Thu, 22 Oct 2009 Adobe unveils Lightroom 3 Beta, improves speed, image quality

Adobe Systems has announced the release of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta, the company's collection of photo editing, management and archiving tools.

The beta software release, aimed at serious amateur and professional photographers, promises new improved intuitive importing, unparalleled noise reduction and sharpening tools and enhanced slideshow capabilities.

According to Adobe, Lightroom 3 beta has been completely redesigned with under-the-hood efficiencies to better handle growing image libraries and improve responsiveness with a higher-quality processing engine.

Library module now includes a rebuilt import system, users can specify the source and destination of their images, and save common processing, metadata or destination settings as easy-to-reuse presets.

In the Develop module, an overhauled processing engine allows users to create the highest quality images insists Adobe.

Improved Capture Sharpening and Colour Noise Reduction tools provide superior results while still preserving an image’s edge detail and contrast. A new Grain tool adds a film-style grain to images, and two new Vignette modes help photographers get a more natural look.

Lightroom 3 beta also offers advanced output options, including the ability to export slideshows as videos with audio and title screens that can be posted to video-sharing sites or optimised for mobile media.

New watermarking capabilities enable photographers, who want to protect work online, to embed text or graphic information directly on an image and then adjust the size, position and opacity. Photographers can customise print layouts and save settings for future use, giving them refined control over their images.

Adobe encourages photographers to test new features and provide the product team with feedback before a full release.

"We are extremely fortunate that a strong community of photographers have rallied around Lightroom, helping to evolve the application and making it a meaningful part of their photographic workflows," said Kevin Connor, vice president of product management for Professional Digital Imaging at Adobe. 

"While we’re still hard at work on Lightroom 3, we recognise the value our customers bring to the development process and want their input so we can deliver the best final product possible."

Last month, independent research revealed Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is almost four times as popular as Apple Aperture amongst Mac based photographers, with the gap growing year on year.

Research company InfoTrends carried out the survey of 1,045 professional photographers in the US. The figures showed improvements on previous years when Lightroom was almost twice as popular in 2007, and almost three times as popular in 2008.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta is available as a free download for Mac and PC users from Adobe Labs.

Visit http://www.labs.adobe.com/downloads.

Feedback can be submitted on the Lightroom forums: http://forums.adobe.com/community/lightroom.

Users also can connect with Adobe at www.facebook.com/lightroom or www.twitter.com/AdobeLR, and can add the tag #AdobeLR3 to tweets about the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta.

No release date for the final version has been announced.

Check out our new Macworld Mobile site.

Follow Macworld UK on twitter: www.twitter.com/macworlduk