Lightroom CC 2015.4 and Lightroom 6.4 are now available on Adobe.com. The goal of this release is to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases.
Adobe Lightroom – Develop Module
In addition to new camera and lens support, this release also includes a new Boundary Warp feature, albeit only for Creative Cloud subscribers.
Boundary Warp
Anyone who has used Photoshop or Lightroom to create panoramas will be familiar with the white non-rectangular boundaries. There are several ways to handle these irregular boundaries; the most common of which is to switch Auto Crop on or apply a rectangular crop. This method is straightforward, but important image details near the edge of the image may be lost due to cropping. An alternative approach is to use Content Aware Fill (in Photoshop) to fill in the transparent areas outside the boundary. While this can be effective with some images it’s very often not appropriate for others. For images where Content Aware Fill can be used it may require multiple attempts to obtain a satisfying (smooth, artifact-free) result. It can also be expensive in terms of processing power, and requires rendering out the panorama to an output-referred (non-raw) format. Boundary Warp is a feature that provides another approach to handling the irregular boundary of panoramas. The feature analyses the boundary and warps the image so that its edges fit a rectangular frame. Here’s a Before and After example of the feature in action in Lightroom.
Boundary Warp – Before
Boundary Fill – After
New Camera Support in Lightroom 6.4 and Camera Raw 9.4
- Fujifilm X70
- Fujifilm X-E2S
- Fujifilm X-Pro2
- Leica M (Typ 262)
- Leica X-U (Typ 113)
- Panasonic DMC-ZS60 (DMC-TZ80, DMC-TZ81, DMC-TZ85)
- Phase One IQ150
- Sony ILCA-68 (A68)
Additional Updates in Camera Raw 9.4
- Nikon 1 J4 Camera matching profile support added
- The panorama merging process should complete roughly twice as fast as ACR 6.3
- Improved quality when applying Auto Straighten and Upright “Level” mode.
- Metadata is added to merged panoramas to support Photoshop’s Adaptive Wide Angle filter
- DNG Converter 9.4 now supports HiDPI displays on Mac
Disclosure: As an Adobe Community Professional I receive a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.