Author Archives: Ian Lyons

Iceland – Full Circle

In early October, I’ll be departing for a 14 day photo trip to Iceland.  We will take an anticlockwise route following Highway 1 (AKA The Ring Road) as it circumnavigates Iceland. We will of course be making many detours on the way to visit more remote and exciting locations.

Iceland Ring Road

The first few days will takes us along the popular southern coast of Iceland and we’ll take in many of the highlights along the way. We’ll be visiting many of the grand waterfalls as well as many lesser known falls.

Reynisdranger Sea Stacks, Vik

A visit to the Black Sand Beach at Vik with its powerful seas and sea stacks, then on to the magical Jokulsarlon Lagoon and iceberg beach.

Icebergs on Beach, Jokulsarlon

As we reach the eastern extent of Highway 1 we’ll visit Hofn and Stokksnes where we’ll spend a few days photographing this dramatic area, including the majestic Vestrahorn.

Mount Vestrahorn, Stokksnes

From Hofn our journey will travel north. This is the more remote and less visited part of the island that we’ve not visited before. We will pass the shores of Reydarfjordur with a detour to Eskifjordur and Seydisfjordur before reaching Egilsstadur. We’ll spend a couple of days in this area as we explore the remote north-east region of Iceland. From here we’ll turn west across the northern part of Iceland to Lake Myvatn and the mountainous interior.

As we continue west we will visit the amazing Godafoss waterfall. Our journey will also take us north from Highway 1 to the coastal town Husavik before rejoining Highway 1 on our travels to Akureyri.

From Akureyri we’ll head south to Borgarnes detouring for a visit to the coastal town of Saudarkrokur. On our final full day we’ll explore Pingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss.

Gullfoss Waterfall

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop | August 2023

The latest updates to Camera Raw (15.5), Lightroom Classic (12.5) and Lightroom Desktop (6.5) have been released to customers. These updates include new camera and lens support along with bug fixes and minor performance enhancements.

Lightroom Classic SDK Updates

The following API has been added or applying Metadata Preset and Develop Preset for LrCatalog.addPhoto

New API Signature

catalog:addPhoto( path, stackWithPhoto, position, metadataPresetUUID, developPresetUUID )

Fixed Bugs

The list of bugs identified on the Adobe Community Forum include the following:

  1. Lightroom and Camera Raw Color Range Mask Edge Artefacts
  2. Curve checkbox is not selected by default in Copy/Preset/Sync Settings
  3. Process V6 creates wide scrollbars (French and German language versions)
  4. Lightroom Classic not opening photos properly in Photoshop beta 2024 25.0
  5. Lightroom Classic 12.4 crashes when Windows Media Feature Pack is not installed
  6. Direct Camera Connect fails to show previews in Import Dialog on macOS

New Camera Support

Details of new camera support added since the last release can be found here

New Lens Correction Support

Details of new lens support added since the last release can be found here

Disclosure: As an Adobe Community Expert I receive a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop | June 2023

The latest updates to Camera Raw (15.4), Lightroom Classic (12.4) and Lightroom Desktop (6.4) have been released to customers. These updates include new camera and lens support along with bug fixes. There are also some minor features enhancements to each of the applications.

Enhancements to Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop

The main feature enhancements to be found in Camera Raw 15.4, Lightroom Classic 12.4 and Lightroom Desktop 6.4 are:

  1. Local ‘Grain’ adjustment slider

The ‘Grain’ adjustment slider will allow you to apply/refine grain effect to local areas of your images using masks. However, the related ‘Size’ and ‘Roughness’ sliders are global and thus affected by any additional adjustments made in the global ‘Effects’ panel as shown in below screenshots.

Grain Adjustment Slider in Masking Panel

Global ‘Size’ & Roughness’ share settings with ‘Masks’

2. Refine Saturation Slider (Curves – Global & Local)

The new ‘Refine Saturation’ slider is used to adjust how much colour saturation is applied with ‘Point Curve’s in both local and global curves.  The purpose being to reduce the increase in saturation that occurs when a curve is applied to increase the contrast of an image.

Refine Saturation

3. Process Version 6

The current Process Version 5 (PV5) has been updated to Process Version 6 (PV6). PV6 contains some updates to the processing math used by PV5. The goal of the PV6 update is to reduce banding issues in adjusted images, while continuing to produce results that are close enough to PV5 that most images don’t need to be readjusted when updated.

New images open in Camera Raw or imported into Lightroom Classic & Desktop will automatically be processed using PV6. Any images that have already been edited in Camera Raw or Lightroom Classic & Desktop will remain as PV5 until additional edits are applied at which time they’ll automatically updated to PV6.

4. Color Mixer

Edit indicators (i.e. dots below Color icons) have been added to the Color Mixer tool making it more obvious that an edit has been applied.

Feedback – Color Mixer sliders and HSL TAT [Lightroom Classic]

When you hold down the Option/Alt keys while moving the ‘Color Mixer’ sliders the active hue is shown in colour, and all other hues in grayscale. While using the HSL TAT tool with Option/Alt key, two hues will be in colour.

Develop Presets [Lightroom Classic]

The Parametric and Point Curves can now be selected individually in Preset Creation/Copy Settings Dialog.

Adobe Cloud Syncing [Lightroom Classic]

The minimum version of Lightroom Classic that can sync files to the Adobe Cloud has been changed to 11.5

Develop Module Performance [Lightroom Classic]

There are number of performance improvements to be found in the Develop module:

  • The selected image should render much faster than before when switching from the Library to Develop module.
  • Improved navigating and selecting an image within the Develop module.
  • Holding down the right/left arrow keys for image and turbo walk in the Develop module Filmstrip should see some improved performance.
  • Faster image load time when launching or re-launching Lightroom Classic into the Develop module.

Disabled GPU Alert [Lightroom Classic & Desktop]

Enable GPU with a single click: Lightroom Classic and Desktop now auto-detects if the system GPU is disabled and gives you a pop-up option to Enable with just one click.

Lightroom Classic

Lightroom Desktop

The Camera Raw team seem to be a bit more aware of the potential irritation that the alert will pose for users who manually disabled the GPU in order for their copy of Lr Classic or Lr Desktop to actually work. In short, a ‘Don’t show again’ checkbox should also be present on Lr Classic and Lr Desktop GPU alert.

New Camera Support

Details of new camera support added since the last release can be found here

New Lens Correction Support

Details of new lens support added since the last release can be found here

Disclosure: As an Adobe Community Expert I receive a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.