Adobe release Lightroom 5.2 and Camera Raw 8.2

 Adobe has just released the GM versions of Lightroom 5.2 and Camera Raw 8.2. If you have been using the release candidates that went live in late July you’ll already be familiar with most of the new features. However, for those who are downloading 5.2/8.2 for the first time the new features are summarised below.

New Features

Lightroom 5.2

  • A Smoothness adjustment slider has been added to the Detail Panel under Color Noise Reduction. This helps to reduce low-frequency color mottling artefacts.
  • Refinements to the Spot Healing Tool:
    • New Feather control
    • Auto find source method now works better for images with textured areas like rocks, bark, and foliage
    • Auto find source method now prefers source areas within the crop rectangle
  • Auto Exposure has been improved to be more consistent across images and across different image sizes.
  • Smart Preview size has been updated to 2560 pixels on the long edge.
  • Refinements to the Local Adjustment Brush:
    • 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

Something not mentioned in the Lightroom release notes that might cause some confusion occurs when 5.2 is first launched – a simplified version of the Registration dialog appears. This is perfectly normal and is due to new licensing arrangements with Google which means that the maps are only available in certain geographic regions. Therefore, you must choose your region from the popup then click Finish (see screen grab below). The dialog will only appear on first launch after updating or in the event that you delete the Lightroom preference file.

Registering your location with Lightroom

Camera Raw 8.2

  • The Histogram is now interactive. This enables the ability to click and drag on the Histogram to adjust the Blacks, Shadows, Exposure, Highlights, and Whites sliders.
  • A Colour Smoothness adjustment slider has been added to the Detail Panel. This helps to reduce low-frequency colour mottling artefacts.
  • Added new “rectangle mode” to white balance eyedropper tool. Click-and-drag with the eyedropper tool to define a rectangular pixel area. Upon releasing mouse, Camera Raw will use all the pixels within the marked rectangle to set the global White Balance.
  • Workflow presets are now available and can be selected by context-clicking the workflow link.
  • Presets have been added to the Save dialog box.
  • Auto Exposure has been improved to be more consistent across images and across different image sizes.
  • Refinements to the Spot Healing Tool:
    • New Feather control
    • Auto find source method now works better for images with textured areas like rocks, bark, and foliage
    • Auto find source method now prefers source areas within the crop rectangle
  • Refinements to the Local Adjustment Brush:
    • Move brush adjustments by clicking and dragging on brush adjustment pins
    • 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
    • Alt+Click (PC) / Option+Click (Mac) on a brush adjustment pin to delete the adjustment

Camera Raw 8.2 will also work with Photoshop CS6. However, only users using the full Creative Cloud version of Camera Raw will get access to the new features listed. For CS6 users Camera Raw just adds new camera support.

This support includes recently introduced cameras from Canon, Casio, Fujifilm. Leica, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax and Sony. For the full list of supported cameras checkout this page at Adobe.com