Lightroom 5 Public Beta

[Mike Farley]

For those amongst who cannot wait until Lightroom 5 is officially released, you don't have to! Adobe has just released a public beta of the next version and anyone is free to download and use it. There seem to be some very worthwhile improvements, judging by DPReview's preview. Just bear in mind the warnings that this is beta software, not will not necessarily have the robustness and performance of the eventual commercial product.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/04/15 ... ta-preview

[Mike Farley]

I have just noticed that the beta has an expiry date of 30 June 2013, which makes me curious. Adobe currently has an official policy of issuing major updates for Lightroom and Photoshop CS every two years, with the next such release being due April/May 2014, so it is stange that Adobe is publishing this preview so early. Either there is going to be a series of betas or Adobe is planning on moving away from this schedule for Lightroom. Or does Adobe consider this to be an "interim" release? Time will tell.

[davidc]

http://petapixel.com/2013/04/15/adobe-l ... ore-106463

This seems to indicate the final release date is June 30th, based on the final paragraph, although Adobe are yet to officially confirm.

[Mike Farley]

http://petapixel.com/2013/04/15/adobe-launches-lightroom-5-beta-adds-several-exciting-features/#more-106463

This seems to indicate the final release date is June 30th, based on the final paragraph, although Adobe are yet to officially confirm.

Officially Adobe is not saying when the product is being released, but I would not be surprised if it is some time in May or June. It was certainly unexpected last year when Adobe, which is not noted for its altruism, halved the price of Lightroom 4. It would appear that this is being counteracted by an annual update to keep Adobe's revenues up.

It is worth noting that although the changes in LR5 are useful, they are comparitively minor compared to the all previous updates when there have been substantial revisions to Raw processing. Is this the sign of a maturing product, or is something major planned for next year? If the latter, what could it be unless there is another round of upgrades for Raw in the pipeline?

[davidc]

I think it's probably the former - the software is maturing and we're not seeing huge strides in Photoshop (which has seen its features trickle into LR in the past) - so we seem to be getting into a period of fewer radical advances.

The auto-align/perspective correct feature looked cool though.

[Mike Farley]

I think it's probably the former - the software is maturing and we're not seeing huge strides in Photoshop (which has seen its features trickle into LR in the past) - so we seem to be getting into a period of fewer radical advances.

The auto-align/perspective correct feature looked cool though.

I would tend to agree. Most of Adobe's advances for both Lightroom and Photoshop have been in making improvements to Raw processing, which is significantly improved from where it was 4 or 5 years ago. Of course, Adobe maximised its revenues by releasing the changes over two updates, but it is far from alone in adopting such a strategy. The company has to justify the upgrade price, so I would expect the changes to be worthwhile, although they are not "must have" like the previous versions were. From what I have seen, it is moving a step closer to being able to do all post processing at the Raw conversion stage without having to use an image editor, for which Adobe is to be applauded.