Almost five months to the day after releasing Lightroom 3 Beta, Adobe has announced a second Lightroom 3 Beta release.  Whether this is only intended as a means to gather and incorporate significantly more user feedback for the final release, or possibly also to buy time to incorporate more new features into the official Lightroom 3 release to compete with the recent Aperture 3 release, only time will tell…  either way, users stand to benefit.

There are subtle changes throughout the program, but here are some of the major enhancements in this second beta:

• Support for managing video files captured with your camera:  the ability to import, rate, flag, keyword and filter your videos, as well as add them to collections and smart collections.
• New luminance noise reduction — try it on your high ISO files!  You may want to rethink your plans to buy a third party plug-in for noise reduction.
• Native tethered shooting support for some Nikon and Canon DSLR’s.
• The addition of a point curve to the Tone Curve panel.
• Improved overall performance
• Various improvements to the import experience
• Improved watermarking functionality.

SeeTom Hogarty’s announcement for more details and a link to the software download.  He says that they are getting closer to the final release, but are still looking for input from all photographers.

You still cannot upgrade your Lightroom 2 catalog to Lightroom 3 — this will not be available until the final release;   it is still recommended that the Beta still be used just for trying out and testing the new new features.   When the final release does come out, you will be able to upgrade your Beta catalog to the official release version.

Here are some additional resources (if they are not available yet, they will be soon):

The Lightroom Queen

Adobe TV

Inside Lightroom

Computer Darkroom

Lightroomers