Lightroom 5 New Features in Use

So I've now purchased LR5 and moved over to it fully, which was a pretty painless process (apart from the pain in my wallet!).  The thing with running the Beta version was that whilst you could play with the new features, its not the same as having it as part of your standard workflow, I've often found that "cool new features" or plugins etc quickly fall by the wayside and don't become a regularly used feature when they are added to your normal day to day work.

So which features have quickly been integrated my workflow and which have not?

Well actually its not that simple because often I have to remind myself to use the new features as my ways are seem quite entrenched.

One of the features I am using regularly is the "Visualise Spots" function that comes alive when the "Spot Removal" tool is activated.  Its ideal for highlighting dust spots as it says, but I've also found it really useful to check whether other manipulations have left artifacts that you don't notice at first but could become visible later.

As an example:

Puffin coming in to land on Staple Island.

In this shot of a  Puffin, coming in to land, I mucked it up and got half a Puffin in at the bottom.  I could have cropped it out but I wanted to keep a good bit of space around the flying one so elected to use the new version of the "Spot Removal" tool that now allows use over irregular shapes.

And it looks like this.

Distracting Half Puffin Removed

Which looks ok (I've left the LR dot in to show where the half Puffin was).  However if you then invoke the "Visualise Spots" function it looks like this.

Visualise Spots function showing blending errors

You can now clearly see that there is a dark crescent visible which is where the Puffin has been removed, so this needs a bit more work.  Incidentally this function has also revealed a spot (may be dust may be an object in the distance), this is the proper function of the tool, so using it to check for blending blemishes etc is not its prime function but is helpful nonetheless.

I'll Post a few thoughts on the new "Spot Removal" tool, which I'm finding a bit disappointing but perhaps my expectations were too high!

Peter.