Big news day at Adobe: Lightroom, Camera Raw updated, Creative Cloud adoption grows
posted Tuesday, September 17, 2013 at 7:36 PM EDT
It's a big news day today for the folks at Adobe. In quick succession, the company has announced new release availability for three of its products: Photoshop Lightroom, Camera Raw, and DNG Converter. It's also made available its new subscription-based Photoshop Photography Program, and announced that it now has more than a million paid Creative Cloud subscribers. And as if that's not enough, it's also revealed plans to commercialize some products it previewed as concepts last May, and kicked off a global promotional tour.
Most interesting to Imaging Resource readers, though, will be the updates to Adobe's photography software. Photoshop Lightroom 5.2, Camera Raw 8.2, and DNG Converter 8.2 were all previewed in release candidate form last July, and are now available as final releases. They bring with them new camera and lens support, fixes for outstanding bugs with each app, and a variety of new features.
For Lightroom, key new features include a Smoothness slider that helps reduce the severity of low-frequency, mottled color artifacts caused by noise reduction. The app also has more consistent autoexposure, and generates larger 2560px smart previews for offline viewing and editing. There's a new feather control for the Spot Healing tool, and it now better heals textured areas. It also now prefers content within the crop rectangle as the source of data from which to perform healing. The Local Adjustment brush, meanwhile, now includes mouse controls for duplicating and deleting adjustment points.
Camera Raw, too, gets the new Smoothness slider, improved autoexposure consistency, and refined Spot Healing tool / Local Adjustment brush. It also gets an interactive histogram, a rectangle mode for the white balance eyedropper, plus presets for both the Save dialog box and workflows. Of course, these improvements are only available to you if you're using the subscription-only Adobe Creative Cloud. Users of Creative Suite 6 still get the new camera / lens support, but all the new features are disabled.
Lightroom 5.2, Camera Raw 8.2, and DNG Converter 8.2 all support the following new camera models:
- Canon EOS 70D
- Canon PowerShot G16
- Canon PowerShot S120 (preliminary)
- Casio Exilim EX-ZR800
- Fujifilm FinePix HS22EXR
- Fujifilm FinePix HS35EXR
- Fujifilm FinePix S205EXR
- Fujifilm X-M1
- Leica C (Typ 112)
- Olympus E-M1 (preliminary)
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX7
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ70
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ72
- Pentax Q7
- Pentax K-50
- Pentax K-500
- Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 II
- Sony Alpha A3000 (ILCE-3000)
- Sony Alpha NEX-5T
In addition, Lightroom 5.2 and Camera Raw 8.2 support the following new optics (with mounts noted):
-
Canon
- SIGMA 18-35mm F1.8 DC HSM A013
- SIGMA 120-300mm F2.8 DG OS HSM S013
-
GoPro
- GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition
- GoPro Hero 3 Silver Edition
- GoPro Hero 3 White Edition
-
Hasselblad
- Hasselblad LF16mm F2.8
- Hasselblad LF18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OSS
- Hasselblad LF18-200mm F3.5-6.3 OSS
-
Leica
- Leica TRI-ELMAR-M 16-18-21 mm f/4 ASPH.
-
Nikon
- Nikon 1 NIKKOR 32mm f/1.2
- SIGMA 30mm F1.4 DC HSM A013
- SIGMA 120-300mm F2.8 DG OS HSM S013
-
Olympus
- SIGMA 60mm F2.8 DN A013
-
Pentax
- SIGMA 17-70mm F2.8-4 DC MACRO OS HSM C013
- SIGMA 35mm F1.4 DG HSM A012
-
Sigma
- SIGMA 120-300mm F2.8 DG OS HSM S013
-
Sony
- Sony DSC-RX1R (built-in lens)
- Sony E 35mm F1.8 OSS
- SIGMA 17-70mm F2.8-4 DC MACRO OS HSM C013
- SIGMA 35mm F1.4 DG HSM A012
- SIGMA 60mm F2.8 DN A013
More details and the apps themselves can be found at the links below:
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.2
-
Adobe Camera Raw 8.2
- Info here; update must be installed using Photoshop's update tool
- Adobe DNG Converter 8.2
We noted just now that the new feature updates for Camera Raw are available only to subscribers using Adobe's Creative Cloud service, but how's adoption of the service coming along? According to Adobe, things are looking pretty rosy. The company reports having passed a million paid subscribers. There's plenty of room for more converts, though; apparently millions more have created memberships, but have yet to convert them to paid accounts.
In related news, Adobe's recently-announced Photoshop Photography Program service, announced earlier this month, just went live. It's priced at US$10/month, for which you get access to Photoshop Creative Cloud and Lightroom software, plus 20GB of cloud storage and a Behance ProSite portfolio website. When the service was launched, we were told that the US$10/month pricing wasn't an introductory price, however as noted at the time, Adobe has reiterated that this price is only available if you sign up before year's end. We're not quite sure what the distinction from an introductory price would be.
And the news continues. Back in May, we told you about Adobe's Bluetooth-connected tablet drawing tool concepts, the "Mighty" pen and the puntastically-named "Napoleon", a short ruler. Now, we hear that both will go on sale in the first half of next year. Admittedly, they're aimed at designers and artists more than photographers, but it will be interesting to see where the technology leads.
And finally, we come to Adobe's worldwide Creative Cloud Events world tour. At 13 events in North America and another 13 in Europe, Adobe will be showing off its latest Creative Cloud software, offering tips and tricks, and doubtless hoping you'll join those who've already signed up. The tour will also hit Asia, but destinations and dates haven't been announced in that region. The tour kicks off simultaneously on Thursday in San Francisco, California and Utrecht, Netherlands. From there, events happen every few days for much of the remainder of the year.