Adobe Systems has made available a beta version of the up-coming Photoshop Lightroom 5 application to enable photographers to have input into the final product, which will be released in roughly two months.

Lightroom 5 beta builds on the vision of the very first Lightroom beta, which enabled photographers to influence the development of the software.  New features in Lightroom 5 Beta include:

  • Advanced Healing Brush  ““ Easily remove objects and fix defects””even those with irregular shapes such as threads or lint””with a  single  brush stroke. Take precise control over what’s being removed as you make unwanted objects just disappear.
  • Upright  ““ Straighten tilted images with a single click. Upright analyses images and detects skewed horizontal or vertical lines. You choose one of four correction methods, and Upright can even straighten images where the horizon is hidden.
  • Radial Gradient  ““ Lead your viewer’s eye through your images with more flexibility and control. The radial gradient tool lets you create off-centre vignette effects, or multiple vignette areas within a single image.
  • Offline editing with Smart Previews  ““ Easily work with images without bringing your entire library with you. Just generate smaller stand-in files called Smart Previews. Make adjustments or metadata additions to Smart Previews and your changes will be automatically applied to the full-size originals later.
  • Video slideshow sharing  ““ Easily share your work in elegant video slideshows. Combine still images, video clips, and music in creative HD videos that can be viewed on almost any computer  or device.
  • Improved photo book creation  ““ Create beautiful photo books from your images. Lightroom includes a variety of easy-to-use book templates, and now you can edit them to create a customised look. Upload your book for printing with just a few clicks.

The Lightroom 5 beta program is available to the public as a download from http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom5/. Anyone with an Internet connection can download it and start putting it to the test. You do not need to own (or have tried) a previous version of Lightroom. You can download the beta and use it until the product expires on June 30, 2013.