By Scott Koegler
This week, we continue our look at the new Adobe Lightroom 3. This time, I'll look at some slick, new editing features.
Developing and RAW processing
Once images are stored in Lightroom, the next step is to edit them, or in Lightroom's terminology: develop them. Lightroom has always had the tools necessary to handle most editing tasks, but some of them were not quite up to what we had come to expect in Photoshop.
But Lightroom 3 is now on par with Photoshop CS5 in many respects, due mainly to the shared components like RAW image processing. The new RAW processor is better than previous versions all around, but even more important is the fact that the advanced processing functions that were previously available only to shooters creating RAW files are now used by Lightroom 3 to process TIFF and JPEG files.
This means all photos can benefit from the availability of wider ranges of adjustments that were only available in RAW files. Of course, this doesn't mean that the typical JPEG image will deliver the same latitude for correction as a similar RAW file, but it does expand the range. And coupled with the other development advances, can make a big difference in our images.
Noise reduction
Noise reduction has been substantially improved in LR3. If you push the tonal and exposure controls beyond minor adjustments, or if you're shooting at high ISO levels, you'll immediately fall in love with LR3's noise reduction improvements. The accompanying before/after shots show an example of the kind of changes that are possible. Take a look at the before image.
FIGURE AImage may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Look at the zoom-in of the before image. (click for larger image)
This section of detail is shown as a 3:1 representing a very small area of the photo. Noise reduction works particularly well on large single color areas like the sky in this shot, as you can see in the after image.
FIGURE BImage may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Here's another example. (click for larger image)
On thing to be aware of when working on images that you've already imported to Lightroom has to do with the way images are processed. The new processor, termed '2010' takes advantage of the new camera raw facility. But simply opening existing images in the new LR3 does not automatically convert the processing to take advantage of the 2010 process.
In fact, if you start to make adjustments using sharpening or noise reduction on a previously edited image, you are unlikely to see the dramatic difference that you can see in the examples here. When you bring an image into the Develop module, look for a small exclamation point in the bottom right of the image and click it.
You will see a dialog box that asks if it is ok to convert to the new process. You can view the changes in store and determine if this particular image should be updated. I haven't found any of my images that don't benefit from the new process, so I checked the "Don't ask again..." box, as shown in Figure C. The difference is dramatic.
