Early this week, Adobe released Major feature Updates for Lightroom, Photoshop, and Camera RAW. In fact across the whole Creative Cloud ecosystem, not just the photography centric apps, there are also major updates for Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush, InDesign, and other CC apps, which I know many of us use too.
Oh and as well as exciting new features, design updates there are some smart new logos which go a little way to help with the Lightroom naming confusion.
There’s a lot to cover here, and I’m not going to touch on the non-photo updates to Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush, InDesign, etc. I’ll take the photography updates one at a time (if you’re new to Lightroom check out out my guide here):
Photoshop updates
Adobe are making a lot of noise about this week’s Photoshop update, stressing that it’s “the largest batch of features since the Adobe MAX conference in November 2019.” There are some performance improvements, but the main feature Adobe is pushing is the new and improved AI-powered Select Subject tool.
Basically: they say it can now select people with far more subtlety, cutting out even complex hair patterns at an extremely high level. Check out a comparison between 2019 Select Subject and 2020 Select Subject below (taken from the Adobe blog):
Check out this Youtube link from Adobe showing the feature in action (looks impressive):
In addition to the update above—and some less relevant updates for photographers—Adobe also added one key feature to Photoshop on the iPad: the ability to “Edit in Photoshop” straight from the Lightroom app.
This app “interoperability” was a huge missing piece of the Adobe mobile workflow for photographers, and now that’s been fixed. You can go from Lightroom Mobile, to Photoshop on the iPad, and back without ever exporting or saving anything along the way. Nice if you are travelling light with just a your iPad and no MacBook (Other laptops are available!)
Camera RAW Updates
Photoshop’s integrated RAW photo editor, Camera RAW has received a major redesign; it no longer looks like you step back to the world of Windows 95. The “modern” UI designed to mirror Lightroom for a more seamless experience no matter which app you’re using, and navigation in the app has been vastly improved.
Here’s what Adobe has to say about the updates:
Image adjustments and batch processing are more intuitive and simpler to navigate. Sliders now look and feel more like Lightroom. New Crop tool improvements consolidate functionality into more convenient options. The Curves UI is updated and simpler to use and to visualize changes. In addition, the controls can now be stacked vertically to reduce the number of clicks required to find the functions you need.
And these Adobe’s videos showing them in action:
You can learn more about the updates Adobe have made to Camera RAW here. I’d bookmark that page if I were you, lots of features and tools have been moved around, so it might stop you getting lost in the new Camera RAW.
Lightroom Classic Updates
While Lightroom Classic has received it own distinct LrC logo and icon, which is major improvement in its self, no more wondering why there are 2 identical icons. Lightroom Classic has received some fairly major feature upgrades.
Perhaps the biggest update being the addition of “Local Hue,” which adds Hue control to the Local Adjustments. This can be used more practically, to clean up skin tones, or it can be used creatively to swap out entire colours in specific parts of your image only – something that was only previously available in Photoshop:
While Lightroom Classic has received it own distinct LrC logo and icon, which is a major improvement in its self, no more wondering why there are 2 identical icons. Lightroom Classic has received some fairly major feature upgrades.
Perhaps the biggest update is the addition of “Local Hue,” which adds Hue control to the Local Adjustments. This can be used more practically, to clean up skin tones, or it can be used creatively to swap out entire colours in specific parts of your image only – something that was only previously available in Photoshop:
AS you can see these are some very significant and useful updates
For a further overview of all of the relevant Creative Cloud updates released for photographers today, check out this video by Ted Forbes over at the Art of photography, or head over to the Adobe Blog where there more information that you’ll ever need on this week’s updates.
And, of course, if you have a CC membership, you can try out all of these new features for yourself by updating to the latest version of all the apps mentioned above.
