Adobe Launches LR 3 Public Beta – Adds Some Aperture 1 and 1.5 Features
Adobe has announced their Public Beta of Lightroom 3. Obviously I’m a bit biased here, but I was hoping for a more extensive list of features. As a photographer, I’m really very happy to see competition in the marketplace. The recent Nikon vs. Canon battles have raised the quality level of photographic gear for everyone who shoots today.
So when I read over the list of improvements for Lightroom 3, I was a bit underwhelmed. I thought, honestly that Adobe would be more forward looking.
Lightroom 2 beta was announced April 2008, and in the 18 months since that release, they have come up with the following improvements from Adobe’s site:
- 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)
More performance is always good, in fact that was the main goal of Aperture 2, so nice to see Adobe catching up to that.
Noise reduction, awesome. I’ve used Noise Ninja in Aperture, again since 2.0 but the built-in noise reduction tool in Aperture is anemic, to say the least.
Watermarking tools are also neat, but I’m not sure I’d have called them a new feature, but okay.
Portable slideshows are good as far as they go. I’d love to see Aperture tackle slideshows more completely, but since Aperture 1 I’ve been using the built-in integration with iLife and apps like PhotoMagico to bring my Aperture images into iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Keynote, Numbers, (and so on) and exporting videos that I’ve loaded to my AppleTV, burned to DVD and sent to clients, put on my iPhone and sent to the web. So again, Lightroom now has a feature I’ve had since 2006.
Print packages are a feature, right on Adobe.
Film grain simulation tool is something I’ve been doing thanks to Nik software (among others) since Aperture 1.5. Yes, there’s no built in simulation tool, but I’m not sure that that’s something that’s needed enough to be a major feature of a major upgrade? (Tell me if you think I’m wrong here.)
New import handling is something I’m playing with now, but I’m really not thrilled with the minimized interface.
Finally, they offer in LR 3 more flexible export that “may require third-party plug-ins.” Great, LR 3 has caught up to Aperture 1.0 in that regard. I’ve had the ability to export with third-party plugins since 2005!
For a while I’ve been talking with people in forums about Apple’s lack of communication with users about the progress of Aperture. I’m frustrated because I’d like Apple to communicate their plans more. I think we all would. But my counter point has always been tell me what Adobe is working on. This public beta of Adobe looks like great corporate communication, but it’s really just product testing in disguise.
“We’re not even close to finished in terms of features, performance, or image quality, but we want early feedback on our improvements so that we have time to make sure Lightroom 3 is your ideal workflow assistant.”
This beta expires in April so even being generous with timing we figure February for launch of LR3. It’s been since July 2008 that Adobe launched Lightroom 2, and in that time they haven’t gathered “feedback” on “improvements?”
It’s great that people get to work with software for potentially six months without paying, but as the Lightroom 2.4 beta release showed—beta can eat your data.
Worse, Adobe hasn’t communicated any of the LR 3 features or launch date information since the July 08 announcement (15 months ago) except to say they’re working on things. They drop an unfinished piece of software in the market and that’s good communication.
As I mentioned, I might be a bit biased. (Which is why you won’t find me writing any of the upcoming content on Lightroom over on our CreativeSuite.MacCreate.com.
In any case, we’ll be playing with LR 3 Beta 1 and impartial users will be writing tutorials on it. I’m going to go back to using Aperture 2, so that I can cool down.
Enjoy this Post? Share it on your favorite social bookmarking site...
Author: David Schloss
David Schloss is the director of the Mac Create Network and the Aperture Users Network, a professional photographer, writer, editor and photographic educator who specializes adventure sports, travel and lifestyle photography. Schloss is the author of the books Blue Pixel Personal Photo Coach: Digital Photography Tips from the Trenches and Blue Pixel Guide to Travel Photography: Perfect Photos Every Time. Schloss is the former Technical Editor for Photo District News, a position he held for six years.
9 Comments
David Heylen (1 comments.)
October 22nd, 2009
Me resisto a usar LR3 en mi iMac por la sencilla razón de que si Apple construye un programa para sus maquinas este debe de ser lo mejor para la plataforma. Desde que uso Aperture 2, estoy más que satisfecho, pero creo que ya va siendo hora de una actualización.
¿Hay algún movimiento de Apple a este respecto?
