Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
Good news; Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is finally “in the house”, finished and ready to roll. Many people have already given Lightroom 3 a look in the public betas but there’s a lot going on in this update. Here are a few of the biggest plusses in my book:
• Incredible Luminance Noise Reduction – it still amazes me, even after testing the product for many months, how easy it is to breathe new life into old photos with this tool. You can clean up so much of the noise while leaving details intact (and which can be enhanced as well with improved capture sharpening) that it really changes the whole NR / sharpening workflow for me. Cuts out extra steps.
• Improved Import – the new import dialog is fantastic. Gets the pictures into my catalog quickly, the way I want them set up. The only missing thing here is a Favorites option for the Drive / Folders list but hopefully that will be available down the road in a future update.
• Lens Correction – like the Photoshop and ACR versions there are still some kinks to be worked out here but the idea that Lightroom can auto-detect which lens was used and if a profile exists, correct for geometric or CA problems on the fly, is great news. Especially for a lot of wide-angle architectural shots.
I will post more information on Lightroom as the week moves on, to tell you about my upcoming book and training video! Thanks for dropping in, as always. -Dan
