Sean has written Direct Timelapse Video Export from Lightroom for Lightroom News and it is well worth a read.

Generally there is a lot to praise about the new dialog. Not only are there the different views, Expanded and Compact but there are many more useful options.

Compact View will be very useful for photographers who have a consistent workflow where they simply wish to import everything from a consistent source (say, a CF card) to a consistent destination. Import Presets will help apply your preferred settings too.

The sooner that you are able to set up a consistent preset, the sooner you can use the Compact view, but if you want to check the files you are importing, maybe to decide whether to import or not (you can do this using P to select and U and X to unselect), then the Expanded View will be essential.

However, I find the Expanded view to be unhelpful and overwhelming.
In my other life, I am a UI Designer and for me the Expanded View breaks the visual link that you might expect between source and destination, beacuse they are too far apart. It is less obvious on a laptop screen, even up to 17″ but on a Desktop monitor with potentially 23-30″ of screen real estate the problems appear.

In part, this is down to the panel metaphor that Lightroom has. It works really well in the other modules, where sorting, organising and presetting occurs on the left and fine tuning is on the right. These are generally separate areas for the user to focus on and you don’t have to worry about what is occurring on the left side to use the right hand panels. Plus, of course, you can hide panels if you use them less frequently, or wish to have more real estate for the image.

The new Import Dialog appears using a ‘lightbox’ effect (like the Javascript effect you see on some websites). In Expanded View it retains the panel views from other areas of Lightroom, but this time you have to make this visual link between left (source) and right (destination) when Copying as DNG, Copying, or Moving. There is a lot to take in – lots of eye movement to work out what you are actually doing. The best method to approach it is probably to keep focused on the left side then look at the right side but not to flick between the two.

There are a couple of solutions to this.

The first would be to make the ‘lightbox’ itself resizable. At the moment you can resize the whole window, but if you do that you lose the advantage that the ‘lightbox’ offers which is to focus the eye on the content. If you make the ‘lightbox’ resizable then you can reduce the distance from source to destination. The downside being to make the Thumbnail/Loupe view smaller.

The second way would be to alter the panel setup just for this dialog. After all, the fact that it is in a ‘lightbox’ and not a normal view, means it doesn’t have to follow the same concepts so long as it still retains the basic look and feel.

So here I propose a rejig – it is not a pixel perfect reworking, just a quick rework to show possibilities.

So here the source and destination are next to each other and the Thumbnail and Loupe are on the right. I have also rejigged the top panel to show, source, destination then import method as this makes more sense with the panel moves.

I haven’t used Aperture for a while now and I have a sneaky memory that this is not dissimilar to Apple’s Import dialog. But, firstly, if it works, then why not?, and secondly, it is not as though Aperture gets much love from Apple, so maybe it is on the way out.
The compact view could follow this pattern too.

Aside from these gripes, there are enough improvements to to make this a leap forward from the 1.x and 2.x Import dialogs. Import Presets, as mentioned, are a good addition allowing more automation. The speed and quality of the thumbnails and loupe is much faster. The Rename Panel has more options. and Thumbnail and Loupe mode really helps cull the cullable.And generally it looks prettier and fits into the Lightroom theme better than the old one ever did.

The other feature that I think will be really appreciated is that the Source panel also doubles up as a File Browser for all the images on your disk, wherever they reside.

And finally, the much requested addition to supported file formats has come to pass. CMYK, Lab and Greyscale (Black and White) files can be imported, but CMYK files will, in effect, be treated as RGB files for their colour space and for Export Original purposes.

(* thanks to John Beardsworth for reminding me I had used the word ‘experience’!)

Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape takes a look at the Public Beta as well as the benefits to Adobe of the Public Beta process.

Ian Lyons also looks in depth at the new features at Computer Darkroom.

John Beardsworth has a round-up of other resources as well as six quick tips: Collections in Develop, Slideshow Export, Publish Services, Black and White (YAY!), Filter Lock and stickiness, and Auto-Sync.

