DEVELOP - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process - page 160

PROCESS VERSION
Here's a fundamental new feature in Lightroom 3 that's really important to
understand: Process Version denotes a change in the core processing routines
that Lightroom uses to demosaic and render image i les, generate previews for
them and in some cases will also determine the available adjustment controls.

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During the development of Lightroom 3, Adobe rei ned and improved the
basic raw processing algorithms used in all their sot ware. Put one way, this
means that older process versions are “not as good” as newer ones. Looking
more carefully, you might recognize that new process versions also enable
more capabilities in working with the image data… but this doesn't necessarily
mean your pictures processed using older versions aren't valid.

(If Lightroom 3 is the i rst version of Lightroom you're using, you don't need to
be concerned with the rest of this particular section.)

If you've used earlier versions of Lightroom, or Photoshop with the Adobe
Camera Raw plug-in, you should be aware of what's changed. Be aware that
Process Version can af ect all photos in the catalog, regardless of i le type.

h ere are currently two process versions, 2003 and 2010, named for when
they were created. When you import new photos into Lightroom 3, they will
automatically be assigned the 2010 Process Version.

Photos in your catalog that were imported with previous versions of Lightroom
will have the 2003 Process Version applied. In these cases, your photos will
look exactly like they did before; Lightroom 3 is not going to change them
automatically.

But for your prize selects, you might consider changing to the 2010 Process
Version, because you might be able to make photos look even better than they
did before. Also, some of the new tools in Lightroom 3, require using the 2010
Process Version.

Based on what kinds of adjustments were applied using the 2003 Process
Versions, you may see more, or less, of a change when switching to the new
process version.

Photos using the 2003 Process Version will display an icon containing an
exclamation mark in the bottom right of the Develop Loupe view; see
Figure 4-6.