Develop Module

At first glance little appears to have changed in the Develop module but don't be fooled. OK, so the image editing tools haven't seen any obvious changes, but other aspects of this module have been significantly enhanced. Image adjustments will appear somewhat faster than in previous betas, but there is still some further performance tuning to be undertaken..

The Crop and Rotate tool was first introduced in Beta 2, but like many Lightroom features it was only partially finished. With Beta 3 you now have the ability to Straighten an image by drawing a straight line between two points. Using the feature is fairly easy - activate Crop Overlay, hold down the Cmd key, click the start point for the line, then drag the mouse to define an end point. If you're familiar with the Ruler tool and arbitrary rotation in Photoshop you'll  adapt to this automated version very quickly.

Enhanced Crop and Rotate Tools

I now come to the most interesting enhancements within the Develop module. Folk participating in the Lightroom forum made a strong case for Before and After views. These views would allow them to compare an edited version of the image against the original. The challenge wasn't so much how, but how many different ways could this be done. Given there wasn't any real consensus on the best way the development team have given us virtually every option they could think of. The screenshot below shows the enhanced Status Bar in the Develop module. With a new set of buttons you can now select the original (Before view) by itself, the edited version (Loupe view), a Left/Right comparison of Before and After, plus a Top/Bottom equivalent.

Status Bar showing enhanced View modes, Crop/Rotate tool and R-G-B readout

Although I haven't shown it on the status bar screenshot there are additional buttons that further enhance this feature. The following screenshot shows a standard 1:1 Before/After view of an image in Left/Right view. A similar view is also available for Top/Bottom views. Before/After views also support Live (Real-time) comparison of image adjustments, etc. A quick method of toggling the Before/After view is to use the "\" (i.e. backslash key).

Standard Before/After View

The second arrangement (shown below) allows the user to compare an identical view of the image with and without edits. However, using the Split Screen toggle it's possible to simply split the image into two halves, thus providing even more options for comparing the effects of image adjustments in realtime.

Split Screen Before/After Toggle

Also, on the Status Bar, and just to the left of the split screen toggle are two buttons that allow you to copy the settings from the Before image to the After image or vice versa. It's an interesting option, but I think some users will take a while to figure out a use for it.

Split Screen Before/After View

When you switch to Before/After view the Hand (Zoom and Pan) and White Balance tools will disappear. However, both Pan and Zoom are still accessible by clicking the image to Zoom or holding down the mouse button to Pan. Pressing the Space Bar also acts as a Zoom toggle.

The Crop & Rotate button on the status bar can be used to activate the Crop Overlay (keyboard shortcut is R for those who don't like buttons), but it can't deactivate it, which is a pity. Also, notice that an R-G-B readout is now available, although the values are quoted in % terms rather than the more usual levels values. Avoiding levels values gets round the problem that occurs when you're working with 16-bit images where the normal 0 to 255 doesn't apply. However, my guess is that there'll be ongoing requests for a conventional levels based R-G-B readout.

Contd. on page 3