Lightroom 5 Public Beta Released

Adobe has released the public beta version of Lightroom 5, available for download. The new features in Lightroom 5 are said to be: Advanced Healing Brush; "Upright" (one-click straightening of tilted images); Radial Gradient; Offline editing with Smart Previews; and Improved photo book creation.

There's a brief review by Sharon Machlis at Computerworld.

The beta version will expire on June 30th, but it's free to use until then.

Mike
(Thanks to John Camp)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Lou: "Those new features are obviously pointless gadgets, but we will keep paying the Adobe tax to get the bug fixes and the newer camera support...."

Adam Richardson replies to Lou: "I'd love to hear what you think a non-pointless gadget is. Adobe regularly does free updates that support new cameras (4.4 being the last one just last week that included extensive RAW engine work to handle Fuji X-trans files). Plus, the relatively small price of this upgrade largely obviates the need for buying/upgrading the vastly more expensive Photoshop, unless you really need layers, or the pano stitching and HDR work as Svein-Frode mentions [in the Comments section —Ed.]. As they build in more functionality it becomes a single solution, so it's actually a money saver....

"In my mind a proper healing brush is super useful and something I've missed since switching from Aperture. It saves a round trip via Photoshop to take advantage of its context aware fill, but that comes with its own issues of image versioning.

"PNG file support, finally—very nice. PDF support would be great too so that it can be used as a more holistic asset library.

"One-click proper full screen view, finally, is very welcome.

"While it's not necessary for me, the ability to keep a relatively tiny size database on a laptop is super useful for working photographers.

"The horizon alignment is a nice to have if it works well—yes, you can do it yourself (and I have to, an embarrassingly large amount of the time), but this is a nice time-saver, and after all isn't that a lot of what working with digital is about, to make tasks that used to be arduous more convenient?

"The Upright function is an extension of the functionality that's been there for lens/perspective corrections, and looks like it brings some enhancements that avoids the weirdness you can sometimes get with the functions in LR4. It means you don't have to invest in expensive tilt correcting lenses, and avoids a round trip to Photoshop for its (til now) more sophisticated abilities."

Comments

[Ed Knepley]

Mike, Not criticism - an observation. Really.

I realize that you have to make a living and that need drives TOP content decisions. I suspect that accounts for the gradual shift in content in the several years TOP has been at the "top" of my daily read-list. Topics are more commercial (product reviews & announcements) than in the past. Nothing wrong with that - especially if it brings home the bacon. There is a danger though - you begin to look less like the site that attracted readers to begin with and more like every other site out there. Case in point - I go through my RSS feed list in alphabetical order thus almost saving the best (TOP) to last. Of the 14 feeds I'd read before TOP, 6 of them included the LR5 item.

I don't believe there's anything you could do to drive me away from TOP ;-). However, I'm increasingly skipping clicking to visit the site when the lead says to me - "just another product review or announcement". I think you're better than that and have more to offer than DPReview and the rest.

[Bill Beebe]

Thank you so very much for using 'has' instead of 'have'; "Adobe has..."

[Nico Maijer]

Also on DPReview a »hands-on preview«.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/1304150010/lightroom-5-public-beta-whats-new

[Svein-Frode]

Now all that's missing is panoramic stitching and HDR-blending of a series of images and Lightroom does almost anything a photographer would ever need in one pice of software. Amazing stuff.

[Lou]

Those new features are obviously pointless gadgets, but we will keep paying the Adobe tax to get the bug fixes and the newer camera support...

[Dave in NM]

It looks good, but there's no more Snow Leopard support. I guess I'll have to upgrade the OS sooner than I had planned.

[Marc Rochkind]

I wouldn't judge Version 5 by what's in the beta. In the past, where there have been multiple betas, features were introduced in later betas, and also features have appeared in the released version that weren't in any beta.

[Dave in NM]

Julieanne Kost has some good video demos of the new features here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/04/lightroom-5-beta-now-available.html

[Paul Marriner]

Unmentioned is the ability to "scan" the image and see Lab values. For those like me (about 10% of the male population) who are color-challenged, Lab allows us to see if there are unrealistic colors in the image since we can't trust our eyes. I've been asking for this capability for several versions (at one point I was told by one of the "color gurus" that this was a "stupid" request). Although the healing brush is certainly a big improvement, this one unheralded feature is more than worth the upgrade money to me.

[Manuel]

I can't be bothered. I tried Adobe Lightroom 4 last year and, two weeks into the test, decided to give DxO Optics Pro 7 a go.
There was no looking back. DxO is vastly superior to Lightroom in terms of distortion correction, geometry adjustment, chromatic aberration treatment and noise reduction. And its default preset is better than Lightroom's, making colour and light adjustments much easier and more accurate. Besides, while Lr5 brings just some Cs-like gimmicks to the arena, Pro 8 is a real worthwhile upgrade over the 7 version. Adobe may know everything about digital imaging, but those guys at DxO know everything about photography. Which makes all the difference. They comprehensively tested all your bodies and lenses and put their knowledge into the editing software.
I don't mean to be controversial or start a DxO vs. Lightroom debate here - this is really not the place for that -, and I'm aware this comment is on the verge of being read as an unofficial ad, but sometimes it can be worthwhile to look outside mainstream offerings. Lightroom is very good to excellent - let there be no doubt about it -, but DxO can be magical at times.

[hugh weller-lewis]

Adobe lost my support for LR when 4.0 required me to upgrade from Windows xp. Which bloatware extortionist is worse? MS or Adobe? Shame, coz I'd stuck with LR since the earliest beta

[Giovanni]

Nice to haves but frankly every new version is becoming heavier and slower. I sometimes miss LR2...
Also, I miss a few things that seem rather straughtforward IMHO:
- locking images. it's easy to change flags/stars/tags by mistake (e.g. apply to multiple selects insted of current image
- borders. would seem a basic thing to be able to do, but nope, not available yet
- allowing previewing presets on full image instead of having to guess from preview window up on the left. I realize this might be a speed issue but...

[ctein]

Dear Lou,

You might be able to make a better case if it weren't for the fact that Adobe offers the ***FREE*** DNG Converter, which will let you use RAW files from the current cameras that Adobe supports in older versions of their software. Including Lightroom.

Kinda shoots down half your argument.

pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]

[Bahi]

My feeling on using the new LR 5 was exactly the opposite of Lou's: relief at the absence of unnecessary features. If a company's previous product evolutions are a guide, I will one day look at Lightroom and wonder what happened to the streamlined, only-what-a-photographer-needs user interface that I loved so much.

I've worked with photographers and undergraduate students for a few years on workflow based around this app. If you tend to live in Photoshops's ACR, you should take a short while to get to to grips with Lightroom and see if you like it—I'm pretty sure you would. That's not to mention the strength of its library management and print modules.

[Sven W]

@Manuel

I use the latest version of DxO Pro Optics, to convert my Sony raw files to 16 bit TIFFs. DXO has a goodly amount of default processing but you can manually override most of it if you want to. I'm happy with DxO but haven't used LR to compare.

I think DxO is a good option for people who edit a small number of images; it doesn't have the DAM features of LR.

[Tom Swoboda]

I've been a Lightroom user since the earliest Beta but version 4 is so slow that I will stop using Lightroom if version 5 isn't reported to have rectified the snail's pace of 4.

[Monica]

Lightrooom 5 is so dang slow when exporting I think I aged 10 years waiting on some measly websize photos.