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Adobe Labs Rolls Out Improved Lightroom Beta 3

The second major update to the Lightroom Public Beta is now available on Adobe Labs. Project Lightroom is Adobe’s effort to engage the professional photography community in a new way by building the software from the ground up by photographers, for photographers, and thus helping solve unique workflow challenges. The beta 3 release includes support for several new raw camera foramts, and many new features and enhancements. This is a substantial upgrade from Beta 2, including a new module called 'web', which includes an updated HTML gallery output. Some of the new features in the update include:

An option to write out XMP sidecar files automatically
The Export dialog supports specifying the resolution of the exported file.
Before and After previews provide live comparison of image adjustments
Enhanced cropping including an additional straighten tool
The History panel automatically and independently keeps track of the changes applied to each image
The new web module comes with two pre-installed web templates : one based on HTML and one based on Flash
The Adobe Color Engine(ACE) for color management, brings Lightroom output closer in line with other Adobe applications
Black point compensation is available when printing with a custom printer profile
Print settings are automatically saved per collection
Relative rendering intent is now functional

Most of the initial users of Beta 3 echoed positive feedback about the new update. "[...] my first impressions are very favorable. I think it now runs much fatser on my 17" iMac, it no longer takes hours (not literally) to preview the thumbnails and doesn't crash whilst scrolling through the whole library. The new interface is good too, I like the ability to see a before and after window. This is especially usefull for sharpening so you can see the effect fully.", said one of the early adopters on the lightroom beta general discussion list.

Two downloads are available, the Lightroom application and the Lightroom application with sample content to jump start your Lightroom experience. Download and launch the disk image(.dmg) then drag Lightroom to the Applications folder.


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