I’ve said before that if you’re a photographer you owe it to yourself to give it a go. I know there are people that find Photoshop a bit scary, and Lightroom is much easier to manage, especially on a workflow basis. Personally I use Lightroom for 90% of my photographic work.

So what’s different? This is Tom Hogarty’s take, part of the Lightroom team:

Import
We’ve redesigned the Lightroom import experience to make it much easier to visualize how Lightroom allows you to manage your files. You’ll be able to see exactly where you’ve asked Lightroom to copy your files off your card and then use import presets in compact mode to get fast repeatable results every time. You can also quickly browse your hard drive to find exactly the right file you need to work on.

Publish Collections
We live in a connected world so you need direct access to publish your photos on your favorite sharing site from directly within the Lightroom Library. In the Lightroom 3 public beta we’re providing direct access to the Flickr photo sharing site so that adding images to your Photostream is as simple as a drag and drop. You can see all of your uploaded images and if you make any changes to those images you can have them updated on Flickr automatically.(Pro accounts only) When a visitor comments on your images, Lightroom can pull that comment right back into the Library so that you can see feedback on your files where it belongs, next to the image in your Lightroom library. We’ve built this functionality with the same extensibility designed for our Export Plug-ins so if Flickr isn’t your cup of tea we’re working hard to support developers who can create connections to any of the popular photo sharing sites. Publish collections can do more than just publish to a photo sharing site. You can have a publish collection that allows you to publish images to my iPhone sync folder with drag and drop simplicity.

Image Quality
Sharpening and Noise Reduction
In the Develop module we’ve focused on tuning our raw processing algorithms to extract incredible detail and quality from your images. Capture sharpening and Color Noise Reduction improvements work together to give you incredible noise reduction results without losing that fine detail. We’re only halfway through our noise reduction efforts but believe that you will be very pleased with the results so far. We’ve actually disabled the previous Luminance Noise Reduction so that you can focus on evaluating the Color Noise reduction implementation.

Grain
While Lightroom’s improved noise reduction will give you incredibly smooth images, sometimes you want a little texture or grain in your images. We’ve added a grain tool that can add a natural film-style grain to your images to get that perfect look for your photo.

Vignette
The Lightroom team received quite a bit of feedback on our post-crop vignette tool in Lightroom 2 that allows photographers to apply beautifully styled vignettes after cropping is applied. While the tool was received quite well, we found that photographers wanted a more natural vignette that utilized an exposure or brightness effect rather than just painting black and white on the edges of images. We’ve added two vignette modes in Lightroom 3 beta, Color Priority and Highlight Priority that attempt to provide the natural vignette that photographers have requested. Let’s not get hung up on the technical details of these models but rather focus on which you prefer for your images and why.

Process Version
The changes above are so significant that for the first time since the Camera Raw plug-in was introduced in 2003, we’ve needed to add the concept of a process version. The process version specifies which version of certain Camera Raw image processing elements should be used when rendering and editing files. Process version can affect raw, DNG, TIFF, JPEG, and PSD files. The process version is incremented only when major changes to the raw processing or features are changed. In Lightroom 3, the demosaicing, noise reduction, sharpening, and post crop vignette were all updated. Depending on what is applied to the image, different image characteristics will change more dramatically than others (i.e. sharpening should change sharpening characteristics etc.), but the demosaic changes apply across the board, so there will always be some change. By default, we’ll leave your images just as they were but if you want to take advantage of the latest processing technology, just update to the current process version. You can update to the latest process version by selecting the notification triangle that includes an exclamation point above the left hand side of the histogram. (Or from the Settings -> Process Version file menu available in the Develop module) By default, all new files in Lightroom 3 beta will receive the latest process version.

Slideshow Export
One of the most elegant ways to present your images is in a slideshow accompanied by music. But until now, you could only share that slideshow with music when playing it directly from within the Lightroom application. But with Lightroom 3 we’ve added the ability to export high quality movie files that include your detailed layout and the music track you’ve selected. By utilizing the popular H.264 movie format you can share these movies on many popular video sharing sites or optimize it for mobile media!

Custom Print Package
Lightroom 3 adds a new custom layout option for photographers who need complete control over their print layouts. Add as many different images in whatever configuration you desire on a single or multiple pages.

Watermarking
Lightroom 3′s new watermarking function lets you embed your identity or other information in your images themselves. You can apply text or graphic watermarks to a photograph with adjustable size, position, and opacity. Available in the Print and Web modules as well as the Export dialog, your identity can now travel with all of your images.

Taken from The Lightroom Journal.

Check out these resources for more on the beta:

NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) LR3 guide and videos

Terry White (Adobe) Tech blog