.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Lightroom 3: cool, new publishing and video features
.AUTHOR Scott Koegler
.SUMMARY In this last of three articles on Lightroom 3, Scott Koegler looks at exciting new publishing and video features.
.OTHER
This week, we continue [[http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue201009/00002568001.html|our look]] at the new [[http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/|Adobe Lightroom 3]]. This time, I’ll look at some exciting new publishing and video features.
.h1 Publishing services
In previous versions of Lightroom it’s been possible to export your edited images so they can be posted to your choice of image sharing sites. Plug-ins like [[http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies|Jeffrey Friedl’s Flickr exporter]] made the task of posting photos to Flickr simple and fast, but required either using a limited version of the plug-in, or making a small donation to unlock the plug-in’s full capabilities.
Lightroom 3’s Publishing Services act differently from Friedl’s plug-in in that Lightroom 3 maintains a link between your Lightroom 3 catalog and your published locations.
Publish Services make it easy to select the images you want to share, then drag them to the publishing service you want them to appear in. Destination choices, as shown in Figure A, include online sharing sites like Flickr and Facebook, as well as hard drives. The hard drives can be external drives, or even drives on another computer in your network, and can be used to sync with your iPhone or other portable device.
.FIGPAIR A You have many publishing choices.
It’s possible to have multiple publishing destinations for each service. For example I can have two (or more) services in Flickr that represent Flickr collections or sets. And I can have multiple hard drive publishing services that represent different drives and folders.
In some ways, I like this less than the ad-hoc method of defining which collection or set to export my photos to each time I use Friedl’s plug-in, because it forces me to create and maintain a publishing service for each destination.
On the other hand, because the publishing destination is permanently defined, if I want to update a photo that’s already been published, all I need to do is make my edits in Lightroom 3. My edit triggers a flag that lets me simply click the Publish button to replace the old version with the new one. Another nice touch is that comments made to photos in the Flickr site are brought back into Lightroom 3 and appear with the photos.
.h1 Watermarks
Another task that was previously possible only through the use of a plug-in is that of adding watermarks to your photos. Lightroom 3 includes the ability to add both text and image watermarks to any output, including export and print. It’s possible to define location and transparency so that your watermark doesn’t interfere with the image, as shown in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B You can customize your watermarks.
.H1 Video import and storage
In yet another "used to be a job for a plug-in" feature addition, it’s now possible to import video clips as Lightroom 3 assets. Lightroom recognizes video files just as it does image files, when a removable drive is attached to the computer. When the Import dialog comes up, the video files are treated exactly as their image counterparts. That means you can assign keywords and other values that help identify your video clips. It also means that video clips show up in context with your static images.
Upon import, Lightroom 3 grabs an image at the beginning of the clip and uses it as the identifying thumbnail in library view. Clicking on the video camera icon brings up your computer’s default video viewer, allowing you to quickly review the clip. Of course, you can’t open the video in the Develop module, but it’s possible to open them in your video editor application.
.h1 Video Slide Shows
Another reason to be able to store and organize video files is Lightroom 3’s new Video Slideshow feature. In addition to the slide shows produced by previous Lightroom versions, you can now click the Export Video when in the Slideshow module. Options include the same headings, intro and exit image capabilities as the Web and PDF slideshow exports, but you can also include background music and even set Lightroom 3 to fit the length of the slide show to the length of the music track, as shown in Figure C. The resulting MP4 file can be published as would any MP4 video.
.FIGPAIR C You can set up your own video slideshow options.
.h1 Printing
Creating exactly the print layout you wanted was previously a complicated process. Lightroom 3 includes the ability to easily define your own print layout.
Previous versions of Lightroom had a variety of print templates, and it was possible to edit them — to a degree. But Lightroom 3 allows you to simply drag the images you want to include, directly to the page. Once there, you can move and resize them as you like. You can then save the layout as a User Template and use it as often as you like, and modify it as necessary.
As you can see in Figure D, this is a great addition to the output capabilities of Lightroom, and one that wasn’t practical, or possibly even possible in earlier versions.
.FIGPAIR D It’s nice ot be able to easily set up print layouts.
Adobe’s Lightroom 3 is a significant upgrade from the most recent version, Lightroom 2, and one worth considering, particularly if you are already a Lightroom user. We give it a 5-out-of-5.
.RATING 5
.BIO Scott Koegler explores digital products and writes about them from his home in the foothills of North Carolina, and from his camper (as long as he has an internet connection. He has acted as CIO, editor, publisher, photographer, and wine taster, and enjoyed each role.
