by Suzanne Mathia
With the release of the newest version of Lightroom this morning I have been inundated with requests for information and updates. I will know more later today and will put all the new tools and enhancements through their paces.
Our upcoming Lightroom classes will be sure to include all these great new features.
What we think we know:
Lightroom CC is available as part of an Adobe Creative Cloud Photography subscription ($9.99 per month) or as the equivalent standalone $149 perpetual-license Lightroom 6 application. But the single purchase option won’t include syncing photos to Adobe’s mobile apps, such as Lightroom Mobile, Slate, and Voice. Adobe uses a smaller-footprint version of the photo file called Smart Preview for transmitting to Web and devices, so bandwidth and storage aren’t taxed unnecessarily.
Panorama – HDR – Face Recognition
Aside from some heavy duty lifting such as luminosity masks, layers, blending and content aware cloning and healing most of the trips to Photoshop were for Panorama stitching and blending multiple exposures – 32 bit image processing. Now they will be included inside Lightroom along with Face recognition
A video preview of Face Recognition
I don’t have much use for this feature but I know a lot of people will like this. Come out with Bird or flower or rock recognition then we’ll be talking!
The Photo/Merge menu is where you access two more new tools: HDR and Panorama.
HDR Tool
Lightroom now lets you combine under- and overexposed versions of the same photo for a balanced result.
Adjustment/Refining brushes for the Graduated and Radial Filters
You can fine tune and make local adjustments to gradients and the radial filter YEA!!!!!
SLIDESHOW IMPROVEMENTS
You will now be able to time slide transitions to music and have Pan and Zoom effects
BLACK AND WHITE CONVERSION – no info yet
SPEED
The most welcome update is the new improved speed up – up to 1000% faster?? That I would love to see.
One of the features touted in the listing is “performance gains” introduced by leveraging compatible graphics.
In other words, it seems the new version of the program will finally make use of your computer’s GPU (graphics processing unit) for faster performance, especially when editing photos using the Develop module.
Thats all I have for now – I will be downloading and playing with all these new features in the next few days and will post updates. I would love to hear your opinions, comments and little tricks you find.
B&H is offering $20.00 off the annual subscription fee for 2 days!
Suzanne Mathia is a certified Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop expert, an AHPW instructor and a frequent contributor to Arizona Highways magazine. www.suzannemathiaphotography.com