Steve Oldham Photography

Adobe have announced the release of the public beta version of Lightroom 5.

By the looks of the new features, I don’t think I’ll be paying to upgrade from LR4, although some of the features look quite cool, particularly the improved healing brush (no longer restricted to circular spots) and the new radial gradients (think multiple vignettes, wherever on the image you want them. Or multiple light sources, illuminating areas of the image).

Other new features include automating the manual lens correction features that already exist in LR4, smart previews enabling you to edit your images whilst the external drive that holds the image is disconnected, and some enhancements to the Book module (which I don’t use, preferring instead to use BookSmart when I produce my photo books.)

Top of my wishlist would be improved performance, as LR4 runs really slowly on my laptop – I have to close all other users of resources before I can work on my pictures, and even then I have to close LR periodically to release the memory it is taking up.

If you’d like to find out more, the guys at NAPP have put together a series of videos highlighting the new features.

In addition, Adobe evangelist Terry White has put together a video of his top 5 favourite features:

Also, Julieanne Kost, Adobe’s principal Digital Imaging Evangelist, has also put together a summary of her favourite features, including some videos.

Have a look, and let me know your thoughts!