Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Review

The first big feature that many Lightroom fans will enjoy is the new noise reduction implementation. This is built-in to the Develop module, and no longer requires the plug-ins or work-arounds that some of you may have used in Lightroom 2. It allows you to adjust color and luminance noise in your images, and is actually very good at doing what it is supposed to do. Caution needs to be exercised to make sure that you don't go too far and smooth out your detail too much, but definite improvements can be seen when using this tool.

 

Another new addition is the introduction of automatic lens adjustments that are based on some preset lens profiles that Adobe has built-in to the software. You can select from a number of popular Nikon, Canon or Sigma lens profiles, and Lightroom 3 will adjust your picture according to what it knows about the characteristics of your lens. The selection of lens profiles may seem small, but Adobe has instructions on how to create your own lens profiles to add to Lightroom 3. Or, in the manual tab of the lens correction adjustments, you can also manually adjust for keystone distortion with horizontal, vertical and rotational sliders.

 

The watermark functionality has been updated to be more flexible and provide more options for photographers. Watermarks can be text or logos now, they can have their opacity, size, and position all adjusted with ease, and they can be saved as presets for future projects. The Library module has also had some updates to the import engine to make it speedier and easier to navigate, but the functionality is essentially the same.

 

Publishing to the web has been made easier with drag and drop functionality to post to your Flickr account. Simply authorize your account to receive uploads from Lightroom 3, and then drag the images you want to Lightroom's Flickr logo and it will upload, and sync any changes to images you choose.

 

Creating contact sheets and print layouts is now easier than ever, with all restrictions on layouts removed. You can create whatever you want, and have any number of frames on a page at one time. You can use standard sizes, or custom sizes, and really this is a big improvement for Lightroom 3 that many people will be glad to see included. Finished products can be printed or exported as jpegs.

 

Another popular update will surely be the ability to add music to picture slideshows. Select your photos, upload your music track, and Lightroom 3 will automatically work out how long each slide should be. You can also add an intro and exit screen that you can include text or graphics on. There is no control over transitions or individual slide timing, but Lightroom still does a good job of producing some professional looking slideshows that can be rendered up to 1080p.

 

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