Adobe Launches Photoshop Lightroom 5 Public Beta With New Healing Brush, 'Upright' Tool

[MacRumors]

Adobe today announced the launch of a free public beta of Photoshop Lightroom 5 for both Mac and Windows, offering a peek at the next major version of the company's digital photo management and post-production software. The beta program runs through June 30, with the official release of Lightroom 5 planned for later this year.

Lightroom 5 Upright tool (Click for full size)

Lightroom 5 beta offers photographers and enthusiasts many new features including:

- Advanced Healing Brush allows customers to heal imperfections and remove distracting elements
- Upright tool analyzes an image to automatically level horizons and straighten objects like buildings to correct a keystone effect
- Radial Gradient tool creates off-center or multiple vignette effects
- Smart Previews allow customers to edit images without needing the original raw file
- Video slideshow enables customers to combine still images, video clips and music in a creative HD slideshow
- Upgrades to the Book module enhancing the ability to create, customize and order elegant photo books using a variety of tailored templates

Lightroom 5 Radial Gradient tool (Click for full size)

Adobe's Sharad Mangalick has more on the new features in a blog post on the company's Photoshop.com Blog.

Adobe has yet to announce pricing or an exact release date for Lightroom 5, which will compete with Apple's Aperture software. Aperture 3 was released over three years ago, but Apple has continued to enhance the software with minor upgrades since that time and slashed the price to $79.99 with the launch of the Mac App Store in January 2011. Adobe responded a year later by cutting Lightroom's price in half to $149 with the launch of Lightroom 4.

Article Link: Adobe Launches Photoshop Lightroom 5 Public Beta With New Healing Brush, 'Upright' Tool

[kirky29]

I was just thinking about switching to Lightroom 4 from Aperture last night.. still not sure though.

Aperture is so slow for me now.

[Foggy]

I just hope they've sorted all the speed issues they had with LR 4.

[needles27]

3 Years on Aperture 3! I waited and waited, and moved to Lightroom a few months ago. Now the disparity is really becoming clear. Sure, lots of posts about Apple giving the pros the backseat - but isn't it becoming super clear? FCPX, Mac Pros with super long refresh cycles, and Aperture showing its age years ago... I love apple, but not as a professional anymore.

[fluxforge]

That's great! I'm an obsessed hobby photographer and hardcore Lightroom user and would really love to play with the upcoming version.

[Mindfield]

I truly love Aperture's distraction free -photo viewing/editing. But I also truly hate not knowing what the software's future is going to be like

[flottenheimer]

I'm a big fan of Lightroom.
And I'll buy this version IF it becomes available on the Danish Mac App Store.

Make my day, Adobe.

[HenryDJP]

Originally Posted by needles27

3 Years on Aperture 3! I waited and waited, and moved to Lightroom a few months ago. Now the disparity is really becoming clear. Sure, lots of posts about Apple giving the pros the backseat - but isn't it becoming super clear? FCPX, Mac Pros with super long refresh cycles, and Aperture showing its age years ago... I love apple, but not as a professional anymore.

Well there are a lot of "professionals" or people who call themselves that.... that still get everything they need to get from Apple. Music and movie studios don't seem to be crying foul with Apple nor do large corporations of the arts that use Macs and Adobe certainly feels their professional software is still worth coding on Mac rather than making crap ports. I'm finding that more "Apple enthusiasts" tend to have this annoyance. Not make excuses here but to be honest about it you don't really need a Mac Pro to do any heavy work. The top iMac can handle Maya, AutoCAD and the like extremely well. I've been on Mac for well over 15 years and I know system software well enough.

[drewyboy]

Please don't bring FCPX into this. The updates have fixed pretty much everything that was missing before. Anything missing now is either people moaning on the littlest thing or they just don't want to relearn the future of editors. FCPX is a complete break from previous NLE's and until ppl understand that, they will continue to not get it. So with that, now to Mac Pro's... there are more than enough solutions out there that work wonders as HenryDJP has so elegantly stated (Henry I +1 you on that post).

Now with that set aside, I'm very happy with LR4. I was thinking about waiting for Ap4, but I used a trial of LR4 and it felt like being right at home. Things are setup just the way I want them to. Will I upgrade to LR5? Probably not. Why? Because I really just use it for organizational purposes. I'm just a guy with a DSLR that takes photos here and there, not much of a color correction or anything like that. So for photo management, I'm very pleased with LR4.

For those of you who are thinking about Lightroom, I say take the dive! Grab the beta and hold out till LR5 is released and buy it. If your doing photo management, LR4 will fit the bill, you could even wait till LR5 and get a deal on LR4.

[jonAppleSeed]

Damm, just paid full price for Lightroom 4 two weeks ago (150$). Hope I get the upgrade to 5 when it comes out, but it's Adobe. I don't think I will.

[Schmitty11]

Going to try this out. I take pictures for fun and am always looking to improve my results. Either taking or editing them.

[Chupa Chupa]

I'd say 3+ months into 2013 Apple's going to need to start pushing out product, or at least announcing, fairly soon. I can't believe Apple is that arrogant to thing people are going to hold off forever in the face of very good alternatives. I love Aperture, but as the feature gap gets wider and wider with LR it's hard to ignore. All of Apple's other pro-ish Apps are also aged and tired.

