom. In LR 1 the Print module had the Single Image package. Then LR 2 brought us the "Picture Package" that let us construct multiple images on a single page. Finally now in LR3, we have Custom Packages, and they are a very nice step up, although we used to have them in earlier versions of Photoshop but lost them in CS 3 (or CS4?).
With a Picture Package, you could have the same image displayed for printing but at a variety of sizes. Thus for schools, weddings, and other events where you want to supply images of different sizes, this became a wonderful tool. The catch was that all images on a page had to be the same image.
With Custom Packages, you can now bring multiple images onto a single page for printing. Thus, if you want to print two or more different images on the same piece of paper, now you can. As shown below, on the top is one image displayed four times in two different sizes, this is Picture Package. Below that you can see five different images shown in three different sizes, this is Custom Packages.
From LR3 you can elect to produce either a Single Image/Contact Sheet: a Picture Package (as shown in the top image above), or a Custom Package (as shown in the bottom image above). Also note that with the Custom Package, you can also overlap photos (but you cannot rotate images other than at 90° increments).
There is a Cell tab that let's you preset container cells for specific aspect ratios. Once you've created such a cell, you can drag an image from the filmstrip into the cell. What you can't do, and I found this frustrating is to take an image and click on it so that it's activated and then click on an aspect ration to reset the aspect ratio of that image. In other words, you can only go forward with this not backwards.
As in the Slideshow, you can also have the same Watermark features within the Print module.
The Web Module
Other then some enhancements on the various web features, the main one here is the Watermarking feature already mentioned. Logically it would have made sense to talk about other web-based dynamics here such as the social media export features but they are placed in the Library Module and discussed early on in this review.
Conclusion
In short, what Adobe did with Lightroom 3 was to take what they had and made it better or way better. They added very little "new" when it comes right down to it as most of the new features already had a basis from what was established in LR2. About the only really new thing they added was tethering and the Social Media contact structure. This is good and should be encouraged. All that notwithstanding, this is not a lightweight update. There are some major important updates and improvements to features that were already good in the first place.
I found a few frustrations such as limitations with the sound accompaniment in Slideshows and the dynamics of the Custom Print Package. But these are small issues when brought in the scope of everything else there is in LR3. These are NOT deal-breaker issues, they are minor.
There's no doubt that Lightroom is not for everyone. It has it's own interface dynamic that governs how you work with it. You cannot work with Lightroom "your" way, you have to deal with it Lightroom's way. Probably one of the biggest limitations of LR is that you best not try to deal with one collection of images on two computers. LR maintains a big cache of information on your images and it's not really practical to try to transfer that cache back and forth. If you absolutely must deal with two (or more) computers, you are probably better off using Bridge and Photoshop. [One way around this is to maintain your images and the Lightroom backup cache and storage on removable media, but even then, your backup options become complicated or limited.]
Despite these issues, I have to give Lightroom 3 a full five "A" review. Lightroom 3 does exactly what it says it can do and it now does it even better.
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___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.
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