Hi folks, longtime lurker with a first post looking for your advice. Just got a new unibody macbook pro and I'm in need of a software program to catalog and process my many RAW images. I've chosen to go with Lr as opposed to Aperture. I already have Adobe's production premium suite which includes photoshop for further editing.
My question is should I purchase Lr 2, which I can buy for under $100 (ed discount), import my catalog and upgrade to Lr 3 in a few months. Or, use the Lr 3 beta, upload my catalog, and purchase it when 3 is released?
Will I save money purchasing now and upgrading when the new release is out or should I just use the beta and purchase it then? What is typical upgrade price from one version to another? If I use the beta what happens when it expires and the new version isn't released yet? What will happen to my catalog?
Photos are from my original digital rebel (7d coming soon, right Santa?). Thanks for your help!
If your image processing is income essential .... I would go with LR2.x .... If you just need something to get your feet wet and experiment with some of the new features .... you could ride out the beta.
LR3 Beta is not feature complete .... for one ... the luminance slider in the noise reduction panel is disabled ... so only the color noise slider is active (for newly imported images that have not been processed by a previous version of LR/ACR .... these images will revert to the processing methods of LR2) .... also you can't update a previous LR catalog to LR3 beta .... or import via, import catalog ... you would have to import your entire collection from scratch ... which isn't too big of a problem .... however .... you would still be working with a beta .....
Worse case scenario, you purchase LR2.x and upgrade to LR3 when released ... maybe a $99 to $120 upgrade (purely my speculation here) but ... you would have a stable work safe version to deal with.
No need to spend money now, again if you can live with the hampered noise management. I do agree with tomrock that beta 3 is pretty good, in many respects better than release 2. Adobe's policy in general is that assets in your beta won't get lost and you'll probably be able to convert to the final 3.0 release with no problems. Also it's not common that a beta release will expire long before the final release. So not much risk there imho. If you can live without the few features of the beta 3 not finished yet than why spend the money now on a license? There will be upgrade offers at the time of release 3 anyway.
Don't complain if you have issues with the BETA. BETA is a test platform for companies to tweak based on reviews. These reviews can include errors. There are so many system configurations out there that you just never know.
OTOH
Since you have all the tools you need in Adobe's suite you should be okay with LR3 BETA. ACR and LR talk to each other very well. If you use ACR/LR3 you "should" be fine. BUT again, it's at your own risk. This is the case with all apps in BETA form.
Grab the beta. If it seems to crash a lot, or be too buggy for you, then buy LR2.
I expect that LR3b will be good enough.
I have been having fun playing with it. Even used it for a real project.
sure there are a couple of "sticky spots" but its decent.
You might check, usually the upgrade to a new version is free to anyone buying the lower version after a certain date. That would allow you to buy 2.5 now and then get a free upgrade to 3 when it comes out. I would not recommend putting a lot of work in under the 3 beta until you understand if the catalog and your edits will be available to the production release.
I had the same question and I posed it to Adobe. The rep told me to stick with LR3 Beta and skip LR2. I don't know the upgrade path/price situation. He didn't seem to have the answer for that. Not sure of your situation but would agree with butchM, if you're earning a living shooting photos then LR2 is the safe bet. If you just have an addiction to photography like me then Beta is good!
UCSB wrote:
You might check, usually the upgrade to a new version is free to anyone buying the lower version after a certain date.
Yes, that's a good thought, however, the "free" upgrade grace period isn't usually announced until the new version is released ... in many cases the grace period is 30-45 days ... if past history of Adobe is any indicator .... the current beta is set to expire at some point in April 2010 ... buying LR2.x now would not likely qualify you for the free upgrade path ... as there is no date set in granite for a the final release of LR3 .... past betas have been updated and extended several times.
As recommended, you can probably do quite well with the beta ... as long as your next sale isn't riding on the gamble of not having a known solid app as backup .... although if you have the Suite ... you could always fall back on Bridge/ACR in a pinch.
Save your money and stick with the beta and back everything up. The final version may not be released for several months and the beta, which has been stable on my Windows workstations, will work until April (?) I believe.
The processing engine is that much better in LR3 than in LR2 (IMHO).
Dave Good wrote:
The final version may not be released for several months and the beta, which has been stable on my Windows workstations, will work until April (?) I believe.
I just downloaded the V3 beta and you're correct; the beta will remain active "through" April, according to the documentation. What really grabbed my attention was the flexibility to embed audio files in exported slideshows; I'm gonna get a lot of mileage out of that feature.....Mitch
Bear in mind that Adobe have warned that there is no guarantee that the production version of LR3 will read the beta LR3 catalog, and that they also warn that it is not for production environments.
