Adobe supports new cameras, lenses with Lightroom 3.6

In picture : Canon Powershot S100

Supported in Lightroom 3.6--along with its close cousin, Photoshop's Camera Raw 6.6 plug-in, are the Nikon 1 V1 and J1; the Panasonic GX-1; the Samsung NX5 and NX200, and Sony's NEX-7. All those models are of a newer category, compact cameras with interchangeable lenses.

More conventional compact cameras also are supported, including Canon's new S100, Fujifilm's FinePix X10, Ricoh GR Digital IV, and the superzoom Leica V-LUX 3.

Lightroom can accommodate JPEG images from any old camera, but its true purpose in life is to handle the proprietary raw image formats from these and other higher-end cameras. Raw photos, taken directly from the image sensor without any in-camera processing, offer more flexibility and image quality but also add more processing hassles for photographers.

Lightroom also can automatically correct some lens problems such as distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. The new version of Lightroom has lens correction profiles for a number of SLR lenses from Sigma, the three small lenses for the Nikon 1 series, and a slew of Mamiya, Schneider-Kreuznach, and Phase One lenses for Phase One's high-end medium-format cameras.

Lightroom 3.6 and Camera Raw 6.6 also fix a number of bugs.