Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Upgrade Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have been using LR since v1. The last 2 revisions have brought significant improvements.
With v2 the standout benefit for me was the local adjustments brush (that alone made the upgrade a no-brainer.
With v3 I wasn't as eager to buy another upgrade - UNTIL I tried it out and noticed that after "updating" views of my images to use the "2010 process" the difference jumped out at me (particularly those at ISO 800+).
The higher ISO RAW files from an Olympus E-1 and E-300 suddenly looked demonstrably better (same with files from my E-3).
Noise reduction in Lightroom has always been less-than-stellar and I've been saving my pennies to buy a "real" noise reduction program for ~$100.
I am SO glad that I held off buying a separate noise reduction program until after I tested LR3 - I was about to pay just about the same price as the LR3 upgrade just for a noise reduction program!
IMO, the noise reduction now integrated into LR3 is the BEST that I have yet seen.
Another tool which I've pined for was a USABLE watermarking tool. FINALLY it is here!
Thanks Adobe (even though you really should've had this in there from the get-go.
There are a number of other tweaks that I've noticed (with a smile) - a bit of a speed increase (thanks to true 64bit support), a little more power in working with Black & White renderings and the lens profiles are fantastically useful (for me).
If you are on the fence as to whether you really want to buy this upgrade or wait for the next version just answer the following questions:
1 - Do you shoot primarily in JPG? The image processing engine won't mean as much to you.
2 - Does your camera already have excellent high-iso noise characteristics? This upgrade won't be the revelation it was to me.
3 - Do you not really care about watermarking? One less reason to upgrade.
4 - Are you running on a 32bit system or with

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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 software delivers sweeping new capabilities to help you bring out the best in your photography. Accelerated performance makes key tasks quicker, and now you can manage video files from most digital SLR cameras side-by-side with your still photos. Perfect your images with new nondestructive editing tools, including world-class noise reduction and lens correction. Showcase your work with greater style and impact using more customizable print layouts, captivating slide show videos with music, streamlined publishing to online photo-sharing sites, and more.

Top reasons to upgrade to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
Accelerated performance Get your digital photography tasks done fast and have more time to shoot and promote your work. Already quick performance has been dramatically accelerated in Lightroom 3, saving you time from first look to final image.
Superior noise reduction Achieve amazing, natural-looking results from your high ISO images with all-new state-of-the-art noise reduction technology. You won't need more than what's built into Lightroom 3 to get the cleanest images at any ISO.
Lens correction Quickly and easily perfect your images by automatically reducing lens defects like geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting with single-click profiles. Even images from the best lenses will be improved.
Support for DSLR video files New support for video files from most digital SLR cameras lets you easily manage and organize both still photographs and video files side-by-side.
Image watermarking Easily embed your identity or your brand and logo in your images with more options for customizing their look. The new watermarking tool lets you apply text or graphic watermarks to a photo with adjustable size, position, and opacity.
Flickr integration Use Lightroom seamlessly with Flickr, a Yahoo! service. When friends or clients post comments and ratings on your Flickr galleries, you can immediately see their feedback in the Lightroom 3 Library alongside your images.
Easy-to-share slide show videos with music Show your images to clients, friends, or family with more style and flair using elegant slide shows with music. Slide shows are a breeze to create, and you can share them easily by exporting them as videos, even in high definition.
Easy image importing Save time with fast image importing. The newly designed import interface is easy to set up and navigate with clear visual indications of where your photos will be located and how they'll be organized after you've downloaded them.
Tethered shooting Instantly import and view images as you shoot them with tethered capture, available for select cameras. Use it to make an immediate, highly detailed check of your shot, the lighting, or the shooting setup. Or get instant feedback from clients or subjects.
Perspective correction Get more natural-looking results by applying powerful, nondestructive perspective corrections to your images. Reduce or eliminate the distortion that can occur, for example, when you take a photograph with the camera pointed upwards, causing buildings to appear to be leaning backwards in your image.
More flexible print layout Showcase your work in more creative formats using highly customizable print layouts, which you can save as reusable templates. With the new custom print layout creation tool, you just drag one image or several different shots onto a page and resize or reposition them as you like.
Film grain simulation Use new sliders to easily control the amount, size, and roughness of grain that you can add to your images to simulate the look of film.

Simplify Photography From Shoot to Finish
Nondestructive editing environment Set your creativity free in a nondestructive editing environment that encourages experimentation. Your original images are always safely unaltered, and it's easy to reverse your steps or save multiple versions of any photo.
Superior image processing Get the absolute best from your images with state-of-the-art image processing controls that work with raw files from more than 290 camera models as well as JPEG, TIFF, and other file formats. Make precise overall adjustments or correct targeted areas for just the look you want. Dodge and burn, convert to black-and-white, add grain, reduce noise, adjust sharpness, create vignettes, and more.
Intuitive environment Be more productive and efficient, and enjoy the freedom and creativity that comes from working with excellent tools designed specifically for photographers. The intuitive environment and controls of Lightroom are easy to master and let you quickly and smoothly accomplish your essential photography tasks.
Accelerated performance Get your digital photography tasks done fast and have more time to shoot and promote your work. Already quick performance has been dramatically accelerated in Lightroom 3, saving you time from first look to final image.
Image management Take advantage of a powerful suite of image management features to organize your photographs, flexibly rate and label them, and find them easily using a wide range of metadata tags and information.
Superior noise reduction Achieve amazing, natural-looking results from your high ISO images with all-new state-of-the-art noise reduction technology. You won't need more than what's built in to Lightroom 3 to get the cleanest images at any ISO.
One-click adjustments for multiple images Save time when processing photographs that were shot under consistent conditions by applying the same Develop settings to all the images in a group at once using presets or the sync feature.
Flickr integration Use Lightroom seamlessly with Flickr, a Yahoo! service. When friends or clients post comments and ratings on your Flickr galleries, you can immediately see their feedback in the Lightroom 3 Library alongside your images.
Fast performance across platforms Speed up day-to-day imaging tasks and process your images faster by taking advantage of cross-platform 64-bit support. Use the advanced memory handling capabilities of the latest Mac OS and Windows operating systems.
Develop presets Save time by instantly applying favorite looks to images. When you've perfected a look that you particularly like for an image—a high-contrast black-and-white effect or a super saturated color look, for example—you simply save the settings as a preset and apply it to your other photographs at any time. Many presets are included with Lightroom, and thousands more are available from the thriving worldwide community of Lightroom photographers and experts.
Easy-to-share slide show videos with music Show your images to clients, friends, or family with more style and flair using elegant slide shows with music. Slide shows are a breeze to create, and you can share them easily by exporting them as videos, even in high definition.
Tethered shooting Instantly import and view images as you shoot them with tethered capture, available for select cameras. Use it to make an immediate, highly detailed check of your shot, the lighting, or the shooting setup. Or get instant feedback from clients or subjects.
Tight Photoshop integration Select one or multiple photos and then automatically open them in Adobe Photoshop for detailed, pixel-level editing or to merge multiple photos into a panorama, a high dynamic range photo, or a multilayered file. After making your edits in Photoshop, see the results immediately back in Lightroom.

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