It seemed like it took a long time to get Lightroom 5.2 released, but now that it has we have Lightroom 5.3 right on its heels. The candidate for release has been posted and is available for download, and it fixes a host of bugs, while adding some new camera support. If you’re one of the people who have been impacted by these bugs, or if you just like living on the edge, head over to Adobe Labs and grab your copy, but remember – this is a Release Candidate only, and features and performance could change between now and the official final release.
Nevertheless, I’m always glad to see bug fixes come along, and it appears that this release will put to bed a number of nagging problems that have been pestering me and countless other Lightroom 5 users.
Adobe Camera Raw gets a bump to 8.3 Release Candidate as well, and the details and links for that are below the Lightroom announcement here.
According to Sharad Mangalick, Lightroom Product Manager, version 5.3 RC fixes these bugs:
- Issues when upgrading catalog from previous versions of Lightroom.
- Incorrect photos are displayed after switching away from a Publish Collection.
- Catalog optimization did not finish, and was not optimizing the catalog
- Feather of clone spots is set to 0 after upgrading catalog to Lightroom 5.
- Auto White Balance settings are not saved to Snapshots.
- Sony 18-55mm lens is detected as the Hasselblad 18-55mm lens for lens correction.
- Increased Update Spot Removal history steps when in Before and After view.
- Slideshows start playing automatically even when the Manual Slideshow option is enabled.
- Video playback stops when dragging on the scrubber.
- Errors when publishing photos to Flickr through the Publish Service.
- Option + drag on Edit Pin behavior is functioning incorrectly.
- Black border appears around the exported slideshow video.
- Catalog containing images processed with PV2003 were adding a post-crop vignette when catalog upgraded to Lightroom 5.
- Pressing the “Reset” button while holding down the Shift key caused Lightroom to exit abruptly.
- Output Sharpening and Noise Reduction were not applied to exported images that were resized to less than 1/3 of the original image size.
- The Esc key did not exit the slideshow after right clicking screen with mouse during slideshow playing.
- Import dialog remained blank for folders that contain PNG files with XMP sidecars.
- Metadata panel displayed incorrect information after modifying published photo. Please note that this only occurred when metadata was changed after the photo was published.
In addition, the following new cameras are supported:
- Canon PowerShot S120
- Fujifilm XQ1
- Fujifilm X-E2
- Nikon 1 AW1
- Nikon Coolpix P7800
- Nikon D610
- Nikon D5300 (*)
- Olympus OM-D E-M1
- Olympus STYLUS 1 (*)
- Panasonic DMC-GM1
- Phase One IQ260
- Phase One IQ280
- Sony A7 (ILCE-7)
- Sony A7R (ILCE-7R)
- Sony DSC-RX10 (*)
* denotes preliminary support
Adobe Camera Raw 8.3 is also available on Adobe Labs (for both Photoshop CC and Photoshop CS6), and in addition to adding the same camera support, it also adds some new lens profiles. If you’re on CS6, you’ll get new camera support, new lens profile support, and bug fixes. However, if you’re on Photoshop CC, you’ll also get some new features:
- Whites and Blacks now support Auto Levels-like functionality via shift-double-click on the sliders.
- Separate Auto Temperature and Auto Tint feature. Shift-double-click to invoke “auto temperature” and “auto tint” separately.
- Ability to option-click shortcut in Synchronize, New Preset, Save Settings, and Copy/Paste (Bridge) dialog boxes. Option-click a checkbox to check that box exclusively. Option-click again to toggle previous checkbox state.
- Set the background color of the work area. Context-click outside the image in the work area to select a background color from a popup menu.
Remember these are "release candidates." The "release candidate" label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of our customers. The final release of Lightroom 5.3 may have additional corrections or camera support.