Photoshop Lightroom 3 BETA Available for Free Download
You know, while we’re at celebrating the 20th anniversary of Photoshop with Adobe, we should mention that they do have a trial download of Lightroom 3 Beta. This is a nice opportunity to test out the next coming version of Lightroom, or getting your feet wet before you decide to move up to Lightroom as part of your overall digital darkroom solution.
I’ve had Lightroom 3 Beta downloaded for a few months now, and am developing a web based course on Lightroom and Photoshop integration. I’ve been pleasantly suprised how bug free and smooth the Beta version has been. This has always been a good product by Adobe, and they do take their time and get their new releases right. I personally use Lightroom for my personal work, and would recommend it to any photographer above the “occasional” range of expertise.
At a minimum, Lightroom is a great “front end” for Photoshop or Elements, yes, it integrates nicely to both, serving as both a super-charged image organizer, and then a Camera Raw converter/color corrector/image output /slideshow creator that will serve as a great image editor to many.
I’ve used Lightroom in the past for all my wedding work, as well as half the digital wedding photographers out there primarily for one reason, speed of processing hundreds of images at a time. For the rest of the photographers out there, its a very good, state-of -the-art image organizer and image correction tool (I shouldn’t say “image editor”, as the term “editing” indicates what Photoshop or Elements is for, and what Lightroom really isn’t).
The BETA is available for download at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/?promoid=FDEKT. The software will operate fully on your computer until April 30th, 2010. At that time, we suspect the retail version will then be available. We’ll announce all the details when they come available.
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You have to wonder why no one else is talking about this. Glad you are. Great post.