Adobe has finally released Lightroom 3.

The official release of Lightroom 3 follows a seven-month public beta period beginning October 2009, during which the beta version was downloaded more than 600,000 times. Lightroom developers utilized feedback from the large pool of beta testers to fine-tune and gauge response to the application’s new features. The beta version of Lightroom will expire on June 30, and any testers who want to continue using LR3 will need to purchase the retail version.

Lightroom 3 is available now at the Adobe store for $299, or as a $99 upgrade for qualified existing Lightroom users. For a full rundown of new features, you can read about the release on the Lightroom Journal, and likely find a range of impressions and news postings across the web. You can also see the Lightroom 3 Video overview by Julieanne Kost.

By now, everyone should be aware of the tragedy that has befallen Haiti. My alma mater, Hallmark Institute of Photography, today announced a fundraising campaign to help those in Haiti that have been devastated by the recent earthquake. This is a Premier Education Group (PEG) organization-wide campaign that allows all staff, faculty, students, families and anyone else to participate. PEG is committed to match funds raised through this campaign up to $10,000, making this an excellent opportunity to double the impact of your donation! All campaign donations will be forwarded to the Doctors Without Borders organization. Every dollar counts! No donation is too small!

Donations for this campaign can be made through http://www.firstgiving.com/pegschools. If you decide to make a contribution, please be sure to put “Hallmark Institute of Photography” in the comment portion of the online form along with your name in the Display Name field. If you wish to remain anonymous, put “Anonymous” in the Display Name field and still put “Hallmark Institute of Photography” in the comment field. This doesn’t effect how your donation is used in anyway, but bolsters Hallmark’s numbers in friendly competition with other participating schools.

So, I had an idea for a new tool this afternoon. I roughed out a new web engine and mocked up some crummy Javascript, a combination of found code and some hacking of my own. It sort of worked, but I wasn’t happy and so I sent it to Ben. Ben is the same good friend who recently built the fantastic new shopping cart for TTG Highslide Gallery Pro 1.9. As usual, the code he sent back was just shiny. I merged it with the incomplete web engine, applied some polish and I now offer it to you.

TTG Viewport Sizer is a measurement tool that allows you to determine the exact dimensions of Lightroom’s web preview viewport, a boon when designing Flash galleries and needing to know what a gallery is going to look like at its final size.

TTG Viewport Sizer is a free download; the video below will show you how to use it.

Download TTG Viewport Sizer Installation

The TTG Highslide Gallery Pro Video Instruction Manual has launched! I have begun uploading videos to my YouTube channel. The videos can be accessed from the About & Help menu > Video Manual: TTG Highslide Pro. You may watch the videos on that page, or click through to YouTube to watch them in a larger viewport. While on YouTube, you may also subscribe to my channel to be notified of new video postings.

The videos vary in length, but typically range between five and ten minutes in length, with no video exceeding ten minutes. I’ve been trying to keep them short, focused and easily digestible. Being short and targeted should also make it easy to pick out videos addressing specific areas of the web engine, without having to wait through a lot of talk on other controls.

My intention for these videos is not that you should sit through them, one-by-one until you’ve seen it all. Rather, users should first go hands-on with TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, coming back to the videos for help as needed, or when you’d like to see particular features fleshed out.

Because TTG Highslide Gallery Pro shares many common controls with TTG Highslide Gallery, relevant portions of the manual may also be applied to that gallery. And because many of the control elements are common in all TTG galleries — such as the auto index implementation, header controls, etc. — users of other galleries may also want to check out some of the videos.

The video manual is still a work in progress, so not all videos are posted at present. I have more finished videos I will be uploading as I find time, and there are still more videos that need to be recorded. I will occasionally post updates on my progress with this task, but will not be blogging every single upload. Check back on the About & Help page occasionally to see new videos, or subscribe to the YouTube feed to stay up-to-date.

The Photo Geek has released an update to its TTG Client Script (originally for use with TTG Client Response Gallery), adding support for TTG Highslide Gallery Pro and TTG Highslide Gallery. The script allows you to easily convert selection gallery email messages into Smart Collections that can be loaded into Lightroom. For more information and to download the script, visit the Photo Geek.

Fotomoto just gets better and better.

Fotomoto announced today on their blog that they now support Visa, Mastercard and Discover as payment options for orders. Previously, transactions were handled through PayPal, but the service now fully supports card transactions. Say goodbye to PayPal fees! For more information, see the Fotomoto blog, and to get your Fotomoto on via Lightroom, check out TTG Highslide Gallery Pro.

The Turning Gate gets a shout out in the new January/February issue of Photoshop User Magazine, the official magazine of National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).

In his article, Making Money with Lightroom, Part 1: SEO for Lightroom Web Galleries, writer Rob Sylvan declares TTG Highslide Gallery Pro his “current favorite third-party gallery” for Lightroom. Check out the clip below and, if you’re a NAPP member, be sure to read the entire article when your copy of the issue arrives. Also, watch out for Part 2 of the article in March!

For more information on TTG Highslide Gallery Pro and Search Engine Optimization, see my article on TTG and SEO.

TTG Simpleviewer-2 is now available as a free download. TTG Simpleviewer-2 brings Airtight Interactive’s new Simpleviewer v2 to the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Web module. Simpleviewer 2 improves upon the original with three gallery styles (modern, compact and classic), direct Flickr integration, a fullscreen mode, larger thumbnails, automatic language support, and benefits from having been written in AS3. A full list of improvements in both the free and Pro versions of Simpleviewer 2 can be found on the Simpleviewer website.

TTG Stage and TTG Pages will soon be updated with embed support for Simpleviewer-2 galleries. Unrelated, TTG Highslide Gallery Pro 1.9 is nearly release ready with a number of impressive new features.

Julia Barnes over at XtremeCamera.com have written up a glowing review for TTG Pages. In the review, Julia discusses TTG Pages features, and also the way that it ties into other TTG image galleries to create fleshed out websites. Of TTG Pages, she writes:

“All in all though, if you are already using a TTG gallery plugin then TTG Pages is a no-brainer; you need this plugin and it will be the best $25 you’ve ever spent (on software). If you are about to purchase your first TTG gallery plugin then by all means pick up TTG Pages at the same time and learn to use them together.”

TTG Highslide Gallery Pro also gets a shout-out in the review:

“The plugins … add tremendous value and functionality to [ Lightroom ]. Personally speaking, without TTG’s Highslide Gallery Pro I wouldn’t be selling nearly as many prints to my clients as I do, because with the plugin I am able to build beautiful, functional, and cross-compatible galleries with a built-in shopping cart. It has been a real godsend for me and thousands of photographers that use Adobe Lightroom 2 as their primary workflow tool.”

Read the full review.

I’ve spent the day working not on the TTG web engines, but on the TTG website. I’ve reorganized the top site menu; the Gallery Indices menu has merged with the menu for Special Purpose Templates, and the items of every drop-down menu have been reordered loosely by importance, “importance” being very subjective.

I have also created a new drop-down menu, About & Help, which contains items intended to clarify the existence of The Turning Gate and to provide access to some basic information on the site, the products and how best to get things done. I have finally written a proper statement About The Turning Gate, and have created a page of user testimonials (thank you users!). All visitors should be sure to check these pages out, as you might find some useful information there.

If you have any comments regarding the new additions, or suggestions for additional material for this menu, please let me know.