There were a bunch of questions the other day when Lightroom 3 was announced. So I figured I’d dedicate a Q&A day to ’em:

Q. If I upgrade to Lightroom 3, do I also need to upgrade Photoshop to CS5 to be able to use Lightroom and Photoshop together? (I have Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 Extended now)
A. Nope. Lightroom 3 will work just fine with CS4 (or CS3 or CS2 or Elements for that matter).

Q. Where can I get some awesome Lightroom 3 training?
A. Great question! No one really asked this but it’s a good way for me to plug a few things. First, Scott Kelby and I will be taking the Lightroom 3 Live tour to a bunch of places in July. You can find out where at KelbyTrainingLive.com. I’ve also got a 3 part course called Lightroom 3 In Depth that goes over everything about Lightroom (Part 1: Import, Part 2: Develop and Edit, Part 3: Showing Off Your Photos). You can find that over at Kelby Training’s website. There’s also the Lightroom 3 Power Session there in case you just want to see the new features in version 3 and how to use them.

Q. Do NAPP members get a discount on LR3?
A. Yes and no. NAPP members get a discount on Adobe software so yes you get a discount but it’s not specifically on Lightroom – it’s everything. Just go to photoshopuser.com/members

Q. Matt, will you just cover LR 3 now (on the blog, seminars, Photoshop World) or will you still cover LR 2?
A. For most purposes it shouldn’t make a difference. While LR3 is a good upgrade, it’s not a game changer. Noise reduction is great but if you’ve followed my training before you’ll know I don’t spend a lot of time training on removing noise. Tethered, slideshows, printing may all have new features but they’re not new to our workflow. So I’ll be assuming you have LR 3 but it shouldn’t impact the overall training that much. Note: I do have some cool presets that I’ll be working on, specifically with the print module in version 3 and a few other things.

Q. Can Lightroom 3 be used to softproof? Naturally, a program made for serious photographers would, but there seems to be a bug in mine in which it doesn’t. How do I softproof?
A. Don’t you just love it when people ask questions they already know the answer to? Anyway, Lightroom 3 doesn’t have a softproofing feature. Photoshop does but I never use it so I guess I’m not a “serious” photographer. My prints look great though! “Naturally” of course 😉

Q. Do I need to keep Lightroom 2 on my computer after I install Lightroom 3?
A. Nope. You can safely remove LR 2 when you’ve installed 3.

Q. Do my plug-ins work with Lightroom 3 (for example, Nik’s Silver Efex Pro or Viveza)?
A. Sure. Your plug-ins should work just fine.

Q. Will my presets from Lightroom 2 work with Lightroom 3?
A. Sure thing. In fact, they should all show up in LR 3 just where they were in 2.

Q. Any advice on how best to upgrade my Lightroom 2 catalog and my Lightroom 3 beta into one?
A. Yes. First get your Lightroom 2 catalog to Lightroom 3. It should upgrade automatically when you install and launch LR 3. Then open Lightroom 3 beta. Go to File > Export as catalog and export the catalog. Then go to LR 3 and go to File > Import from Catalog and import the old beta catalog into your newly upgraded catalog in LR 3.

Q. Thanks for the videos at NAPP – nice quick summaries…. if they’d quit releasing new software all the time I could afford to be a member of NAPP.
A. 🙂 I know, it’s not really a question but I thought it would be interesting to point out that Lightroom 2 came out in July 2008 – that’s about two years ago. That’s ancient in the software world.

Q. Is there a way to export custom print templates in the Print module as a JPEG?
A. Yup. Go to the Print module and scroll all the way down on the right side to the Print Job panel. Change the Print To setting to “JPEG File”.

Q. I liked that the Import/Back Up feature automatically created a folder with the date of import. But LR 3 doesnÂ’t do that any more. Do you know, if you can turn this feature on again?
A. Quick answer… no 🙂

Thanks for all the questions. I hope this helped a little. Have a great weekend!

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