Adobe on Friday pushed out release candidates for Camera Raw 8.4 and DNG Converter 8.4, with notable inclusions to the Photoshop CS6 and CC tools being a new "before and after" preview system, additional lens support and numerous bug fixes.
As Adobe migrates its efforts toward the latest Photoshop CC, the company is weening off support for users of Photoshop CS6, as well as those running older operating systems. For Photoshop CS6 customers, all Camera Raw 8 updates are limited to new camera and lens support, as well as bug fixes. New features are restricted to Photoshop CC.
With ACR 8.4 RC, Photoshop CS6 users will also see support dropped for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Windows XP and Windows Vista. This leaves customers two options: upgrade their OS or continue use of Camera Raw 8.3.
Adobe confirmed Photoshop CS6 customers running OS X 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain lion or 10.9 Mavericks and Windows 7 and 8 will receive updates through future ACR 8.x point updates.
Alternatively, Adobe is running an upgrade promotion that nets current CS6 suite users a 40 percent discount on Creative Cloud.
New features introduced with Camera Raw 8.4 for Photoshop CC users:
- A new before/after Preview system with side-by-side and split-view support.
- Pet Eye correction: The Red Eye tool can now correct bright pupils in animals. Select 'Pet Eye' from the new drop down menu in the Red Eye tool to locate and fix pet eyes.
- Changes to Local Corrections
- Added context menu to Histogram pane. The context menu can be used to enable Lab color readouts, even when the Workflow Options are set to another color space (such as Adobe RGB). The context menu and also be used to toggle the shadow, highlight, and gamut clipping warnings.
- Added Camera Matching color profiles (PROVIA/STANDARD, Velvia/VIVID, ASTIA/SOFT, MONOCHROME, etc.) for a variety of Fujifilm cameras.
- Bug fixes.
For a complete rundown and in-depth information regarding the new features, Adobe has a webpage dedicated to the new ACR 8.4 RC.
In addition to the new tools and bug fixes, new cameras supported with the 8.4 release candidate include (preliminary support denoted with asterisk):
- Canon EOS 1200D (REBEL T5, KISS X70)Casio EX-100
- DJI Phantom
- Fujifilm X-T1
- Hasselblad H5D-50c
- Hasselblad HV
- Nikon D3300
- Nikon D4S
- Olympus OM-D E-M10 (*)
- Panasonic LUMIX DMC-ZS40 (DMC-TZ60, DMC-TZ61)
- Phase One IQ250
- Samsung NX30
- Sony Alpha a5000 (ILCE-5000)
- Sony Alpha a6000 (ILCE-6000)
Users are urged to provide feedback on both release candidates via Adobe's Feedback Portal.
The Camera Raw 8.4 plug-in update is free, with versions for both Photoshop CC and Photoshop CS6 available now.