Adobe Lightroom 5 Public Beta Available

[Canon Rumors]

Tweet

Free Download

You can download the public beta of Adobe’s Lightroom 5 for free.

Lots new in the area of photo editing, including perspective correction and better healing options. You can use these resources to see everything that’s new in Lightroom 5 Beta.

Download Lightroom 5 Public Beta

cr

[RGomezPhotos]

Looks interesting. Though there are MANY people just catxhing up on LR4....

[bchernicoff]

I've imported a few RAW images and it seem like the rendering performance is much faster than V4. Switching from the Library to Develop module and zooming to 100% seems to give a nearly instant rendering.

[Drizzt321]

From what I read it looks like performance in general, and especially in the Develop module has been a major focus of this version. Definitely going to check this out!

[Irishpanther]

I picked up LR3 at what turned out to be near it's end of life when i saw a deal here I think.  Then grabbed LR4 when I saw another good deal (hurrah for still qualifying as a student)

Do they typically release a new version every year?  If you buy upgrade versions can you skip a release?  Just curious if anyone knows as it's likely another year until I'll think about upgrading since this is all just a hobby for me. 

[Jens]

Worth the upgrade if performance is better as mentioned in this post. But is it just me or did LR4 have a short life, I feel like their upgrade cycles usually are a bit longer?

[Lee Jay]

Yes, the update cycle is faster and no, performance isn't close to the only new thing.
http://www.lightroomqueen.com/2013/04/15/whats-new-in-lightroom-5-0-beta/

[jrista]

Hmm, some interesting updates. I really hope the performance is improved...its been pretty poor for a while now.

One of the features I've been asking for, and have endorsed on the feature request forums, is a REAL plugin API. The way plugins work now, they can only work on TIFF copies. This eliminates any option for producing plugins that simply inject themselves into the RAW rendering pipeline, and work on the RAW data itself. Some edits are better done after demosaicing, however others, such as debanding and some forms of deconvolution, work best when done directly on the raw data. I really wish Adobe would implement a pluggable rendering pipeline. Would open so many doors, and streamline the process of working with plugins (they could simply become additional panels in the Develop module.)

[wickidwombat]

i would love LR to implement luminosity masks downloding now to see if they have something cool

[Marsu42]

You can use these resources to see everything that’s new in Lightroom 5 Beta.

Waaaa, they still didn't include focus peaking like in Capture One :-( and you still need multiple virtual copies for different crops (16:9, 4:3, 2:3).

Btw Smart Previews are the "DNG Proxies" from the DNG 1.4 spec, just that marketing has found a better term - and it'll be very useful for editing high-mp pictures in the future.

My favorite new features are: radial filter & new healing brush (in acr!), but I'm still a little underwhelmed, I hope at least the AutoTone now works at least as good/mediocre as in LR3's PV2010.

[eyeland]

I've imported a few RAW images and it seem like the rendering performance is much faster than V4. Switching from the Library to Develop module and zooming to 100% seems to give a nearly instant rendering.

That sounds like enough of a reason for me to upgrade sooner than later
Anyone had any problems with running/uninstalling the beta alongside Lr4?

[chasinglight]

When I first started playing with LR5 I was pretty underwhelmed, as it doesn't seem all that different from LR4, but the radial filters are cool. Allows you to put a whole new swing on photos. The new spot healing and cloning is nice, but I feel like larger touch ups will still require PS. Also I haven't tried it, but the new perspective tools would be cool so long as they work.

I was a little upset by the lack of changes in the book modules, but at least you can create custom templates now.

The videos about the new features are helpful.
http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/04/lightroom-5-beta-now-available.html

It's hard to tell if performance is better though as lightroom always performs better with a fresh library...see what happens after you add and edit a few thousand photos..

[3kramd5]

I used the beta on a photoshoot last night. It's slow going due to general buggy-ness, but when the brush tools work they work well. I like, and will upgrade when the time comes.

The offline editing feature is probably very compelling for some (particularly those with only one harddrive, i.e. laptop users).

[Marsu42]

It's slow going due to general buggy-ness

My experience when trying it is quite the opposite: LR5 feels like turbo-charged, as if the build a wait loop into LR4 to make people wish for an upgrade :-> ... this and some new features like the heal/clone brush are enough to upgrade, let's hope the RC phase doesn't take the better of a year's time.

[3kramd5]

It's slow going due to general buggy-ness

My experience when trying it is quite the opposite: LR5 feels like turbo-charged, as if the build a wait loop into LR4 to make people wish for an upgrade :-> ... this and some new features like the heal/clone brush are enough to upgrade, let's hope the RC phase doesn't take the better of a year's time.

Out of curiosity: OSX or Windows? I've thus far only used it on Windows 7. May load it up on my Mountain Lion machine this evening.

It does feel peppier than 4, and I'll note that I always work each photoshoot in its own fresh catalog, so there's no "few hundred versus tens-of-thousands" effect at play.

What I meant was: getting through the entire set is slow going, because I have to restart LR every couple of frames. Most common failure has been the adjustment brush. It repeatedly stopped working, i.e. I'd select the tool but when I clicked to place it it merely zoomed in an out. Restarting the software remedied it. Other times it crashed outright.