Adobe Lightroom 5 has now been officially released! The software is available as a stand alone license for $149, upgrade for an existing stand alone license for $79, or free with your Adobe Creative Cloud Membership.

Adobe Lightroom brings a handful of new features to the table. Many of them bring some much desired photoshop functionality to photographers and I now am able to develop 95% of my photographs in Lightroom without ever heading to photoshop. Some notable missing functionality is still HDRs and Panoramic stitching as well as more advanced cloning options. I have gone over the best new features from Lightroom 5 in the following video.

Another decision to make revolves around the cloud VS. stand alone license. If you do not need photoshop, Lightroom as a standalone license is a no-brainer. It is a very low cost software and the new tools bring it closer to being a one stop shop for all editing and organization. I highly recommend this software for anyone, from the person looking for better photo organization, to the hobbyist, to the professional photographer. It really brings an amazing level of abilities and features for a very low price. You can order the software now on Amazon.com.

To see my full views on the creative cloud head over to my Creative Cloud Impressions