What’s New in Lightroom 2.7?

Lightroom 2.7 and ACR 5.7 were both officially released last night, after a few weeks on Adobe Labs as release candidates.

Lightroom 2.7

Windows – http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4673

Mac – http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4672

ACR 5.7

Windows – http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4683

Mac – http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4682

As usual, there’s support for new cameras:

  • Canon EOS 550D (Digital Rebel T2i/ EOS Kiss X4 Digital)
  • Kodak Z981
  • Leaf Aptus-II 8 and Leaf Aptus-II 10R
  • Mamiya DM40
  • Olympus E-PL1
  • Panasonic G2 and Panasonic G10
  • Sony A450

There’s also been some extra work behind the scenes – Lightroom 2.7 and ACR 5.7 now use the new demosaic which has been available in Lightroom 3 beta for some time.  This new demosaic retains extra detail in your image, making them sharper and respond better to subsequent noise reduction, however it does mean that images may show a little more noise at default values.  This change does apply to your existing images as well as new images, therefore you may wish to check your noise reduction values, possibly increasing the luminance noise reduction by 15-20 to get a result closer to that of Lightroom 2.6 on some images.

ACR 5.7 is now compatible with Lightroom 3 beta 2, so any images opened directly into Photoshop without an interim TIFF/PSD file will now render correctly.  Images with settings created by LR3 beta 2 and stored in XMP will also convert correctly, however there are no sliders in the ACR 5.7 dialog to make further adjustments to those new settings – making adjustments will require returning to LR3.  Lightroom 2.7 is NOT fully compatible and won’t understand Lightroom 3 beta 2 settings.

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April 21, 2010 | Victoria Bampton
This entry was posted in LR 2, What's New in this Release. Bookmark the permalink.
  • John

    “…Lightroom 2.7 and ACR 5.7 now use the new demosaic which has been available in Lightroom 3 beta for some time…”

    Does this mean 2010/2003 profiles? Or something else?

    John

    [ACR 5.7 understands PV2010 and also the new features (grain, etc) in PV2003, for full compatibility with LR3, but has no UI to change those settings.

    LR 2.7 just has the new demosaic and doesn't understand process versions or the new LR3 features.

    Make sense?- VB]

  • http://www.robertgreenphotography.co.uk Rob Green

    Is that statement about Lr2.7 not being able to understand Lr3b2 settings correct Victoria? I thought that basically Lr had ACR built into it and so had the same features. I can’t see that statement from Tom Hogarty, but equally I can’t see any statement to the contrary! It is starting to get very confusing with different demosiac algorithms and process versions.

    [Yes - you can check it for yourself. To make it really easy to see, apply a heavy grain to an image in LR3 and save the settings to the metadata. Then import the file that file into 2.7, and open it with 5.7. 5.7 will show the grain, whereas 2.7 won't. I know it's a bit complicated! I'll put out a full blog post at some point explaining it further. - VB]

  • http://www.robertgreenphotography.co.uk Rob Green

    Thanks for the answer Victoria, but it has confused me even more. I’ve tried that grain trick and Lr2.7 doesn’t recognise it as you state but unfortunately I can’t test it with ACR5.7 at the moment but I believe you that it will show the grain.

    However, what confuses me is in Lr2.7 when you click on help->about it says it uses Camera Raw 5.7. So does this mean that Camera Raw 5.7 in Lightroom is different from Camera Raw 5.7 in Photoshop CS4? That just seems crazy to me that the same thing behaves differently in the two programs.

    [Yeah, I know it's confusing. I need to write a full blog post on it. You've got the right understanding - the base camera raw is the same in both, but ACR in CS4 has 'extra bits' for compatibility with LR3. It's Adobe being nice and not forcing LR3 users to upgrade to CS5 yet if they don't want to, but they could probably have done with explaining it better. - VB]

  • http://www.robertgreenphotography.co.uk Robert Green

    I think it would be clearer if CS4 had Camera Raw 5.7.1 (for example) to show it is not 100% the same as that in Lr2.7.

    It does throw the question in the back of my mind: what else is different between Camera Raw in Lightroom and Photoshop? Will each program have other subtle differences in the way it processes files? I know the answers to the questions, but you will have to look at the small print of all future releases of Camera Raw to make sure Lr is exactly the same as Photoshop ACR.

    [The only occasion this should come up is in terms of compatibility when 2 Lightroom versions cross over, for example when there's a new beta out. The actual processing between LR 2.7 and ACR 5.7, which are the official matching versions, is exactly the same. That's why the numbers match. The only difference is that ACR 5.7 has 'extra bits' for compatibility with LR3b2, so it won't affect you if you're using LR 2.7 or LR3b3 - the only difference is trying to import backwards from LR3b2 to LR2.7, but there's a new blog post up with more detail to try to clear up the confusion. - VB]

  • http://www.robertgreenphotography.co.uk Robert Green

    Yeah, I know it won’t affect me, and I plan to buy Lr3 when that comes out. I was just being very picky because I don’t like there being a difference in the software (however small) but with the same version number, its not good software practice.

    Your new blog post should clear up the confusion with the demosiac and process version.

  • Anton

    Can anyone clearly list the important new features of Lr2.7 and Lr3 compared with version 2.0?

    Thanks!

    [If you check the What's New category of this blog, you'll see what's been added with each release. - VB]