Lightroom 3 Beta is now available to download from the Adobe website:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_lightroom3

Cool ... thanks.

Cool... I think...

Some new features:

- Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries

- State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots

- Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease

- Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio

- Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own

- Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want

- New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy

- More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*

Sounds like a great upgrade. The watermarking feature is long overdue.

I'm looking forward to be able to handle larger catalogs. I'm finding 20k to 30k images is about the limit for anyway workable performace (and even then it's slow - but workable).

Merv.

just downloaded and had a look.
the import seems better
One thing I hope they do is improve the dual screen. allow all the menues to be put on a seperate would be a good start. As it is in LR2 (and the beta LR3) its just not much point having it most of the time.

Wow, sounds great. DPP is forever consigned to the trash can.

Cr@p... it doesn't install on my Mac... some kind of installation error

Daan B wrote:
Cr@p... it doesn't install on my Mac... some kind of installation error

No problems with XP

I'll take a look at the windows version. See how it runs on my clean win7 install

I'm curious if the final version might have some color correction tool which uses seperate rgb channels. An upgraded curve tool would be fantastic

Pixel Perfect wrote:
Wow, sounds great. DPP is forever consigned to the trash can.
For newer cameras, until good profiles emerge, DPP remains the best tool to achieve quality from Canon RAW.

The latest beta camera profiles which I'm aware of were relesed one year ago (october 22nd, 2008) - http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles

ciprian.trofin wrote:
Pixel Perfect wrote:
Wow, sounds great. DPP is forever consigned to the trash can.
For newer cameras, until good profiles emerge, DPP remains the best tool to achieve quality from Canon RAW.



That's why I don't buy new cameras

Tried on my MacBook... installation error as well

#$%^%$#@ I need the watermark function pretty bad!!!!!!

Installed fine on my MBP, have you tried downloading the file again Daan? Any specific errors?

ciprian.trofin wrote:
Pixel Perfect wrote:
Wow, sounds great. DPP is forever consigned to the trash can.
For newer cameras, until good profiles emerge, DPP remains the best tool to achieve quality from Canon RAW.

The latest beta camera profiles which I'm aware of were relesed one year ago (october 22nd, 2008) - http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles




If you are shooting RAW, don't throw away DPP quite yet. You will still get more accurate color rendition from DPP than any third-party software. Until Canon is willing to share their proprietary RAW file encoding with other vendors, Adobe is still having to guess at color tags in the file.

I'm not that fussy about colour rendition (with my colour deficiency I'm not sure it matters) and I don't do portraits where accurate skin tones may be needed say. I'm happy enough using LR or C1.

Ronan O Keeffe wrote:
Installed fine on my MBP, have you tried downloading the file again Daan? Any specific errors?

Yeah, I downloaded it twice with the same results. Just an installation error. It aborts right after I have given my username/password for installation. I got the Windows version to run on my wife's PC. D@mn

Daan B wrote:
Tried on my MacBook... installation error as well

#$%^%$#@ I need the watermark function pretty bad!!!!!!

Grab this addon... Knowing adobe, this is probably still better functionality over what they added in lr3 although I hope I am wrong.

http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrmogrify.php

Daan B wrote:
Tried on my MacBook... installation error as well

#$%^%$#@ I need the watermark function pretty bad!!!!!!


Works fine on Windows 7.

No problem installing on my Mac with Snow Leopard. Tried an import right away, It very quick. Then built 1:1 previews, was VERY slow, at least twice as long to do the same in 2.5. Hopefully that's just temporary in the beta!