For those that may no know. Lightroom 3 Beta is now available for free till April

benhasajeep · Oct 27, 2009

If you have Lightroom 1 / 2, or if you just want to try Lightroom. Lightroom 3 Beta version is now available for free download and use till April. This is full version (but may not be final, and may have bugs). But its a working version of Lightroom.

Check about Adobes' site for the download.

NateWagner · Oct 27, 2009

awesome... I heard they improved the sharpening and the vignettes

PhotoXopher · Oct 27, 2009

Thanks for the info!

inTempus · Oct 27, 2009

Yeah, I'm running it. It's 64bit which is nice. There are some cool new features too. It looks like a nice update to 2.5 which I'm running. Given it's a beta I can't really trust it with my workflow... but it's nice to see what's coming.

Sw1tchFX · Oct 28, 2009

I made some posts about this, i'm not sure how i feel about the way it translates noise, there seems to be alot of white spots in the shadows which LR 1/2.5 don't have. However the sharpening is nice for sure.

It is a little faster too when in the library or develop module, which is nice.

I also hate the new import tool. It's incredibly slow for searching. I like the old way better.

I have mixed feelings about it.

Dominantly · Oct 28, 2009

What are the benefits of lightroom over say Elements?
What is it mainly used for, I mean does it offer the same spread of editing tools/features?

Garbz · Oct 28, 2009

Two completely different systems and workflows. Lightroom is dedicated to non-destructive raw editing en mass. Elements is dedicated to permanent pixel level alterations of standard bitmap files.

When you open a RAW file with elements you will see the Adobe CameraRAW plugin open the file. Lightroom is essentially a giant program dedicated to providing a workflow around this plugin. So if you only edit one picture at a time then you gain no benefit of using Lightroom over the CameraRAW plugin. If you however would like to sort, batch edit, synchronise settings, print, export and otherwise work with sets of images then Lightroom is THE tool for the job in my opinion.