Of course Lightroom 3 doesn’t end there, but as this review is focused on RAW processing, I’ll only briefly cover the rest of the software’s features.

Slideshow, in particular has been updated from Lightroom 2 where you could make slideshows and play them, provided you had Lightroom installed. As I wouldn’t be in business long if I gave my customers slideshows which they could only play if they bought Lightroom, I never used it. Apparently someone at Adobe listened to the feedback about that too, and Lightroom can now export slideshows that will play on any PC, so Lightroom 3 slideshows are now good for more than a quick show for friends and family on your home PC. More progress.

The Lightroom print screen - it’s all very simple and the slider at the top right for stroke width makes adding a border much easier and more predictable. With multiple images the image width remains constant - which is exactly what I would choose to happen - and landscape images are rotated to fit.

Print :  Like many photographers I like to print my pictures with a wide white border and put a thin black stroke around the image - This is something that I’ve always used Adobe Photoshop for, but I was surprised to find that  the Print module in Lightroom can do all of that - in fact Lightroom does a far better job of this than Photoshop, as it takes account of printer margins and resizes the image if necessary so that you never get only one border, or part borders, only what you intended, regardless of the stroke width.  No more weird half or quarter borders !!  That really is excellent -  So far all I’ve had from Lightroom are perfect borders.

Web : To be honest I’m not quite sure who this feature is aimed at. I’ve made tests and it will produce a nice photo gallery very quickly, but most people I suspect, if they are producing a web site will want more than just the galleries. Still it works well and the results look great.

Conclusion

It really pleases me to say that, apart from the Library section, and even that’s better, Lightroom has finally arrived.

Lightroom 3 has unique and really valuable features, the best RAW processing around, and is in Adobe terms reasonably priced, particularly if you’re upgrading.  The £ 75 I spent upgrading from Lightroom 2 to 3 will undoubtedly be the best £ 75 I’ll spend this year.

If you haven’t tried Lightroom before you can download a free 30 day trial from Adobe here. Although you’ll have gathered, Lightroom 3 can be a bit intimidating to get started with, it is now definitely and emphatically worth the effort.

Adobe are well aware that most people need help to get going so there are hours and hours of free and paid for tutorials online, or on DVDs.Having tried all of them,  I would say save your money and a lot of time, and buy one book.

Scott Kelby’s book Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 for Digital Photographers is among the best instruction books I’ve read, and is exactly what you need with Lightroom. Scott really knows Lightroom and Photoshop inside out, but he’s also a working pro photographer, and has a sense of humour, which helps a lot when dealing with Lightroom 3.