I waited until the hype wore off to post anything about Lightroom 3 Beta. Yeah, it's out. Yeah, it's 'neat'. And yeah, it's buggy. Come on, it's a beta, that's to be expected.

To be blatantly honest, it's a minor upgrade with a few additions. The adjustment brush interface has been tweaked, it can now export to Flickr within a window, you can now see sharpening at any percentage, noise reduction has been improved, importing is faster and more pleasing to the eye, it asks to back-up when you exit the program as opposed to when you open it, there are new slideshow exporting options, etc. The list of significant, but small, improvements goes on. What does this mean for real estate photographers? ...Um…watermarking…?

I couldn't think of anything else, that's really why I said watermarking. I don't watermark my images before they go to the MLS, but some do, so it should be a welcome addition not to have to rely on LRMogrify (it only exports 10 at a time unless you donate). Lightroom 2 offered us the adjustment brush - one of the single-most useful tools in Lightroom that enables us to spend less time in Photoshop. I guess I was just hoping for another big change like the adjustment brush. I do see the video slideshow's being useful to some, just like watermarking - but again, not for me.

In all seriousness, I imagine Lightroom 3 will be a great program that will, in fact, make our lives easier. If the program I spend 95% of my time in is stronger and more user-friendly, count me in.

Check it out here.