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Following the release of a public beta nearly two months ago, Adobe today announced immediate availability of the official release of Photoshop Lightroom 5, the company's professional photo management and manipulation software.

Lightroom 5 Advanced Healing Brush (Click for larger)
Adobe highlights six major new and improved features found in Lightroom 5, as well as a number of other smaller features designed to make the software more powerful and efficient than ever.
- Advanced Healing Brush: Remove distracting elements with a single brush stroke. Adjust the size of the brush and move it in precise paths. Unwanted objects and flaws--even those with irregular shapes like threads--just disappear.

- Upright tool: Straighten tilted images with a single click. The new Upright tool analyzes images and detects skewed horizontal and vertical lines, even straightening shots where the horizon is hidden.

- Radial Gradient tool: Emphasize important parts of your image with more flexibility and control. The Radial Gradient tool lets you create off-center vignette effects, or multiple vignetted areas within a single image.

- Smart Previews: Easily work with images without bringing your entire catalog of original images with you. Just generate smaller stand-in files called Smart Previews. Make adjustments or metadata additions to the Smart Previews and apply your changes to the full-size originals later.

- Improved photo book creation: Create beautiful photo books from your images. Lightroom includes a variety of easy-to-use book templates, and now you can edit them to create a customized look. Upload your book for printing with just a few clicks.

- Video slideshows: Easily share your work in elegant video slideshows. Combine still images, video clips, and music in creative HD videos that can be viewed on almost any computer or device.
Lightroom 5 is priced at $149 as a standalone purchase, with upgrading pricing of $79 available to current Lightroom users. Subscribers to Adobe's Creative Cloud service will also receive access to Lightroom 5 with their memberships.

Lightroom competes with Apple's Aperture software, which is available on the Mac App Store for $79.99. Each successive version of Aperture has seen Apple reduce pricing, moves that drove Adobe to slash the price of Lightroom in half to $149 with the release of Lightroom 4 last year. But with no sign of a new version of Aperture and Apple continuing to price Aperture 3 at $79.99, Adobe apparently remains comfortable with its $149 standard pricing on Lightroom while it also seeks to transition users to its Creative Cloud subscription services.

Article Link: Adobe Releases Photoshop Lightroom 5 With New Healing Brush, Radial Gradient, and Straightening Tools
 

dweezle3

macrumors regular
Jun 11, 2010
196
44
Earth
Finally a usable healing brush! The lack of proper cloning and healing tools in Lightroom is the main reason I've stuck with an outdated Aperture for so long.
 

ob81

macrumors 65816
Jun 11, 2007
1,406
356
Virginia Beach
The healing brush is ok, but not sure this is enough for an upgrade. Most of this they could have just put in 4 as an update.
 

mac.cali

macrumors 65816
Mar 16, 2012
1,448
368
Might have to try this out. I've out grown iPhoto and looking for something better. I have Aperture but felt that was outdated big time! Maybe WWDC will bring Aperture 4 or iPhoto '13?
 

jhpadilla

macrumors member
Sep 23, 2008
32
0
Mac App Store version

any chance of getting an upgrade price those of us who bought it in the Mac App Store ???? :D ;)
 

portishead

macrumors 65816
Apr 4, 2007
1,114
2
los angeles
I'm really interested to see how Smart Previews work. I have a huge library and it might be nice to have a preview library all the time and the masters on an external drive.
 

Bezbozny

macrumors member
Jul 23, 2009
88
15
I use Aperture, but since Apple has abandoned it i will move all my photo library to Lightroom. I was just wondering. Do i loose all the adjustments that i have made in my raw files if i will move the pictures to Lightroom?
 

ng-design

macrumors member
Jul 18, 2011
47
18
Nashville
Is full screen available now?

I don't see full screen editing listed on Adobe's feature list. That's a feature I truly wanted in LR4. Anyone know if it made it into version 5?
 

David G.

macrumors 65816
Apr 10, 2007
1,128
488
Alaska
Lightroom 5, the perfect way to get rid of your daughter in a photograph but not that annoying stick in the lower right hand portion of the image.
 

taxiapple

macrumors regular
Jun 9, 2009
191
27
but does it work with iPhoto?

I seem to remember wanting to use Lightroom and all the work I had done sorting iPhoto events and albums wasn't imported to Lightroom.
 

neversink

macrumors regular
Jan 16, 2008
162
16
Hmmmm....

I just stopped using Aperture and switched to Capture 1 Pro 7. I have the beta Lightroom 5.

Each of these programs have their problems. Lightroom 5 has great tools, perhaps some of the best, but Lightroom 5's raw processing is the noisiest, particularly on higher ISOs than the other two. Capture 1 seems to have the nicest raw processing. Aperture is still the easiest to use and understand out of the box. And the raw processing is good, although some might find that it is flat, which very easy to remedy. Although Lightroom's histogram tools are the very advanced, the use of them is counter-intuitive. Histogram manipulation is so much easier in Aperture and C1.

I find myself spending more time in Lightroom and I do not enjoy the interface. It's so much easier to get exif info about the photos in C1 and Aperture than it is in Lightroom. Lightroom is a good program with a lousy interface. The raw processing is also a bit unpredictable.

Personally, I think Capture One 7.x is the software for most.

Of course, there's the old bloated PS standby that is now only available in the cloud that Adobe wants us all to be virtually chained to.
 
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