Adobe released Lightroom 5.2 today, with important bug fixes, new camera, lens and tethered capture support. As has become their practice in the first “dot” release (“.2” in this case — there was no “.1”), Adobe has also thrown in a few small but welcome new features.

Watch my “What’s New in Lightroom 5.2” video below, and then read on in this article for more information on new camera support, bug fixes, etc.

New Features in Lightroom 5.2
1. Color Noise Smoothness Slidersmoothness-slider-lightroom-5-2

  • The color noise slider previously present has been great at removing pixel-level color noise. This new smoothness slider now also removes larger color blobs that you may find when you brighten very-much underexposed areas of a photograph:
lightroom 5-2-smoothness

CLICK TO SEE LARGER

2. Refinements to the Spot Healing Tool:

  • New Feather Slider

Lightroom 5.2 Spot Removal Feather Slider

This is a “small” addition that for me increases the power of this tool greatly. As I explain in my video on how to use the spot removal tool/ advanced healing brush in Lightroom 5, I usually work in Heal mode. However, when working up against a high contrast edge, Heal can cause bleeding along the edge of my fix. In these cases I turn to clone mode. However, up until now the edge of the clone fix was often too harsh. Now we can use the feather slider to adjust this edge. (It works on both clone and heal.)

  • 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

3. Auto Exposure has been improved to be more consistent across images and across different image sizes.
4. Smart Preview size has been updated to 2560 pixels (from 2540) on the long edge.

5. 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

Newly added support for Tethered Capture in Lightroom 5.2
Canon EOS 6D
Canon EOS Rebel T5i / EOS 700D / EOS Kiss X7i
Canon EOS Rebel SL1 / EOS 100D / EOS Kiss X7
Nikon D7100

New Camera Support in Lightroom 5.2
Canon EOS 70D, Canon PowerShot G16, Canon PowerShot S120*, Casio Exilim EX-ZR800, Fujifilm FinePix HS22EXR, Fujifilm FinePix HS35EXR, Fujifilm FinePix S205EXR, Fujifilm X-A1, Fujifilm X-M1, Leica C (Typ 112), Olympus OM-DE-M1, Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX7, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ70, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ72, Pentax Q7, Pentax K-50, Pentax K-500, Sony DSC-RX100 II, Sony A3000 (ILCE-3000), Sony NEX-5T

* denotes preliminary support

New Lens Profile Support in Lightroom 5.2

Sony E 35mm F1.8 OSS, Hasselblad LF16mm F2.8, Hasselblad LF18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OSS, Hasselblad LF18-200mm F3.5-6.3 OSS, GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition, GoPro Hero 3 Silver Edition, GoPro Hero 3 White Edition, Leica TRI-ELMAR-M16-18-21 mm f/4 ASPH, Canon SIGMA 18-35mm F1.8 DC HSM A013; Canon, Nikon Sigma 120-300mm F2.8 DG OS HSM S013, Nikon SIGMA 30mm F1.4 DC HSM A013;  Olympus, SonySIGMA 60mm F2.8 DN A013; Pentax, Sony SIGMA 17-70mm F2.8-4 DC MACRO OS HSMC013; Pentax, Sony SIGMA 35mm F1.4 DG HSM A012; Nikon 1 NIIKKOR 32mm f/1.2; Sony DSC-RX1R

Bugs Corrected in Lightroom 5.2

  • Output Sharpening and Noise Reduction were not applied to exported images that were resized to less than 1/3 of the original image size.
  • Slideshow Exporting process fails for time-lapse sequences.
  • Unable to export a Book. This only occurred after a customer deleted a background photo.
  • Catalog containing images processed with PV2003 were adding a post-crop vignette when catalog upgraded to Lightroom 5.
  • JPEG decoding produced a red colorcast.
  • Unable to scroll through photos when in Full screen mode. This only occurs when more than 1 photo is selected.
  • “Store presets with this catalog” preference is not preserved when upgrading catalog from previous versions of Lightroom.
  • Crash when scrubbing Size slider with existing spot selected.
  • Landscape crop not maintained on portrait oriented photos
  • Pressing the Reset button while holding the Shift key results in an internal error.
  • Crash when attempting to move brush spots
  • Gray area is shown when zooming in/out after cropping image.
  • A row of vertical artifacts appears along bottom edge of photo when applying Grain.
  • Defringe Color Sampler is inaccurate on photos that have Upright applied
  • All of the images on a Compact Flash card did not appear in the Import Dialogue.
  • Metadata panel displayed incorrect information after modifying published photo. Please note that this only occurred when metadata was changed after the photo was published.
  • Soundtrack does not fade at the end of a slideshow
  • 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.

 

Download Links for Lightroom 5.2:

Windows

Mac

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