Lightroom 3 (beta) is here

Lightroom 3 (beta) is here
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/

Welcome to the Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 3 public beta. We’re excited about the new features and advancements in the new Lightroom 3 beta and we hope you will be too. Included on this page is information about Lightroom, details about the new beta release of Lightroom 3, and access to Lightroom 3 beta software.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software is a digital darkroom and efficient assistant designed for serious amateur and professional photographers. With Lightroom, you can organize, enhance, and showcase your images all from one fast and nimble application that’s available on Macintosh and Windows® platforms.

Manage your growing photo collection in a visual library that makes it quick and easy to organize, find, and select your images.

Get the absolute best from every shot—whether raw, JPEG, or TIFF—using state-of-the-art nondestructive editing tools.

And when you're ready, showcase your images with the impact they deserve using customizable print layouts, powerful slideshows, web gallery creation tools, and connection to online photo sharing sites (may require third-party plug-ins).

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta

Lightroom 3 beta builds on the vision of the very first Lightroom beta. From day 1, Lightroom was designed for photographers and by photographers to help them focus on what they love—the art and craft of photography. Lightroom provides photographers with an elegant and efficient way to work with their growing digital image collections, bring out the best in their images, and make an impact from raw capture to creative output, all while maintaining the highest possible quality each step of the way.

We're offering a public beta of the next release of Lightroom to give you a chance to preview some of the new features and enhancements in the upcoming version. It's an opportunity for you to evaluate a select portion of the new features planned for Lightroom 3, to help the team discover and address issues if any, and to send feedback that the Lightroom team can use to make Lightroom 3 an even better digital darkroom and more efficient assistant for you.

Download and Discuss
Get the Lightroom 3 beta
Discuss the Lightroom 3 beta in the forums
Visit the NAPP Lightroom 3 beta Resource Center

For the development of this latest release, we’ve focused on what we believe are the fundamental priorities of our customers: performance and image quality. Lightroom has been rebuilt from its core to provide a performance architecture that meets the needs of photographers today and into the future. The raw processing engine has also received an overhaul in order to ensure that you’re maximizing the potential in your images in terms of sharpening and noise reduction. And, a number of other new areas have also had new features added and enhanced. Like any beta, Lightroom 3 beta is unfinished, which means some of the features we have planned are not in this release, and some of the features in the beta are not yet complete.

Some of the new features included for you to play with in the Lightroom 3 beta are:
Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio

Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*

For more details on the new functionality in the Lightroom 3 beta:
Watch 3 short videos about what’s new in the beta
Read the blog post from the Lightroom team to learn about the vision behind the features included in the beta.
Find helpful resources on the new NAPP Lightroom 3 beta Resource Center.
Read the release notes (PDF) for detailed information.
Download now and send us your feedback!

Anyone Can Try Out the New Lightroom 3 Beta
The Lightroom 3 beta program is available to the public, so that means anyone with an Internet connection can download it and start putting it to the test. You do not need to own (or have tried) a previous version of Lightroom. The version of Lightroom 3 beta software available for download is offered in English only. You can download the beta and use it until the product expires. The current Lightroom 3 public beta will expire on April 30, 2010.

Please note that the software available in this public beta is not a final release. The product quality and the features are still being developed and completed. Like any beta release, usage of this product carries more risk than using a shipping product. We’ve tested the product thoroughly and do not anticipate serious issues but for critical work, you should rely on the shipping version. If you do not currently use Lightroom and you’d prefer to use Lightroom 2, visit the Lightroom 2 page on Adobe.com for information about Lightroom 2 and links to where you can try and/or purchase it.

Scott Kelby has blogged about LR3
http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/7004

They even have a “Lightroom 3 Beta Power Session” full training class -- the Lightroom 3 Learning Center (here’s the link),

Terry’s Tech Blog also has a video on Lightroom 3 Beta Here’s the link.