Victoria Bampton, The Lightroom Queen, has updated her Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta: The Missing FAQ book, which is a rough cut ebook. Eric Scouten one of the Lightroom Team said of it. “I have to give her credit for teaching me a few things that were in the release.”

NAAP has a Lightroom 3 Resource Center.

This version is not feature complete but is a viable snapshot in time. Suffice to say, there is more to come!

WORDS OF CAUTION!

• This beta won’t upgrade previous Libraries, please use it on separate copies of files, for ultimate safety.
• The beta will coexist with 1.x and 2.x versions.
• Develop Settings created and applied during your use of the beta may not transfer to the final version

New in Lightroom 3 Beta

Fundamental reworking and updating of the core ‘engine block’ of the application. This is to ensure that the basic architecture is set for the the increased demands of large and numerous Raw files from modern digital SLRs.

The Raw processing engine has received an overhaul so you should see improved demosaicing, sharpening and  noise reduction.

New Import experience
with a compact and expanded view depending on your preference.

Publish Collections
Direct access sites such as Flickr, with the ability to pull comments back into the Library. Developers can create Plug-ins for other services, which will perform the same functions

Image Quality
Sharpening and Noise Reduction: although this feature is not fully finished you will see improved algorithms being used to extract detail from your images. Luminance Noise reduction is disabled for this beta, but you should focus on Color Noise Reduction and Capture Sharpening.

Grain: A new grain tool allows you to create film and creative effects for your images

Vignette: Following feedback, the post-crop vignette tool has been improved and you now have more options for subtlety with Color Priority and Highlight Priority modes.

Process Version: The process version specifies which version of certain Camera Raw image processing elements should be used when rendering and editing files. Process Version can affect raw, DNG, TIFF, JPEG, and PSD files.
To update to the latest Process Version you select the notification triangle that includes an exclamation point above the left hand side of the histogram.

Slideshow Export
You can  now export high quality movies of your Slideshows in H.264 format.

Custom Print Package
There is a new custom layout version for photographers who desire complete control

Watermarking
This lets you embed your identity or other information in your images. You can apply text or graphic watermarks to a photograph with adjustable size, position, and
opacity. This is available in the Print and Web modules as well as the Export dialog.

There are lots of other minor features ,which you can find out in the release notes, on the Labs forums and in posts from other Lightroom testers.

Other Links
Lightroom Journal, Lightroom News, Lightroom Blog, Jeffrey Friedl, Lightroom Queen, Lightroom Secrets, Ian Lyons, John Beardsworth, Utiliser Lightroom (French),  Photo News (Portuguese), and Lightroomers.

John Nack has posted the results showing that Lightroom seems to be gaining in popularity over Aperture.

A healthy dose of reality to mention that Aperture is Mac only whereas Lightroom is cross-platform.

• Nikon D300s
• Nikon D3000
• Olympus E-P1
• Panasonic DMC-FZ35
• Panasonic DMC-GF1

There are some issues to note regarding the Panasonic DMC-FZ35, please check Lightroom Journal for the details.

Camera Raw 5.5 and Lightroom 2.5 include a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Bayer sensor cameras with unequal green response. Olympus, Panasonic and Sony are among the more popular camera manufacturers affected by this change. But the demosaic correction provides only a subtle visual improvement to the processing of those raw files.

Lightroom 2.5 corrects for the following problem in Lightroom 2.4. Lightroom 2.4 on Windows continued to display the import dialog when a memory card was detected regardless of the preference setting “Show import dialog when a memory card is detected.”

Lightroom 2.5 is available at: Macintosh | Windows

Adobe Camera Raw 5.5 is available at: Macintosh | Windows

I really like the idea of an Incubator Catalog, and one I tend to use when away on shoots. Some of the deeper aspects are probably more down to how you shoot and won’t be to all tastes, but it is well worth a read.

The Presets that were released then are still available – check out the menu on the right hand side. You will find some originals that aren’t available elsewhere.