Lightroom 7.2 was released today. This release is primarily about performance improvements and bug fixes although there a few minor but useful feature enhancements.

Performance Improvements

Adobe are advising that you should see significant performance improvements on most computers with multiple cores. These be most noticeable on more powerful computers, especially those with six and more CPU core. However, to take advantage of the improvements you will also need at least 12 GB RAM. That being said, computers with fewer CPU cores (e.g. laptops) and more than 12 GB RAM will also see some improvement. To reflect this, Adobe have updated the system requirements to recommend 12GB of RAM, although it will still run with 4GB.

Aspects of the application where Adobe claim customers should see improved performance include:

• Import and preview generation
• Walking of images in the Loupe View
• Rendering of adjustments in Develop
• Batch merge operations of HDR/Panos
• Export

By this point you may be thinking that Adobe have made similar claims in the past but when put to the test customers were left somewhat underwhelmed. So, what’s different this time? Well, rather than make an unsubstantiated claim Adobe gave some independent   Photo Blogs and test houses early access to 7.2. You can read more about their experiences and findings at: Fstoppers, Puget Systems, and DPReview.

In addition to above improvements Adobe have also advised that a long term and extremely frustrating bug affecting a relatively small number of customers. This bug manifested itself as an extreme slowdown over time. In some cases the application became so unresponsive that it had to be relaunched.

NEW FEATURES

Folder Search

It’s been a while coming but now you can search folder names. It operates much like collection searches by filtering the list of relevant folders down to only those matching the search criteria. It’s particular useful if you tend to use descriptive or topical names for folders. In below example, I’ve searched for folders continuing ‘yellowstone’.

‘Folder Search’ also works well with folders containing numbers or a mix of numbers and letters. For example, date based folder names.

Favorite Folders

Another new folder related features is ‘Favorite Folders’. Using this this feature you can mark one or more folders as favorites by right-mouse clicking on the folder name then selecting ‘Mark Favorite’.

You can also use the filter in ‘Folder Search’ to show only those folders marked as favorites. In below example, I’ve marked only the “Yellowstone” folders containing raw files as favorites.

Create a Collection from a Folder

Another  new feature associated with folders is the ability to create a collection or collection hierarchy from a folder or folder hierarchy. To access the feature you simply right-mouse click on the folder or parent folder and select ‘Create Collection’ or ‘Collection Sets’, respectively.

Filter Edited/Unedited Photos

The last new feature I want to discuss is the ‘Edited/Unedited’ buttons on the ‘Library Filter Attributes Bar’. Using these buttons you can filter on photos that have already been edited or are still to be edited.

Above buttons are duplicated in the ‘Filmstrip Filter Bar’.  The ‘Edit’ option can also be found in the ‘Metadata Filter’ panel and ‘Smart Collections’. At this point it’s worth noting that the existing Smart Collection ‘Has Adjustments’ criteria does not include cropping whereas ‘Has Edits’ does include cropping.

Create Collections from a Pin in the Map Module

You can now add all of the photos from a specific location to a Collection.  Simply right-mouse click on any pin or group of pins on the Map and choose ‘Create Collection’.

Camera and Lens Support

You can also check out the latest camera and lens profile support as well.

Lightroom CC Ecosystem

Today also sees the release of minor updates to Lightroom CC Desktop, iOS and Android. More details of what’s, bug fixes, etc can be found at the Adobe Lightroom CC Blog