Lightroom CC was announced today. If you’re like me and have subscribed to the photographer’s Lightroom and Photoshop package, a notice should appear in your desktop Creative Cloud app. Adobe’s servers are swamped, so this might take a while. The new Lightroom is also available as a standalone perpetual license program.
Downloading and installing the new version of Lightroom was easy for me. No problem, until I tried to open the new program. I clicked on the desktop icon, and nothing happened. If this is your experience, there is an easy fix: sign out of your Adobe account via the “preferences” in the desktop CC app (click on the gear icon or the drop down triangle in the upper right) and sign right back into your account.
Lightroom CC has two new features which are of interest to me.
1. A brush tool option has been added within the graduated filter. Add a grad just as you did in earlier versions of Lightroom, and then select the brush option within the grad filter, hold down the Alt/Option key, and brush over the image area where you do not want the grad filter applied. Hey, it’s an editable filter!
2. Merge to panorama can now be accomplished within Lightroom. This can be done using RAW files, and the composite image is saved as a DNG file…which means that the resulting pan image is still a RAW file, and can be processed non-destructively in Lightroom. Select the files you want to merge into a pan, and do Photo > Photo Merge > Panorama. Lightroom does the merging, and saves the merged panoramic in the same folder as are the component files. It does add -Pano to the end of the combined image’s filename, a feature I’m not really keen about. I’ve always worked by selecting the images in Lightroom, then opening them in Photoshop to merge images into panoramics, and finally doing a “save as” while added a P_ at the start of the pan’s filename. I’ve got a smart collection in Lightroom which automatically sorts out all my panoramic images, all the files that have a filename starting with that P_. OK, so now I’ll add another smart collection, this one to find all the images with filenames that contain Pano.
Lightroom CC also has a new merge to HDR feature, but that’s no big deal for me as I rarely no any sort of HDR. However, I’m certainly open to playing around with this feature. Face recognition is also now included, and I’m sure a lot of folks will be pleased with that. There are also some nice additions to the slideshow module. I’m sure I’ll discover more as I start using the program, but my initial experience is quite positive.
And one more good point: all in all, the program runs faster than before.
I highly recommend you go to Adobe’s website and view the videos by Adobe Evangelist Julieanne Kost. Go to https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom/features.html?promoid=KSKBF and click on the See how it works buttons in the Lightroom CC section.
Be sure to watch her video on some of the other new features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GZErV1m1uQ.
6 Comments
Download and it work well.
Thank for the link.
PS: just finish to read your new book and I hope that you’ll also upgrade to digital photography the Macrofotography and Landscapes book. :-9
Hi. I downloaded fine, but in mine panorama is under Photo> photomerge>panorama/hdr
That’s correct. I run the Windows version of LR, but I think the Mac version is the same.
John. I was just curious as to what system you use to backup your work at your office? Do you use the Drobo or synology system? or another brand or method?
Hi John, apologies for using a comment to ask you a question but I was wondering if you as a professional photographer convert your RAW files to DNG?
Seems like there is only an upside to doing so but I still have a fear of throwing away the .nef file that comes out of my expensive camera!
No, I do not convert my Nikon RAW files to DNG. I’m a confirmed Adobe person so I’m not concerned about using Nikon software, but I don’t see enough advantages for me to take the extra step in converting to DNG.