Lightroom CC 2015.1 and Lightroom 6.1 are now available on Adobe.com. Adobe has stated that the goal of this release is to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom. Lightroom mobile for iOS v1.5 is also now available. In addition, Creative Cloud customers receive a bonus in the form of two new features.

Lightroom CC on the desktop

Dehaze
Photographers of every skill level will be aware that many outdoor scenes have some amount of haze due to atmospheric conditions. Dehaze is a new feature introduced in Lightroom CC 2015.1 for removing/adding haze and fog to/from your photos. You can control how much haze to remove by adjusting a new slider in the Effects panel in the Dehaze section. This feature can also be used in the other direction to increase the amount of haze.

Lightroom CC 2015.1 Effects Panel

Adobe have recommended  a workflow for getting the best results from this new too – Adjust the white balance of the image before applying the Dehaze control. You may also find that the saturation levels in some images needs to be reduced slightly relative to what would be normal had Dehaze not been applied. Below you’ll see a Before/After example of an image where the Dehaze control has been used to reduce the atmospheric haze in the distant mountains. This example also required that I applied a slightly smaller amount of saturation/vibrance than what I’d normally apply.

Local White and Black Adjustment Sliders

The second new feature and potentially more useful than Dehaze are a pair of sliders within each of the 3 local adjustment tools: Gradient Filter, Radial Filter and Local adjustment brush. These sliders are useful for fine­tuning tonality near the brightest and darkest parts of the picture. For instance, they can be used to increase the contrast of highlights.

As with Dehaze above Adobe have recommended a workflow when using the Blacks and Whites sliders – Make your global adjustments first and then use the local adjustments to fine tune. Use the clip warning indicators in the Histogram to help avoid clipping highlights and shadows.

Again, note that the features described above are only available in Lightroom CC 2015

Lightroom mobile on iOS:

Lightroom mobile has also been updated as part of the June release. Areas updated include:

Video support: You can now import, and sync your iPhone and iPad created videos from Lightroom on iOS to the web and desktop. More adjustment tools

Vignettes: Adjust the Color channel and B&W mix Tone Curve

New Camera Support

Fujifilm X­T10 Nikon 1 J5
Nikon D810A Panasonic DMC­G7 Pentax K­S2 Pentax K3 II (*)

* Preliminary support. The multi­shot Pixel Shift Resolution and HDR features are still under investigation.