Lightroom 5.2 now available!

Lightroom 5.2 has been in Release Candidate mode for a while now and I know some of you have already downloaded it and are enjoying the new features.  It’s now in official release and is available in the update menu in Lightroom.

The Spot removal tool now includes a feather slider to control the hardness of the edges when cloning or healing.  Also where is decides to pick it’s source has been greatly improved and works so much better with textured areas of the image. It will also try to limit the source to areas within a cropped image.

A smoothness adjustment slider has been added to the detail panel under Color Noise Reduction that helps reduce low frequency color mottling

Smart Preview size has been increased to 2560 pixels on the long edge

Local Adjustment Brush refinements:

▪                Right Click (PC) / Control-click (Mac) on a brush adjustment pin to bring up a context menu to duplicate or delete

▪     Control+Alt+Drag (PC) / Command+Option+Drag (Mac) on a brush adjustment pin to clone (duplicate) that adjustment

Added cameras and lens support

A few bug fixes:

The following bugs that were part the Lightroom 5 have been corrected.

▪                Catalog containing images processed with PV2003 were adding a post-crop vignette when catalog upgraded to Lightroom 5.

▪                Pressing the “Reset” button while holding down the Shift key caused Lightroom to exit abruptly.

▪                Output Sharpening and Noise Reduction were not applied to exported images that were resized to less than 1/3 of the original image size.

▪                Incorrect photo was selected when trying to select a photo in segmented grid in Publish Services.

▪                The Esc key did not exit the slideshow after right clicking screen with mouse during slideshow playing.

▪                Import dialog remained blank for folders that contain PNG files with XMP sidecars.

▪                Metadata panel displayed incorrect information after modifying published photo. Please note that this only occurred when metadata was changed after the photo was published.

Go ahead and update – this is included free

Adobe listened? Creative Cloud Package just for Photographers

The backlash and complaints surge after Adobe's announcement  making its Creative Cloud product suite a subscription-only service. This has been especially true for Photographers who may not need all the programs in the all encompassing package that is too expensive and more than what we need.

In response to that criticism, Adobe has just announced a pared down package for photographers, which includes Photoshop CC, Lightroom, 20GB of cloud storage, and a Behance ProSite for $9.99 a month. The Adobe service, dubbed the "Photoshop Photography Program," was announced during the opening keynote at Photoshop World in Las Vegas.

 "Since introducing Photoshop CC, we’ve listened to feedback from a spectrum of our customers, from advanced professionals to casual enthusiasts," Winston Hendrickson, Adobe's vice president of Engineering, Digital Imaging, wrote on Adobe's Creative Layer blog today. "One common request was a solution specifically tailored for photographers. We listened, and at Photoshop World we’re announcing a special offer for our loyal Photoshop customers."

*** The one catch is that to eligible for the offer, you must already own Photoshop CS3 or higher.  Note that this is NOT an "introductory price." It's offered to anyone who signs up for the Photoshop Photography Program by December 31, 2013.

The deal will be available in the next few weeks at the same time as Adobe introduces final version of Lightroom 5.2. update.

Stay tuned