Lightroom 5 is out.....

Arob1000 wrote in post #16025833
Exactly my thoughts! Photoshop isn't really necessary much anymore!

Depends on your style. LR is a nice program, catalogs well, and does basic adjustments ok. But it is not a decent photo editor. Try stacking, panos, combine elements, remove elements, layers, hdr, and so much more. Na, LR is not ready to take over PS just yet. Maybe for the pure photographer but not if you want to get creative.

gjl711 wrote in post #16025853
Depends on your style. LR is a nice program, catalogs well, and does basic adjustments ok. But it is not a decent photo editor. Try stacking, panos, combine elements, remove elements, layers, hdr, and so much more. Na, LR is not ready to take over PS just yet. Maybe for the pure photographer but not if you want to get creative.

I still use Photoshop for pano's but that's about it with Lightroom able to clone now. For the rest of it I use NIK software, Color EFEX PRO, Silver EFEX PRO, and HDR EFEX Pro.

Mark-B wrote in post #16024393
Slow with no precise control, and very resource intensive. If you have a lot to do, you're still better off with Photoshop.

I agree with that. It's much better than the LR 4 spot tool but is not close to being a replacement for the content aware Spot Healing Brush in CS6. For files from my digital cameras it'll probably be all I need 99% of the time, but it's not useful for things like photo restoration (B&W film scans) or if you need to remove significant elements from an image.

I downloaded the new version yesterday. I haven't had a chance to put it through its paces yet, but so far it seems faster than version 4.4. One thing I did notice immediately was that the auto feature in the Basic panel of develop is significantly more accurate than in the previous version. I know there are many here that think the auto feature is terrible. I and many others use it just as a string point. But on the dozen or so pictures I've tried it on in version 5, the results were much closer to the settings I would have chosen. Time will tell when my initial assessment of that feature holds up.

I'm on the fence on the upgrade since I actually do most of my work in PS using PS plugins.

If you are not doing al lot of mass edits then PS is just fine. That is where LR shines for me. I use both as as required. I Iike my actions in PS.

Most plugins work in LR.

BigBadWolfie wrote in post #16026373
I'm on the fence on the upgrade since I actually do most of my work in PS using PS plugins.

Yes I was going to say that as well. I have a few older ones that don't so I decided not to.

Mark-B wrote in post #16024389
Do you not use the lens correction tool in LR4? It's the same thing, but LR5 just takes it's best guess at doing an automatic correction. I've found it to be good enough about 20% of the time on non-architecture shots and about 10% of the time on architecture shots. I still end up using the manual corrections anyway.

I don't use the lens correction tool in LR4. I'm not very good at doing those kind of manual corrections. The reason why I ask how much space to give the image before I take it is because I know after correction, parts of the image will need to be cropped.

lsquare wrote in post #16029825
I don't use the lens correction tool in LR4. I'm not very good at doing those kind of manual corrections. The reason why I ask how much space to give the image before I take it is because I know after correction, parts of the image will need to be cropped.

A response was given earlier "how long is a piece of string". It's a accurate response as that it depends on how far off you are. If your are only 1 degree off then the correction will be minimal with maybe a few pixels shaved off the corners. If your 10 degrees off, then much more will be lost. If your 45 degrees off, most of the picture will be lost.

I have LR 3.6. I know a lot of those who upgraded to 4 stated it handled noise reduction and other items much better than 3. But, they also said it was slow. I see a few comments here that the speed is faster on 5. Since i never used 4 how slow was it in comparison to the speed of 5? I am thinking of upgrading to 5 before Adobe makes everything Cloud based.

Thanks

mak65 wrote in post #16031306
I have LR 3.6. I know a lot of those who upgraded to 4 stated it handled noise reduction and other items much better than 3. But, they also said it was slow. I see a few comments here that the speed is faster on 5. Since i never used 4 how slow was it in comparison to the speed of 5? I am thinking of upgrading to 5 before Adobe makes everything Cloud based.

Thanks

Word on the street is that Lightroom isn't going to be only cloud-based and will be sold as a separate product, who knows how long that will last though.

mak65 wrote in post #16031306
I have LR 3.6. I know a lot of those who upgraded to 4 stated it handled noise reduction and other items much better than 3. But, they also said it was slow. I see a few comments here that the speed is faster on 5. Since i never used 4 how slow was it in comparison to the speed of 5?

Thanks

This question can be answered as above -"How long is a string?" Comments ranged for those who considered LR4 to be unusable, to those like me for whom response was virtually instantaneous. From Version 4.2 on, I never had any trouble with it, even when making extensive use of the adjustment brushes. There are some for whom LR4 was slow who are saying that LR5 is not, so take that for what it's worth.

Thanks Arob and Preeb. Can anyone tell me, since LR 3 was my first version will the LR 5 upgrade work or would I have to buy the full package?

When you upgrade online, you will select your current version from a drop down box
I'm not certain, but as far as i could see, the price is the same.
You could go through the process online and check with out confirming the order