(Source: Business Wire)
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today introduced Adobe®
Photoshop® Lightroom® 3 beta software for Macintosh and Windows®, a
public preview of new and improved functionality to be delivered in the
next major release. Lightroom is the essential digital photography
workflow solution, helping serious amateur and professional
photographers quickly import, manage, enhance and showcase all their
images from one application. Available as a free download on Adobe Labs,
Lightroom 3 beta delivers a preview of new tools that will be in
Lightroom 3, including more intuitive importing, unparalleled noise
reduction and sharpening tools, enhanced slideshow capabilities and
direct publishing to online photo sharing sites like Flickr®. Adobe
encourages photographers to test this early selection of new features
and provide the product team with their feedback.
"We are extremely fortunate that a strong community of photographers
have rallied around Lightroom, helping to evolve the application and
making it a meaningful part of their photographic workflows," said Kevin
Connor, vice president of product management for Professional Digital
Imaging at Adobe. "While we're still hard at work on Lightroom 3, we
recognize the value our customers bring to the development process and
want their input so we can deliver the best final product possible."
New in Lightroom 3 Beta
Lightroom 3 beta has been completely redesigned with under-the-hood
efficiencies to better handle growing image libraries and improve
responsiveness with a higher-quality processing engine. In the Library
module, a rebuilt import system makes bringing photos into the software
more intuitive. Users can easily specify the source and destination of
their images, and save common processing, metadata or destination
settings as easy-to-reuse presets.
The Library module also includes new capabilities to publish collections
on popular photo-sharing sites. Flickr users now have direct access to
their accounts from within Lightroom and can drag and drop images
directly into their Photostreams. Flickr Pro account users can
automatically synch their images and even view comments made on Flickr
directly within the Library. This functionality can be extended to
additional sites by adding them as new plug-ins once they become
available.
In the Develop module, an overhauled processing engine allows users to
create the highest quality images. Improved Capture Sharpening and Color
Noise Reduction tools provide superior results while still preserving an
image's edge detail and contrast.
