life, love & laundry
Lightroom 3 Beta, you’ve worn out your welcome
I’ve started counting down the days until the full version of Lightroom 3 is released by Adobe. This isn’t as easy as it may sound since there is no release date as of yet. I’m going to plan for sometime in April and hope for sooner.
I used to be a photoshop girl. I tried Lightroom several times in the past, thanks to the Adobe free trials, but really just didn’t get it. It didn’t have NEARLY the the heft and precision that photoshop has. It wasn’t really until I started shooting exclusively in Raw that I began realizing the weaknesses of photoshop. I was looking at things all wrong: heft doesn’t make a workflow smoother! It doesn’t keep my photos organized and it doesn’t make it faster and easier for me to post-process. Precision is awesome, when it’s needed. But what I really wanted was a real *workflow*.
Finally, on my fourth try downloading the free LR 2 trial this past fall, it clicked. And when clicked, I mean it really REALLY clicked in the way that something becomes a necessity you rely on and can’t remember how you survived without it….like a DVR or the Internet. My trial expired right around the time I realized there was a lightroom 3 beta offered, free of charge. I would have sprung for Lightroom 2 but the beta meant that the full version of LR3 was right around the corner. I didn’t want to buy both so I rationalized that I’d just use Lightroom 3 beta (despite all the warnings NOT to rely on beta software as your sole means of image management) for the few months it took before LR3 was released.
For the most part, this has worked out ok! I have learned so much more about Lightroom and really developed a workflow that I love. But by beta….they really mean beta. There are all kinds of quirks and problems. It crashes every time I try to exit out of the program. It randomly deletes images in Flickr. You know – little things like that! ha! It has worn out its welcome. I appreciate it for what it offered me – a chance to see if LR3 will be worth the full retail price for me (answer: yes! most assuredly!). And it bought me a few badly needed months to save up for the full version of the software. But relying on beta software is not for the faint of heart.
One feature that LR3 has that is new is superb noise reduction functionality. It really does quite a good job. Not as good as I would like. Not as good as, say, when i’d shoot JPEGs and edit in photoshop. But much better than LR 2. But this has spurred me to research raw file noise reduction. For those of you that shoot in raw and post-process, do you use a noise reduction program? I am seriously considering investing in Noise Ninja and wonder if anyone has experience to share using it alone or as a Lightroom or Photoshop plugin?
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*gorgeous*
Love the second one best!
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Beautiful shots. It has obviously been too long since I last saw Addy. She looks so much older. I tried the Lightroom Beta and TOTALLY didn’t know what to do with it. I’m hardly a photography expert, so maybe that was it. Maybe someday you guys need to come by and show me :) The good news is I’ve almost got Dominic convinced we need to buy a Rebel for Christmas this year!
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No idea what any of that means, but I love the pictures of Addy being loved on by her big brother. So sweet!
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To compare LR and PS is not fair. LR is a workflow and DAM tool; that is not required to replace photoshop. If you shoot something like 20-50 photos at a time Bridge and Ps would do the job just fine. If you shoot 500-800 photos at a time (a typical wedding), LR is a life saver. I do 90% of my editing in LR 2.5 and I am using the other software Capture NX, Capture One or PS when I need to develop for enlargements, magazines/other CMYK publications, etc. Just my 0.02.
PS Nice photos :)
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Reply:
March 1st, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Thanks Greg – it’s interesting to hear about how photographers use their software/workflow. I definitely don’t think I could live without either LR or PS and agree that the comparison is not fair. Totally different uses. There are things there is just no way to do in LR and now that I fully understand the workflow ease built into LR, there is no way I can ever go back to editing in PS only!
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