Prior to the great Creative Cloud conundrum, Adobe announced the latest version of Lightroom as a beta release for the public to try. Fans of the speedy post-processing software were left a little worried that they would be forced onto the cloud, but here we are: Lightroom 5 is available as a stand alone licence and all is right in the world.
The new features introduced in this upgrade include a more advanced healing brush/clone stamp, the new Upright tool for automatic leveling and easy perspective control, radial gradients for selective editing and smart preview to edit offline images. You can get the newest version of Lightroom for $149 as a new customers or $79 for just the upgrade. Of course, it will also be included as part of the Creative Cloud package should you want to pay $49.99 a month.Adobe also released the latest version of Camera Raw and DNG Converter. ACR 8.1 will support 7 new cameras inluding the Olympus PEN E-P5, Ricoh GR and Panasonic Lumix DMC-G6 along with 16 lens profiles.