Adobe has announced that it has launched the final version of Photoshop Lightroom 5.
Two months ago Adobe released the photography software in public beta, which allowed professional and amateur photographers alike to test the new program before it went to market. That beta also helped Adobe fine-tune the program to better suit the users needs. Based on the feedback of the initial users, Adobe says it fixed over 400 bugs from its preview release to the final one launched this week. Since then, Lightroom has been hailed as a useful tool for photographers to easily edit their photos.
Lightroom 5 is lacking in some user-desired features such as face detection, HDR and panorama tools, but it also has a few new features to make up for those losses. The program has new features like a ‘healing brush‘ that, unlike the older spot healing tool, can correct non-circular areas, and has a opacity slider to fine-tune the corrections. A new Upright feature will automatically straighten distorted images. Lightroom 5 also uses lossy digital negative Smart Previews to allow users to work on raw photos without taking up a lot of memory space. The photo-editing program also has a radial filter, a slideshow option that can mix video and still images, and a feature that allows users to share their pictures directly to Behance, a platform for people to share their creative work and discover others.
Adobe bought Behance, the portfolio sharing network, at the end of last year. Last month, the agency that developed mobile apps for Behance announced that it is now with Adobe as well, working full time with the Behance team.
Adobe gained the ire of its base earlier this year when it announced that Creative Cloud, a cloud-based creative suite of photo, video and audio-editing software, would sell as a subscription. Lightroom 5, however, was excluded from that subscription model.
Lightroom 5 can be purchased as stand-alone software ($149) or as an upgrade from previous versions of Lightroom ($79). It's free as part of Adobe Creative Cloud, which gives subscribers access to their entire collection of tools, including Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC, Premiere Pro CC, integration with Behance, and others.
