Wednesday Q&A Adobe Lightroom 5 Best Guesses

A friend just bought Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 less than a month ago.  When the public Beta of Lightroom 5 was announced the other day I sent him an email with a link to a sneak preview and a review.  I was on the fence as to if I was going to download the Beta or wait for the RTM (release to manufacturing) version.  It took me two days to decide I needed/wanted the features of LR5.  Today’s image doesn’t look like it would have much to do with LR5, but it wouldn’t be possible without it.  At least not easily.  It’s not that today’s image didn’t take a couple trips over to Adobe Photoshop CS6, it certainly did.  It’s a partial digital painting.  I been slightly fixated on making photographic images look like painting/photograph hybrid.  Today it was taken to a wee bit of an extreme.  To find out was due to LR5 and what was because of CS6, Hit the “Read More”

The biggest thing from LR5 that was used right at the end of the finishing process was the new Radial Tool found alongside the Crop Tool, the Spot Healing Tool, Gradient Tool, and the Adjustment Brush.  It’s one of the tools I’ve been looking for.  A “targeted” vignetting tool.  Through LR4 the Post Crop Vignette has assumed the vignette should be centered.  With LR5, you can put a vignette anywhere you’d like.  You can even put several vignettes on a single image.  Today’s image has a total of five vignettes.  Can you spot them?  I don’t think so, but without them the scene wouldn’t have the sparkle it needed. 

The overall “canvas” was filled with an orangey brown color.  The blues, the greens and the darker browns are all done using Brushes made from images of the sky and clouds.  Making cloud Brushes are probably the easiest types of Brushes to make.  They’re great for this type of mottled backgrounds.  Clouds are supposed to be light and airy.  That makes them Brushes thin and wispy and lots of transparency.  Putting one over another (on separate Layers) builds up combinations of colors. 

The scene looked a little weird with the horse and carriage sort of floating in midair.  Using a Layer Mask I brought back the roadway the horse was walking down.  Makes things look a little more realistic. 

One of the things you can see if you look very closely is that there may be buildings in the far background.  There are geometric shapes back there, but it’s a Brush made from a shot of a circuit board.  It was put in, expanded (CTRL T), the Opacity reduced and a very slight Blur applied.  You can tell “something” is there.  You just can’t tell what. 

Well, back to the vignettes.  Did you find them?  Did ya even look?  One is on the horse.  The exposure is brought up about 2/3’s of a stop.  Another is on the horse’s head.  Again, the exposure was brought up about ½ stop.  The face of the man in the driver’s seat has on, as do the bouquet of flowers.  The last one is on the whole scene.

A couple “guesses” about LR5. 

·         The public Beta download expires in June.  Adobe has never let a Beta expire before the RTM version comes out.  Expect LR5 to come out in late May or early June. 

·         Where will be at least one more “interesting” feature that hasn’t been divulged in the public Beta.  There “always” is.

·         There will be no “upgrade” pricing.  Since Adobe dropped the retail price to about $79.00 to $99.00 there isn’t any need for an upgrade version.

·         LR5 will be available as an electronic download only.  (Adobe has announced that future products will be download only.)

·         Just for laughs --- Adobe will break all sorts of records for number of downloads on the release date.  In other words: Adobe will make a boatload of money on the release date.