just finished. $99 for upgrade. It converted my previous 2.x catalog to a 3.x format catalog (though I could have skipped that). You can see the obvious additions on their upgrade page. I’m curious to see what else has been added; and what they mean when they say they’ve speeded it up.
Picture is from a few nights ago – Fifth Avenue – Villon? window. It’s the latest hairstyle for Lightroom users.
1. The first time you load an image (I think it was in Development module) there’s a yellow exclamation mark in lower right corner. Click it you get a pop-up box which says there may be slight differences in noise reduction between former LR and current LR3 version. You get a split screen showing slight differences between former LR2 and LR3. You can a) see that box with the differences again and select one and / or tell it to use this for all images in the filmstrip.
In the development module, in the calibration section (bottom) is a new parameter called Process, which can be set to 2010 or 2003. Currently I have set everything to 2010.
I was working on print of Subway Car Interior which is a heavy midtone picture. It seemed to me that the LR3 was a touch darker in the highlights, but I couldn’t swear to it. Anyway – the original looked slightly brighter and I went with that.
Next print was Basketball Silhouette. I used the new NR for this one.
So how to set all images to the 2010 process?
I don’t want to have to decide for each image which process to use. There should be (somewhere) a switch to change all images to the 2010 process, but I didn’t see that. You could make it part of your import preset – but for all the current images, here’s one way.
In Develop Module, pick the first image in the filmstrip, set the process for that first image to 2010 (there are many ways to do this – see top menu and process options), or click on the exclamation mark. Then select the images you want to set to 2010 process and click on SYNC (not the new thing – auto-sync), click off all the attributes, and then make sure that just the Process tab is clicked to 2010. And well, click SYNCHRONIZE. What is supposed to happen (at least it does for me) is that only the one process attribute will be synced to all the selected images. None of the other attributes will be effected.
2. There’s a ton of new presets for the development section. I mean a ton. Just to give you an idea:
You’ve got like 15 more black and white filters
And presets that will give you various types of sharpening; presets that do rounded corners; presets for various types of film grain; things that have no meaning to me like “beach bypass.”
3. Help has changed. When you search for something in help, if there’s a menu selection to do the job, a floating box pops up with an arrow pointing to actual menu item to use. It’s sort of ugly looking but probably a good idea.
4. I mentioned that Lightroom 3 with the new catalog structure is a lot faster. One place you really notice this is when you add file to a folder and hit synchronize. This is at least twice as fast, maybe more than it was before (and I’m talking about on the same machine). In a folder with about 500 large files, it pops up with the new files in a few seconds.
My understanding from brief reading is that assuming you use their new ‘rendering engine’ which facilitates many of the new features available in Noise reduction, sharpness, etc., it might be a little slower. So they say. But I could be wrong. You’re on a Mac now, however, so I’m sure on balance it will be a Good Thing.
.-= Chris Klug´s last blog ..Famous Blue Raincoat =-.