Lightroom 3 Beta vs. buying Lightroom 2?

[jsrockit]

Is the Lightroom 3 Beta stable enough to use until 3 comes out or should I just buy Lightroom 2 and forget about Lightroom 3.

I'll be a new user and feel like I have enough to learn with regards to Lightroom, so I don't want to use 3 if it isn't up to par yet. That said, I wouldn't mind using the 3 as a free version until its available to buy if it works sufficiently. I'll be using it on a Macbook Pro and using a HP B8850 to print.

 

[martin s]

Lr 3 Beta is very stable and in my opinion reliable (on a Mac), I've used it with a huge load of pictures since release - but, to use a Beta program without backup or as only program isn't a good idea.

If your an amateur I'd say go for Lr3, backup a lot, and so on, later upgrade to the full version. If you have any kind of deadline I wouldn't mess with it.

martin

 

[jsrockit]

Yes, I'm only doing this for fun, not as a profession. Also, I'm not the type to take a ton of photos... I can always buy 2 right away if 3 doesn't work out.

 

[Harrejesus]

Anybody that know of any release date for LR3?

 

[jsrockit]

The thing I noticed is that the Beta will expire in April 2010.

 

[gavinlg]

LR3 Beta is significantly better than LR2.5

I wouldn't bother with 2.5

 

[jsrockit]

Cool...that'll put off payment for a few months and I'll use the cash on some paper or something. 🙂

 

[martin s]

Today I imported more files into Lightroom 3 Beta and really started using it - it turned out to be pretty unstable, freezing the iMac a bunch of times. I dealt with M8-DNG-files primarily, and one huge issue is the preview rendering (1:1 especially) - takes a lot longer than with Lr 2(.5), which seems to be a bug reported on other websites also.

Also selecting and deselecting doesn't work all that well, especially with the keyboard. If you for example mark a bunch of images in a row and stack them, Lr will keep the selection with the same amount of previously selected images applied to the chronologically next ones.

And the worst might be that Adobe deactivated noise reduction for newly imported files (with files imported from Lr2 nr can still be applied), except for color noise.


martin

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

I don't typically use luminance noise reduction, so the absence of it is no big deal to me. But the color noise reduction is so massively improved in LR3 that I have entirely adopted the program. I just started a new library and will merge it with the 2.5 one when LR3 is officially released.

LR3 is definitely not optimized yet, so it's very slow if your computer's not up to date, but I actually bought a slave drive for my desktop and moved all my photos over to it, and this is making the program quite fast...it doesn't seem to like polling the OS drive for files in its current incarnation--at least on XP.

I also wiped my OS and installed the totally illegal TinyXP, which is stunningly superior (cleaner, faster, more stable) than the OEM version I actually own.

 

[martin s]

Agreed, color noise reduction is _amazing - I attached an example. It's an M8.2 file shot at 1250 ISO, 300% view.

By the way, I run Lr 3 Beta on a very capable iMac (3.06 GHz, 8 GB ram) and it still takes roughly 5 seconds for the preview to load.

martin

 

[jpmac55]

I'm assuming Aperture is not going to be keeping up with LR, at least as far as supported raw files/camera's. My Leica Dlux4 and future micro 4/3 missed Apertures recent cut. So I'm considering swapping to LR. I'm not a big fan of post production work and cringe about learning something new.

Needing all the help as I can get, will LR3 have the same tutorials and support as LR2 will likely have?

 

[martin s]

I'm assuming Aperture is not going to be keeping up with LR, at least as far as supported raw files/camera's. My Leica Dlux4 and future micro 4/3 missed Apertures recent cut. So I'm considering swapping to LR. I'm not a big fan of post production work and cringe about learning something new.

Needing all the help as I can get, will LR3 have the same tutorials and support as LR2 will likely have?

Yes - it already has! You could get a monthly subscription to Lynda.com (about 40 dollars) and watch all the videos about Lr2 and 3, they're similar enough (for now).

martin

 

[ChrisN]

Can LR3 beta import a LR 1.4 catalog?

 

[martin s]

Yes, but there's no going back (as in importing an Lr3 catalog in 2.*).

martin