Month: March 2011

DNG Converter 6.4 last to support PowerPC Mac Systems

The Camera Raw team recently provided a release candidate of the Camera Raw 6.4 plug-in and the DNG Converter 6.4 application. For those not familiar with the DNG Converter it’s a free, standalone application that is able to convert over 300 proprietary raw formats to the openly documented DNG file format.  When a new proprietary raw file format is released, essentially every new camera model with raw capability, we need to update the DNG Converter so that it’s able to convert that proprietary format to the DNG format.

The PowerPC(PPC) Mac systems, commonly referred to as G4 or G5 systems, represent a significantly different platform than the Intel-based solutions Apple started offering in January of 2006.  Due to the differences in software development environments, Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3 both dropped support for PowerPC systems in 2010.  However, we’ve extended PowerPC support for the DNG Converter into 2011 in order to ensure that customers who are still utilizing PowerPC Macs and are unable to upgrade to the latest version of Photoshop and Lightroom would be able to read raw files from the most recent camera models by converting the proprietary file to DNG and opening the DNG file in a previous version of Photoshop or Lightroom.  However, there is increasing overhead required to support the PowerPC code base in the DNG Converter so the final DNG Converter 6.4 update will be the last update to support PowerPC systems.

[Side Note: It’s come to my attention that many comments have been getting trapped in the Lightroom Journal’s spam filter.  I’ll be watching more closely to make sure that your comments are published. -TH]

Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 Available on Adobe Labs

Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 are now available as Release Candidates on Adobe Labs.   The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of our customers.  The final releases of Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 may have additional corrections or camera support.

New Camera Support in Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 Release Candidates

  • Canon EOS 600D (Rebel T3i / Kiss X5)
  • Canon EOS 1100D (Rebel T3 / Kiss X50)
  • Hasselblad H4D-40
  • Olympus E-PL1s
  • Olympus E-PL2
  • Olympus XZ-1
  • Samsung NX11

New Lens Profile Support in Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 Release Candidates

Lens Mount Lens Name
Canon Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM
Canon Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8 L USM
Canon SIGMA 85mm F1.4 EX DG HSM**
Canon TAMRON 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3DiII VC PZD B008E
Nikon Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR
Nikon Nikon AF-S DX VR Zoom-NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED
Nikon Nikon AF-S Micro NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8G ED
Nikon Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm f/4G ED VR
Nikon SIGMA 85mm F1.4 EX DG HSM
Nikon TAMRON 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3DiII VC PZD B008N
Leica Leica APO-MACRO-SUMMARIT-S 1:2.5/120mm
Leica Leica SUMMARIT-S 1:2.5/35mm ASPH.
Leica Leica SUMMARIT-S 1:2.5/70 mm ASPH.

**These lens profiles were in the previous release but have been updated to address quality concerns.

Bugs Corrected in the Lightroom 3.4 Release Candidate

The following bugs that were part of previous Lightroom 3 releases have been corrected. The team appreciates the very detailed feedback the community has provided on Lightroom 3 and we’re excited to correct a number of issues experienced by our customers. These issues have been FIXED

  • Lightroom encountered issues presenting double-byte character metadata after the image was edited on Photoshop.com.
  • Publish collections did not work properly if the sort order is set to descending. (“Z to A”).
  • Using the up/down arrow keys or the mouse wheel to adjust a parameter while the graduated filter is activated caused increments of plus or minus 100 instead of 1.
  • Interlacing artifacts, and a slight magenta cast in the deepest shadows could have appeared on some high-contrast edges of Canon mRaw files.
  • A magenta color cast could have appeared on Nikon D7000 images if the multi-exposure feature was used with raw capture.
  • Video files were allowed to be added to a SmugMug publish collection not capable of supporting video uploads.
  • Folder creation caused an expanded folder hierarchy to close unexpectedly in the Library Module.
  • Please provide feedback on your experience with the Lightroom 3.4 Release Candidate Bug Report Form.

Camera Raw 6.4 Release Notes

  • Camera Raw did not allow write-back capability for the EXIF GPS properties
  • The DNG File format did not support XMP Media Management
  • A JPEG file with a specific characteristic was found to have a pink cast
  • The undo command (Command Z) was failing to undo crop adjustments
  • Single images marked for deletion were not moved to the trash
  • A magenta color cast could have appeared on Nikon D7000 images if the multi-exposure feature was used with raw capture
  • Please provide feedback on your experience with the Camera Raw 6.4 plug-in and the DNG Converter on the Camera Raw User to User forum.

Thank You

A big thanks to everyone who submitted bug reports, posted entries in the U2U forums and blogged their issues so that we could improve both Lightroom and Camera Raw in this update.