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Adobe Lightroom 4.3 brings Retina display support

The software for editing and cataloging photos supports raw image formats from 20 new cameras, corrects lens flaws with Leica and other lenses, and supports Apple's high-resolution displays.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
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Stephen Shankland
2 min read
Support for Apple's Retina displays and other high-DPI screens is helpful for judging fine details like wispy hair.
Support for Apple's Retina displays and other high-DPI screens is helpful for judging fine details like wispy hair. screenshot by Stephen Shankland

Adobe Systems released Lightroom 4.3 today, adding support for MacBook Pros' high-resolution Retina displays and for raw images from 20 new cameras.

The list of supported cameras includes three higher-end compact PowerShot models from Canon, the small S110, the more flexible G15, and the ultrazoom SX50 HS; the new Nikon 1 V2 compact interchangeable-lens model and lower-priced full-frame Nikon D600 SLR; and competing models from Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, and Pentax. However, the D600 support is only preliminary, according to a blog post by Sharad Mangalick.

The Retina support, available only in Lightroom's library and develop modules, means that images no longer are scaled. And that's good: photos appear crisper and that thumbnail images carry a lot more information. In my testing of the release candidate version, however, I've found it's a lot harder to pixel peep when it's time for fine control over noise reduction and sharpening settings. That's because the Retina display is designed to make pixels small enough to be indistinguishable to the human eye, which means that single-pixel feature like noise are harder to pinpoint. You can of course zoom to 2:1 to expand pixels to the size they'd be in earlier Lightroom versions.

In addition, the new version fixes a number bugs and adds automated optical corrections for a host of lenses, including 24 from Leica.

The full list of newly supported cameras is as follows:

• Canon EOS 6D

• Canon PowerShot S110

• Canon PowerShot G15

• Canon PowerShot SX50 HS

• Casio Exilim EX-ZR1000

• Casio Exilim EX-FC300S

• Leica M-E

• Nikon 1 V2

• Nikon D5200

• Nikon D600

• Olympus PEN E-PL5

• Olympus PEN E-PM2

• Olympus STYLUS XZ-2 iHS

• Panasonic DMC-GH3

• Pentax K-5 II

• Pentax K-5 IIs

• Pentax Q10

• Sony DSC-RX1

• Sony NEX-VG30

• Sony NEX-VG900

The download size of Lightroom continues to steadily increase. It's now up to 419MB for Mac OS X and 772MB for Windows.

Lightroom is geared for editing raw photos, the images taken directly from camera image sensors without in-camera processing into JPEGs. Lightroom 4.3 is accompanied by Adobe's DNG Converter 7.3, which converts proprietary raw images into the DNG format Adobe is trying to standardize, and by the Adobe Camera Raw 7.3 plug-in for Photoshop.

Adobe brought Retina support to Photoshop and Illustrator earlier this week.