[UPDATE (June 10th) – The Lightroom 5 final release is now shipping!]
Adobe has just announced a free public beta release of the eagerly-anticipated Photoshop Lightroom 5, with new tools and advancements to develop, enhance and share your digital photographs… Lightroom 5 provides photographers with an elegant and efficient way to work with their growing digital image collections, bring out the best in their images, and make an impact from raw capture to creative output, all while maintaining the highest possible quality each step of the way.
“The Lightroom team is proud to introduce the fifth major version of the product designed for and by photographers. We’ve been hard at work improving an application that’s intended to be as easy to use as it is powerful. This release builds on the image quality improvements in Lightroom 4 to provide a truly complete workflow and imaging solution. We encourage you to try the beta release and provide your feedback to the product team.”
Available as a free public download for Windows and Mac, the Lightroom 5 beta is a limited-time preview of new features and capabilities that will be offered in the final release of LR5, expected in mid-2013 and available separately as well as part of the Creative Cloud.
New Features in Lightroom 5 Beta
Here’s the quick hit list of what’s new – for more details check out the Lightroom Journal or the “LR5 Top 5” video below:
- Performance improvements – Lightroom 5 user interactivity is quicker and faster.
- Smart Previews – Edit and showcase your images while offline from the originals.
- Advanced Healing Brush – Heal or clone using brush strokes of any shape or form.
- Radial Filter – Apply any of LR’s local adjustment attributes with a circular mask.
- Upright Tool – Automatically level horizons, straighten buildings, & correct askew lines.
- New Visualize Spots Tool – Highlights sensor dust spots for easy removal.
- Slideshows with Videos and Still Images – Bring images, video clips & music together.
- Improved Photo Book Creation – Customize with templates, captions, and more.
- PNG File Support
- True Full Screen Mode
- And more – Almost 50 additional features and JDIs.
Note that some user-requested features like person/face recognition and support for shared catalogs on network drives are not in the beta version, but we’ll have to see what the final release brings.
LR5 Beta Download Availability
The free Lightroom 5 beta program is open and available to the public. Anyone with an Internet connection can download and test it out in full. You do not need to own (or have tried) a previous version of Lightroom, and there is no serial number required. The Lightroom 5 beta will not overwrite or interfere with any existing installation of Lightroom 1, 2, 3, or 4.
You can download the beta immediately and use it freely until the product expires at the end of June. Please see this detailed post for the minimum system requirements and installation instructions, as well as more information on the new features and known issues. One possible hiccup for some users is that Lightroom 5 is not supported on Mac OS 10.6 or Windows Vista systems or lower.
Also be sure to give your feedback to the Adobe developers…
Introduction to Lightroom 5
And here’s a great video review from Creative Evangelist Terry White to get you started…
The final version of Lightroom 5 will be included automatically in the Creative Cloud – and if you’re not a member yet, now is a fantastic time to sign up because Adobe is offering a special one-time 40% discount until the 19th of April.
For Lightroom 4, the Current Release
- Fast Facts: Our LR4 Release Overview
- How-to: Learn the Top 10 Techniques for Lightroom 4
- Adobe Product Comparison: Photoshop CS6 vs. Lightroom 4
- Four Hours of Free Tutorials for Lightroom 4, plus Other Resources
- What’s New in Lightroom 4 vs. Lightroom 3 vs. Lightroom 2?
- Lightroom Presets/Settings: How to Export Photos to the iPad
- Lightroom 4 Free Trial: Direct Download Links
For Creative Suite and Creative Cloud
- When is Adobe CS7 coming out, and what’s new?
- The 10 most common myths about Creative Cloud
- What are the differences between CS6 vs. CS5, 4, 3?
- Download free Adobe books (choose over 30 titles)
- Free Adobe CS6 Tutorials – 30 hours of video training
- Free Adobe Stock! Download 1,000,000+ top images
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Woo-hoo! Thx for the good news
I just purchased LR4.4 from B&H Photo. I have not opened the box. Will Adobe offer a free upgrade to LR5 with this recent purchase? Should I return it for a refund and wait for LR5 this spring?
Hi Paul, the company has not made any statements regarding upgrades to Lightroom 5 – however if you buy direct from Adobe then you can effectively create your own 30-day “grace period” for a free upgrade…
Not sure what your retailer’s return policy is, but Adobe has a full Refund Policy which means that if LR5 comes out within a month of buying LR4 from them, you can just do the exchange for the newer version (even if you’ve already opened and installed the software).
As to when the final/official version Lightroom 5 will be shipping, we expect around midyear.
Hello, do you know why Adobe isn’t supporting Mac OSX 10.6.8 in the Lightroom 5 beta?
Yes Shawna, you’ll find the full explanation here.
typo in the article. I think you mean “expected in mid-2013” rather than “mid-2012.”
Thank you JP, that’s right… and fixed.
OK. I’ve decided to wait for LR5. However, before LR was even considered, I began to get lots of (old) books intending to finally dig into Design Premium CS3. And what do you know. Every Photoshop CS3 book implies that LR is the de facto photographic editing and management software. So…now I’m learning about Bridge, the wonderful things it can do, but also discovering I may want to wait to manage and do most of the editing of my images with LR(5) .
Question: Should I proceed with setting up importing and editing RAW files with Bridge (and Photoshop), expecting an easy move to LR5, or wait for the release of LR5?
Hello Paul, nice to see you again. You can definitely use Bridge and Lightroom both, independently, or together – they do not conflict as Bridge does not maintain an internal catalog, it is more of a file browser really.
So you can get started however you like today using Bridge, and then import your photos into Lightroom 5 when it ships. However, keep in mind that any changes you make/save to your images using Photoshop CS will be permanent, and you will not be able to change later in Lightroom.
Lastly, the version of Camera Raw will be different with CS3 than with CS6 and LR5, something to be aware of.
This guide may help quite a bit in sorting it all out:
What’s the Difference Between Lightroom vs. Photoshop CS + Bridge?
So Camera RAW 7.xx can not be installed in CS3?
No, CS3 predates the latest ACR version by five years – it doesn’t understand it… See this page:
Adobe Camera Raw Compatibility Chart
And if not, what are the implications for working in CS3 Bridge now considering LR5 RAW is not the same version?
You will get a “mismatch” message and possibly have incompatibilities related to controls or adjustments that exist in one but are not supported by the other.