[Marlor]

I'm sold on the iPhoto workflow for my personal photos, but I need a bit more power, so I've been waiting for Aperture 4. I've been waiting for a long time.

I don't see the point paying full price on the App Store for a program that is being updated "any time now", only to have to re-buy the new version at full price.

However, I've been in that situation for about a year. Wanting to buy Aperture, but not wanting to waste money on version 3, when version 4 is seemingly around the corner.

This situation really exposes that Apple's sporadic Pro software releases and "no upgrade" policy on the App Store just aren't compatible. They lead to buyer paralysis, waiting for the "imminent" new release.

I'm thinking of just going to Lightroom, and throwing my iPhoto workflow (along with faces, places, and much of my complex filing system) away. At least then I'll have a predictable release schedule and access to upgrade pricing.

[Dr McKay]

Originally Posted by kirky29

I was just thinking about switching to Lightroom 4 from Aperture last night.. still not sure though.

Aperture is so slow for me now.

The Sheer volume of photos you take I'd suggest an SSD. And download more RAM

[Krazy Bill]

I've said it before... LightRoom can't be a bloated Adobe product - I refuse to believe it. It's just too good.

[Chupa Chupa]

Just a heads up:

Beta 1 doesn't have the D7100 update so it won't work w/ these RAW files out of the box.

[Stella]

These additions look great, but seems I chose wrong: I bought Aperture instead of LightRoom :-\

3 years and counting Apple.... appears Apple discounted and dumped Aperature. Wish they wouldn't give up on their products.

[Mike Oxard]

I wonder if we'll get LR5 as part of Creative Cloud or whether it'll be a separate purchase for a while like LR4 was. I guess it'll be free, that is one of the selling points of CC.

[Chupa Chupa]

Originally Posted by Stella

Wish they wouldn't give up on their products.

I wish they would respect its customers more and tell us if they are giving up or not. As the saying goes, there comes a time when event require one to either sh!# or get of the pot.

[hayesk]

Neither of these products have a check out/check in system where I can store photos/projects on a server and checkout to various machines to make changes. I have Aperture now, but if Adobe can offer that, I'll switch.

----------

Originally Posted by Chupa Chupa

I wish they would respect its customers more and tell us if they are giving up or not. As the saying goes, there comes a time when event require one to either sh!# or get of the pot.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but this is Apple we're talkng about here. What's the threshold for these desired "status updates." Monthly? Quarterly? Yearly?

[soulbot]

Originally Posted by HenryDJP

...Music and movie studios don't seem to be crying foul with Apple...

Yeah, because they're using ProTools and Media Composer. Apple software is not a factor for the sector you're talking about. Feature films, sound + picture are pumping through AVID software. High-end graphics are happening on HP's, Linux, Nuke and proprietary software. There's a fair amount of After Effects nowadays. Still, this has nothing to do with a reliance on Apple software.

It's a little different with music production / recording. Sure, there are TONS of people using Logic. So there is a little more of a foothold here. However, these people are 'crying foul' about an updated version of Logic. Or lack thereof...

[pcharles]

I have owned Aperture 3 for some time now because I got it cheap with the new iMac. I installed it and hardly ever used it because it was annoying to have one set of photos on iPhoto and one on Aperture, and my wife has little to no interest in learning Aperture.

All of a sudden, Apple updated Aperture and iPhoto to use the same database and now I have the best of both worlds. I can edit my SLR photos in Aperture and view the results in iPhoto if needed. It has really simplified my photo workflow.

I heard a lot about Lightroom 4, and thought I would give it a try. I had tried all the Lightroom versions prior to that and cannot get my head around the segmented workflow it offers, and I still feel the same about Lightroom 4, however, the lack of integration with iPhoto was the real killer. Worse still the lack of any form of iPhoto import made it difficult to even get started. Very frustrating.

I'm sure I'll give Lightroom 5 a try and see what they have added to it, such as iPhoto import. So, my question to the Lightroom evangelists is "What does Lightroom do that Aperture does not? What is the killer feature that an Aperture user would upheave his exiting libraries and switch for?"

[Yujenisis]

As a current Aperture user who is considering the switch: Does Lightroom offer something equivalent to Aperture's "edge-detection" with customized brushes?

Pretty much that an integration with iCloud are my only reasons to hold out. Apple's RAW support is a sad, sad joke.

[parish]

So, Aperture is now two major releases behind LR - unless Apple surprise us by releasing Aperture 4 in the next couple of months, though I'm not holding my breath, but even then it'll still be one major release behind.

Originally Posted by pcharles

"What does Lightroom do that Aperture does not? What is the killer feature that an Aperture user would upheave his exiting libraries and switch for?"

For me they would be noise reduction and lens (and perspective) correction.

[CJK]

Originally Posted by Mike Oxard

I wonder if we'll get LR5 as part of Creative Cloud or whether it'll be a separate purchase for a while like LR4 was. I guess it'll be free, that is one of the selling points of CC.

It'll be part of Creative Cloud.

So happy I signed up for CC -- Adobe hit it out of the park with that idea.