Release candidates of Adobe Camera Raw 5.6, Lightroom 2.6 and DNG Converter 5.6 are available now from Adobe Labs. The updates fix a few minor bugs in the applications and provide additional Raw support for 19 more DSLRs, including the Canon EOS 7D and Nikon D3s, with additional DNG support for the Leica M9.
Release candidates are not final versions; it just means the software has been thoroughly tested, and they are almost ready to go. The software maker may yet refine it for final release.
Making the release candidates available to the public is part of the testing process as the community of users can help verify the quality of the updates through normal usage. It ensures that the application is tested on a diversity of hardware and software configurations not available internally at Adobe.
The release candidates are available from the following sites: