Adobe Lightroom 3.2 Review

SLIDESHOW MODULE

The Slideshow module allows you to select a group of photos individually or use all photos within a folder or collection to display on screen.

A couple of new features have been added to the Slideshow Module including a new HD video export option and a more advanced Watermarking tool.   Users can also select a new option that tells the slideshow to render previews in advance to prevent slow rendering with some images during the slideshow itself.

HD Video Export

 In Lightroom 2 you could export a slideshow as a PDF, but with the addition of the HD Video option users can now create high-resolution slideshows that output at various sizes up to 1080p resolution in the .mp4 format. The slideshow module also allows you to add a soundtrack to your slideshow and has an option called "Fit to Music" where it will automatically adjust the slideshow length to fit the length of the music. The Export module only contains preset resolutions (320x240, 480x320, 720x480, 960x540, 720p, 1080p) and does not allow you to alter the quality of the presets.

Lightroom 3.0 Slideshow Exported in full 1080p HD Resolution



This slideshow is 78 seconds, contains 16 photographs, is 85.9MB in size, and rendered at 1080p resolution. You can download the original slideshow here if you would like to see its image quality before re-encoded by Vimeo.

Watermarking Your Slideshow

Adding a watermark to your slideshow is a new feature in Lightroom 3.  Yes, in Lightroom 2 you were able to add a watermark during export, but it was just a plain text watermark.  In Lightroom 3.0 you can now add watermarks in any of the output modules (Slideshow, Print, Web, and Published Services) or during manual export.  The watermark editor now allows you to place a graphical watermark over each image during a slideshow and the watermark can appear virtually anywhere you want over your slideshow.   The watermark editor allows you to position the watermark in any of 9 sections or to have it fit the screen, fill the screen, or be sized as a proportion to the resolution of the image.

Add a Soundtrack to Your Slideshows

Lightroom 3.0 allows you to use virtually any .mp3 file as a soundtrack and now offers a feature to automatically adjust your slideshow to fit the music.    After selecting your images and music  just click "Fit to Music" and Lightroom with do the rest.   For example I created a slideshow with just 26 images set to a song that is 2 Min. and 51 Sec. in duration.  After clicking "Fit to Music" Lightroom adjusted the duration of each slide to be 3.9 seconds with a 2.5 second fade between each image.  If I manually re-adjust the fade to 3.8 seconds and click "Fit to Music" again Lightroom 3.0 will then adjust the slide length of each image to 2.6 seconds.  Unfortunately it will not work the other way around - you cannot select the slide duration to have Lightroom automatically figure out the fade duration.  I would assume that this should work, but it doesn't.

The Slideshow Module does have a few quirks. When you preview the slideshow and hit the double-bar PAUSE button the music keeps playing.  The only way to stop the music with the slideshow is to hit the square STOP button.    I assume this was purposeful, allowing you to stay on a particular image longer during playback while keeping the music going, but then the music selection ends before the slideshow is over.   You also can only select one song for the slideshow, a feature I hope they change in a software update.   To get around this you could merge multiple songs together in a program liked Audacity (Free) and then save it out as a single MP3 file.

When using the Identity Plate feature to add an opening or closing title screen the text box only displays the first 18 characters. Anything you type after that won't be visible until you click "OK" - you can't even scroll through the text within the text box to see what you had written. There is also no way of adding multiple lines of text - unless you create a graphic and use the graphic in place of text.

Collections

Again, a new change in Lightroom 3.0 is the ability to access your Collections while in the Slideshow module.  This has been discussed earlier in the review in the Library Module section.

PRINT MODULE

The PRINT module in Lightroom 2.0 was good, but not great.  Lacking in Lightroom 2.x was the ability to customize page layouts using differing sizes and different images together on the same page.   The only option in Lightroom 2.0 to add multiple images to the same page was by using the contact sheet / grid layout, which forced the photos into similarly sized rows and columns.

Flexible Multi-Image Page Layouts

In Lightroom 3.0 Adobe has made the Print Module much more flexible by adding the ability to create multi-image page layouts with different size images on each page. While it doesn't match the flexibility of professional album design software it does offer endless layout possibilities, falling short by leaving out a vari-angle rotate option for individual photos, drop shadows, transparency, and the fact that all photos in a layout are forced to use the same border width and border inner stroke color - even across pages.    

Watermarking

Aside from the ability to drag multiple images at varying sizes into a page layout, Lightroom 3.0 also allows you to add a watermark to each image on a page.  If you prefer to use just one centered watermark you can use the Identity plate feature in the PRINT Module, however you do not have the option to use a single graphic watermark to cover all the images on the page.  Not a big deal, but something I had noticed while working with Lightroom 3.0.

WEB MODULE

The Web module remains unchanged from Lightroom 2.0 with the exception that it also has access to the new watermarking capabilities.  This allows you to add a graphical watermark to each image included on your website.

The Web Module offers a variety of layout styles including the choice between HTML and Flash galleries.  There are five layout styles, each customizable to some degree by moving sliders.  Depending on the layout style chosen users can change border width, background colors, padding, columns, zoom factor, position of images, thumbnail size, and grid layout.  A built-in FTP server makes it easy for those with their own servers to upload their finished web presentations to their live server.

Introduction (1) • Library (2) • Develop (3) • Slideshow, Print & Web (4) • Conclusion (5)