Back to Lightroom 5

It happens every now and then that we have to take our words back. I have to do it as well. But in this case I do it with a lot of pleasure. On my previous post on Lightroom 5 I have written about the issues with the stability and the performance of this version.
Recently I gave it a second try, this time with the version 5.3 of this application.
I am very pleased with the improvements Adobe made in this version. There are no stability issues, no unexpected crashes. The performance (as perceived by me) is very similar to the version 4.x.

So I decided to switch definitely to the Lightroom 5. 

Lightroom 5? No, thank you (at least for now)

A while ago the Lightroom 5 has been released by Adobe. Since it is my application of choice for my photography workflow I wanted to test the new version. It contains quite some nice features that would make the post-processing even more efficient and better, just to mention the most important to me:
- True healing brush (not only spot removal tool),
- Circular mask,
- Image skew correction tool

With the new versions of any software product one needs to be a bit cautious: it might not be the best software the developers were intend to deliver. That is why we have "minor" version upgrades over time of almost each software package nowadays.
So I downloaded the trial and started playing with it. Actually, since it was time of my family portrait assignment, I decided to use the new version for postprocessing them.

Unfortunately, Lightroom 5 does not deliver a quality I got used to it with this product. There is an obvious regression at two areas: stability and performance.
With Lightroom 5 I experienced crashing of the application during regular activities: something I have never seen in previous versions (Lightroom 3 and Lightroom 4). Luckily the results of my work were never lost, but it slowed down the processing a lot.

Then the performance: using spot removal tool or healing brush tool was practically impossible in my hardware configuration. I was unable to move the brush smoothly over the photo, effects of applying the brush were visible on the photo only after several seconds after the movement - really not workable scenario.

I admit, my hardware (Windows 7 64-bit, quad core i5 processor with 6MB RAM) and photos that I take (36 MPixels) are challenging for efficient processing, but Lightroom 4 is a lot faster and more stable than the new product of Adobe!

So I decided not to purchase the newest version. I'll wait till they address performance issues. Final note: I am not alone having such experience, check out this blog.