You can easily convert your raw file into LR3. The basic thing you need to do is to download the best converter or get the best converter like like avs image converter. And follow the instructions according to the converter then you can easily convert these files. I used these Converter for the designs of Joomla Templates, CSS Templates and Magneto Templates. And they convert the picture with good resolution.
OMG no, no no and absolutely no. That is almost insane. What ever gave you the idea that you needed to do all of that? LR3 uses imagemagik's output algorithms, some of the best out there currently.
@Fleurya: One thing (well two) to remember when exporting. Actually, more than two...
The list of develop functions on the right are displayed in the order they're in for a particular reason, and this is especially true for converting RAW images. All processing of color, tone, hue, saturation and all else preceding sharpening and noise reduction should be done first.
Do your sharpening
before noise reduction. Make sure to use the masking feature appropriately. For landscape work, less masking is better, as there are a lot of defining lines to sharpen. For People and animals etc.. more tends to be better. You can gauge how much is being used by holding down the option (alt) key while using the slider. Same goes for sharpening, but I tend to be zoomed in 1:1 while doing this too.
It also helps to be zoomed in to 2:1 in the "detail panel" in order to really see what's going on with finer detail. This is especially true for doing noise reduction. Always make sure to not go too crazy with sharpening. Play with the sliders to ensure that you're not creating sharpening artifacts like halos and such. Plenty of tutorials to view for this stuff, I'll try and find some links for you.
With noise reduction, always start small. I try not to take the luminance too high, and always try to keep the detail slider really high. Usually in the upper 80's to mid 90's. But this will depend upon how bad your noise is I guess.
And the reason it's important to do sharpening first is because the sharpening algorithm kind of tends to smooth out some noise before you even get to the noise reduction panel!
Also make sure that you set your output sharpening appropriately! This is in the export dialog. There's: Low;standard and high. I use high for landscape/architecture stuff the most. I use standard for people. You don't really want too much sharpening for a person's face, usually never very flattering.
Another tip... You should create several export types. For example, I never export at my camera's largest resolution setting. This serves two purposes. For one, you don't want people straight up jacking your original sized photos so that they can post them on their site etc.. (You should also make sure that your personal metadata and copyright info is embedded in your files) Secondly, because bandwidth can be an issue for some.
I have several export settings so that most importantly, pics are exported at an appropriate Landscape as well as portrait size. For instance, I divide my camera's original resolution size by both 2 or 3, depending upon the use of said photo. So for my portrait shots, I resize to 2144x1424 and 949x1429 respectively. For Landscape obviously, these numbers are reversed.
I also have an export setting for: email size, Facebook, Picasa, Flickr etc etc.. For social networking sites, the plugins already exist in the library module on the left panel listed as "publish services". Learn how to use these valuable tools, they'll make life a LOT easier. There are a TON of tips and tricks ....
Here's a good one and then I'll stop babbling. Open the drop down list in one of the publish services after you've populated it with your existing galleries, now right click on one of the galleries and choose "set as target collection". Now go ahead and rummage through your library and start flagging or tagging which of those photos you want to put in that "target collection". When you think you've got enough to work with... hit "B" and that photo or those highlighted photos will be sent to that collection.
Now that your photos are in that collection, you can press "D" and develop them so they're ready to be exported ! You may have known this already... but ah well. Maybe someone else didn't. There are so many other things like that, which can make life easier in LR. Like collections, in general. Get to know how to use them.
Doug
