If you currently are using Lightroom2 or lower, should you update to Lr3?
The answer by popular acclaim is yes. Why you might well ask? My answer is for two very critical functions that have been updated to the level of "professional". They are sharpening and noise reduction. These two related, image refinement functions have been improved to the point where they can be readily seen making your image over into what you had envisioned when you captured it. Yes, there are many other improvements in Lr3; but nothing to the level that would make you upgrade from Lr2 to Lr3 were it not for these two tools.
Now I’ll tell the true, I’m new to Lightroom and have just started using Lr3. I had it for several weeks and fought my way to learning the rudiments of its use and application to my images. I started my learning by using Scott Kelby’s tutorial, "The adobe Photoshop Lightroom3 book for Digital Photogrsaphers" published by New Riders 2010. Frankly, I found the book to be every bit as verbose as its title and both difficult and non-disclosing as the software it was discoursing on!
I then got a copy of a training video created by Michael Reichmann and Jeff Schewe covering Lr1. It was interesting to note the basic design hadn’t changed very much from 1.0 to my level 3.3. Everything seemed to be very much the same. Thus I was left with basic questions of what was new and how had things changed in the intervening 4-5 years? So I went to
I did download the sample and found it to be useful and to my taste. I’ve since bought the complete video and can recommend it the best way to learn Lr3 and all of its subtleties of use. These two guys present the training in a very friendly and with full understanding of its use.
I could have saved my time and money left Kelby’s tome on the shelf. I’ve gotten more from my first viewing of the video than two entire weeks of trying to read and understand the book. Sometimes I had to use a magnifying glass to see the bloody illustrative images. I had no such problems viewing the Lr3 images on my 21" monitor.
What am I touting here? Surely Lr3 is a fully recommended buy for the PC user and a dealer’s choice on the MAC. What I would really like to recommend is the training video for Lr3 produced by Luminous-Landscape as the best way to go when you do decide to upgrade or buy Lr3.
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