Lightroom upgrade

[Alun51]

A new 5D Mark III is forcing me to upgrade from LR 3.6 as I shoot in raw and the camera is not supported. Although I'm happy to go to LR5 I now find out I will need to upgrade from Windows XP to 7 or 8. Frankly, this worries me because I'm happy with XP and its stability.

So, two questions if you feel you can help:

has anybody come up with a workround to this?

should I be worried about 7 or 8 and which is preferable?

[AndyA]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

I can't offer any advice with LR, but I have used all 3 operating systems and I currently use Windows 8. Personally, I prefer Windows 7 as it's less gimmicky than Windows 8. I found both Windows 7 & 8 to be much more stable and reliable than XP.

[djguk47]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

XP is out of support I think in March 2014 so you might as well upgrade to Windows 7 and LR5

[MX5]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

You can use Adobe's FREE Raw to DNG converter and then import the DNGs into LR3.x. It's a trick many of us have used when our new camera isn't supported by Adobe ACR (or we are too behind with our PS/LR the latest ACR isn't compatible).

Alternatively use Canon's own Free DPP to batch convert the 5D3 CR2's to TIFFs and then use Adobe products.

Both the above approaches are workarounds and have the associated hassle but work.

Windows 7 is at least as stable as XP. But XP is moribund (sadly for many I know) so a move to 8 seems inescapable ... if you want to use the latest LR.

[Muscat]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

I have a Win 7 machine and an XP machin, the latter is almost sacraficial as it is my main system for surfing the web. I also use a 5D3 and to get around the problem I put LR4 onto the machines and then upgraded the Win7 system to LR5.

At the moment if you don't want to upgrade the OS as you may need to also upgrade your hardware to get good performance from the newer operating system it may be worth your while looking to pick up one of the LR4 deals as this will open the Canon 5D3 CR2 files and also runs in 32 bit mode.

I must say that LR5 on a true 64bit system is nice, much quicker than the older 32 bit versions of LR4

[DrJon]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

BTW DXO Optics Pro still supports XP... well not the 64-bit version...

Windows:
"Microsoft Windows XP SP3 (32), VISTA (32 or 64-bit), 7 (32 or 64-bit), 8 (32 or 64-bit)
Processor: Intel Core™ 2 Duo or higher, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or higher
Graphics card: Support of DirectX 9.0.c or higher for Windows operating systems; 256 MB VRAM recommended to support GPU acceleration
A 64-bit system is recommended for processing images taken with cameras having a sensor size greater than 20 Megapixels."

Memory:
"2 Gigabytes of RAM (3 Gigabytes of RAM is recommended for processing images taken with cameras having a sensor size greater than 20 Megapixels)."

[Alun51]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

Thanks to everybody for their assistance. I'm using the DNG workround until I can come up with a final solution.

[Dave_S]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

I have just upgraded from LR4 (64bit) to LR5, and I am yet to be convinced that it was worth the £57.64 to do so.

Maybe when I 'dig a bit deeper', I might find some benefit in moving from V4 to V5, but at the moment I'm not seeing it.

Dave

[pelliott1954]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

That's interesting Dave, can you keep updating us, I have been pondering the same move.

Regards Paul

[Riggers]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

I've not used Windows 8 but Win7 is much more stable than XP and the best OS I've used to date.

[Dave_S]

Re: Lightroom upgrade

That's interesting Dave, can you keep updating us, I have been pondering the same move.

Regards Paul

The 'spot healing' tool has been improved, in that instead of being limited to a circle, you can now 'paint' around a random shape.

The is also a 'verticals' correction tool, which I have yet to try

Is this worth £57.64?, probably not.

LR4 (64 bit) met my requirements nicely, but I guess I'm a bit of a sucker for the latest software iterations.

That said, I have no desire at all to move from Windows 7 (64 bit) to Windows 8.

Dave