Gerald
October 22nd, 2009
Looks like there will an Apple Aperture 3. A book for pre-order has showed up on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Aperture-Workflow-Digital-Photographers/dp/0240521781/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256238934&sr=8-2
Connie
October 23rd, 2009
quote;
More performance is always good, in fact that was the main goal of Aperture 2, so nice to see Adobe catching up to that
/quote
I am sorry, but poor peformance is what has kept me away from Aperture.
Speed is important for me.
Wayne
October 23rd, 2009
I’ve never had much of a problem with Aperture 2 and performance. And I have not yet seen the new Lightroom 3, or 2 for that matter! What I do know, though, is that you say your using 3rd party tools in Aperture to make up for it’s shortcomings, (as am I,) so it’s no big deal that Lightroom has is built in now. (At least, that’s the spirit of what your saying?) I guess that’s no big deal, really, except for the fact that every picture that I use a 3rd party tool with blows up to 25 MB vs. the original 5 or so. It might be that I’m doing something wrong, I don’t know, but that’s my take. I’d much rather have it built in just for this problem.
David Schloss
October 24th, 2009
No, that’s not exactly what I was saying Wayne. But your’e right that my point was a bit off. I’m saying two things.
1) A film grain tool isn’t the sort of thing I’d make a whole new-feature listing about. I mean I’d love to have more tools, I’m just not sure that one is so in demand that it needs it’s own adjustment? Maybe I’m wrong, naturally. It’s just my opinion.
But your’e right, it’s better to have something built in than a plug-in, if it’s used a lot.
2) The other side of that was the notion that they now have export tools to send things to sharing
Mark Alan Thomas (1 comments.)
October 24th, 2009
I actually wrote to Apple asking that they add a non-destructive film grain plug-in to Aperture because I detest the look of even the best luminance noise reduction. Then it shows up in Lightroom first. Ironic.
But I have to say the new import dialog in Lightroom 3 is atrocious. I understand what they’re trying to do, but as with the Lightroom GUI in general, Adobe keeps demonstrating that they have no real understanding of what makes good GUIs good. Lightroom is the most cluttered, clunky app I’ve ever used. If it weren’t camera raw underneath it all, it would have bombed in the marketplace.
Simon (1 comments.)
October 24th, 2009
I love Aperture and have been on board since version 1, but I have to say I feel like I’ve been left hanging by Apple. I have an early 2009 iMac with a C2Duo 3.06ghz processor, 4GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 4850 graphics card with 512MB of RAM. All of this, just so I can get respectable performance out of Aperture 2. Meanwhile, I fired up a demo of LR on my aging MacBook Pro (2.33ghz C2Duo) and it cruises along with no problem. It’s a pretty big discrepancy. I have no real intentions of switching to Lightroom, but it would just make me feel better if I heard definitive info from Apple that they were working to update the software, and address some of these issues.
Paulo
October 28th, 2009
I used to use Aperture 1 as my main tool and switched over to Lightroom 1.4 after finding that performance was much better. Eventually I upgraded both Aperture and Lightroom their versions 2 and still preferred to use Lightroom.
The fact that Adobe is developing a version 3 of LR is actually quite a good thing on its own as there’s no definitive news about a new version of Aperture any time soon so I think credit should be given to their continued support for photographers.
I do agree that the list of new features in LR 3 looks a tad meagre.
Neil2112
November 1st, 2009
I am a pro. My camera pays my mortgage. I read every forum and got the demo of both Ap2 and Lr2 to give them a good thrashing. I uploaded the same 1200 image wedding shoot to each and put them through their paces. My goal was to attempt to prove that Ap was better despite what the malcontents were saying online. I’m a Mac fan and I would just prefer to be sitting in front of the slicker Ap UI.
Ok. The verdict?
Lightroom drop kicked Aperture out of contention so convincingly it was ridiculous. Yes the Lr UI sucks but the main reason I use such an app is to process large numbers of images fast. The Ap test started with the app ingesting the images about 4 times slower that Lr. It was downhill from there. And it has nothing to do with hardware, look at the comment from Simon there above me.
Apple, I hope you’re reading this. Ap3 had better be stinking fast. I could care less if you copy every last feature of Lr, just make it fast. Adobe has seriously fumbled the ball with this boring new version of Lr. They even kept the stupid end panel markers. Now’s your chance. I want to come back to Ap but you have to make something totally compelling, Lr is really that much better.