ACR and Lightroom Release Candidate Updates

Adobe has new "release candidate" updates for Lightroom and ACR:

Adobe Camera Raw 5.7 And Lightroom 2.7 Release Candidates >>

So they want the public to be beta testers. That's fine, but it states that the Lightroom 2.7 release candidate will remove Lightroom 2.6. That seems kinda counter-productive for software that hasn't reached it's finalized form. Back-ups are easy enough I guess, but still.....

- Joe U.

The release candidate terminology with Adobe is entirely different from a Beta. It is production quality and if there's no major problem it shortly becomes the 'current' version.

There is always the possibility some users are doing something that Adobe didn't know about and a small change or interaction with even other software can require a fix. No way to find out but putting the release in to a real environment.

A lot of software is now being written to remove the previous version to eliminate hardware conflicts and confusion. Adobe also wants to know about this new image processing that they are incrementally rolling out that with each step is markedly better. LR3B2 replaced LR3B1 as a recent example.

I'm hoping to get some time this pm to compare this ACR tech with the LR3 (both process levels) to see which direction, if I can tell, Adobe has finalized on to use.

I've got a sacrificial computer I can use for 2.7 :)