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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is a photo workflow manager that takes care of cataloging, editing, and producing images for both professional and amateur photographers.

In fact, I'll go a step further and say Lightroom 3 can be the heart of any photographer's digital workflow. It addresses the needs of amateurs and professionals alike. Because of its reasonable price, it’s also a good choice for advanced hobbyists who have outgrown the basic capabilities of Apple iPhoto.

Lightroom 3 - What's New

On the surface, Adobe Lightroom 3 appears to be an evolutionary update to Lightroom 2, but digging deeper, Lightroom 3 is a dramatic improvement. Built around a whole new engine, Lightroom 3 is faster, from start to finish.

The new features list for Lightroom 3 is long; here are a few key features I especially liked.

Importing images, whether from your existing photo collection or your camera, has become both a faster process and an easier one, with all the options right in front of you.

Noise reduction has been dramatically improved. If you ever shoot low light or nighttime images, or use your camera's high ISO settings, then you no doubt have seen the noise such images always seem to process. Lightroom 3's noise reduction technology can clean up the noise in an image without blooming or softening the image.

Perspective correction allows you to correct keystone distortion caused by shooting off angle. Lightroom 3 can also make lens corrections, removing most of the distortion from an extreme wide angle lens or vignetting; it even corrects chromatic aberrations.

Publishing, part of Lightroom 3's new workflow feature, is a simplified system that allows you to use drag-and-drop to publish your images to your Mac's file system or the Web.

Tethered capture is probably one of the most asked for features by photographic professionals. Tethered capture allows you to connect your camera directly to your Mac and use Lightroom 3 to control your camer

Lightroom 3 - Installation

Lightroom 3 is available in a retail boxed version with an installation CD and as a direct download from the Adobe web site. Both versions provide exactly the same product. If you opt for the download version, be sure to create a CD/DVD backup of the downloaded file, along with the license key Adobe will provide. That will allow you to reinstall Lightroom 3 in the future should the need arise.

Start the installation process by double-clicking the Adobe Lightroom 3.pkg file, either on the install CD or in the image file you downloaded from Adobe. The installer will place the Adobe Lightroom 3 program in your Applications folder.

64-bit

Lightroom 3 is a 64-bit application that can take advantage of all of the RAM installed in your Mac. Lightroom 2 also supported 64-bit, but required you to set the operating mode using the Finder. Lightroom 3 is 64-bit by default, and requires a Mac with an Intel processor.

If needed, you can also run Lightroom 3 as a 32-bit application. This won't let you run Lightroom 3 on your older PowerMac G5, but it will let you use Lightroom 3 on a first-generation Intel Mac, which has a 32-bit Intel processor.

To set 32-bit operation mode, go to the Applications folder and right-click the Lightroom 3 application. Select 'Get Info' from the pop-up menu, and place a check mark in the 'Open in 32-bit mode' box.

Lightroom 3 - First Impressions

Like most Adobe applications, Lightroom 3 likes to take over all of a monitor's available screen space. Luckily, Lightroom 3 also allows you to resize and reposition it as you wish.

Lightroom 3 uses a generally dark interface that you can easily adjust to suit your taste from within the program's preferences. The interface is divided into specific display areas.

Module Picker. Located along the top right of the display, the Module Picker lets you quickly select the tools you want to have available in the panels, so you can easily step through the photographer's workflow. The available modules are Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web.

Panels. Located on the left- and right-hand side of the interface. The left-hand panel contains content and presets for the selected module; the right-hand panel contains the individual tools.

Work Pane. Located in the center, this is the largest pane. It displays the image(s) you're currently working on.

Filmstrip. Located along the bottom, the Filmstrip shows thumbnails of each image from your library or images from selected collections you can work with for the task you're currently performing.

Menu Bar. This is the standard menu bar used in all Mac applications.

Lightroom 3's interface will seem very familiar to Lightroom 2 users, with just a few tweaks and changes scattered here and there. Overall, the user interface is well thought out and a pleasure to use.

Lightroom 3 - Library

The Library is the Lightroom 3 module you will probably use the most. It allows you to view, catalog, and organize your image library. Lightroom uses four basic organization structures.

Catalog. Keeps track of photos and their information, including titles, keywords, metadata, and EXIF data. The catalog doesn't contain the actual images; that's the job of folders.

Folders. Contain the actual images. Folders correspond to the image storage location(s) on your Mac. The catalog can use multiple folders, so you can continue to organize your images on your Mac as you see fit.

Collections. These pseudo folders can contain any images you wish, from any of the folders in your catalog. You can drag-and-drop photos from your current library to any collection you create. Collections are made up of any criteria you wish, for example, a collection of sports images. You can also have Lightroom 3 create a Smart Collection based on criteria you assign, such as all images that were shot with flash or that have the keyword 'baseball.'

Publish Services. When you're ready to save images, Publish Services lets you easily set up and publish to a Flickr online account, or to any folder on your Mac. If you publish to a folder, you can store your completed images anywhere you wish, including a folder you use for syncing to your MobileMe account, your iPad or iPhone, or any place you want to serve as an image archive location.

The single Flickr export option is very limiting, but Publishing