Just activate the download in the Adobe Application Manager. If you have the Creative Cloud, there is no additional fee.
If you already have a recent version of Lightroom you can upgrade for $79. Like mentioned above, Lightroom 5 is available now for $149 at.
By temporarily converting your photo into a strange abstract black and white photo, you’re able to see contrastes in the image with ease, which will allow you to clean up any sensor dust or other problems you might not notice right away when looking at it normally.
The Visual Spot setting is perhaps the greatest, and certainly my favorite, new tool to come to this latest release. Previously, this could be done with adjustment brushes, but the Radial Filter allows similar editing stills to be done in a more graduate system. You can also use it to increase sharpness at different parts of the photo, and works much like a Layer Mask would in Photoshop. By doing this, you’re able to draw the viewers attention to different parts of the photo selectively. The Radial Filter allows you to alter different parts of the photo selectively, much like you’d find in third party apps such as Viveza. And while this type of tool isn’t new for some of us advanced Photoshop users who adapted to it back in Photoshop CS4, it is great to have the tool available while we’re in Lightroom too. Prior to this, we often had to open these photos manually in Photoshop to get the advanced tools we desired. Simply click, drag and release, and the problem is fixed. By allowing you to create custom brush shapes, this tool allows you to remove objects in photos with ease. The Advanced Healing brush works much like the Content Aware fill does in Photoshop. This feature can be found in the Lens Corrections category, in Develop mode. Though this was something that could be done manually, this tool allows it to be done in a single click and seemed to fix every horizon problem I had with superb accuracy. The tool seems to be extremely powerful and work with incredible accuracy.
The Upright tool ( which we played with in the beta) is incredible, allowing you to fix horizons and tilts that you might find in your photos. Switching from Library mode to Develop mode still has a short delay, but the previewing system is faster and makes the entire program feel as though its speeding along. Previews seem to load faster than ever, without the long wait on a blurry photo like you got with Lightroom 4. While it still doesn't load as fast as some culling programs available, it does run at a manageable pace. The speed is comparable to what we saw in Lightroom 3. The previews render much faster now, making it a viable culling application for larger projects (such as weddings).
Certainly, the latest software still bogs down a little, but it is nothing compared to what Lightroom 4 does. So fast in fact, I’ve already uninstalled Photo Mechanic as my culling service for larger shoots which I was using because of the lethargic pace of Lightroom 4. Lightroom 5 is really fast compared to Lightroom 4. The first thing I noticed was the speed of the program. It did this so seamlessly, I actually had to double check that I was loading up Lightroom 5, and not 4. All of my presets, filters, smart collections and settings were loaded automatically. Upon installing Lightroom 5, Adobe detected my catalogs from Lightroom 4 and automatically went through the conversion process to make them work seamlessly with its latest software. I’ve spent my Sunday afternoon digging through settings, playing with the new features and and most importantly, getting some post processing work done.
I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time with the latest edition to the Lightroom series and have culled through hundreds of photos and edited dozens with it already.