Category Archives: Machine Learning

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop | April 2023

The latest updates to Camera Raw (15.3), Lightroom Classic (12.3) and Lightroom Desktop (6.3) have been released to customers. These updates include new camera and lens support along with bug fixes. There is one major new feature along with other minor features and enhancements that I’ll discuss below.

AI-powered Denoise [Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop]

With these latest updates, Adobe is introducing AI-powered Denoise!

Using artificial intelligence, Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop can now remove noise from your photos. Better still, the noise is removed whilst preserving fine detail, far more effectively than the legacy noise reduction controls.

At present, Denoise will only work with Bayer and X-trans raw files. It won’t work on files such as JPEG, HEIC, ProRAW, sRaw, etc. However, Adobe plan to expand support for other file types in future versions.

Lightroom Classic Denoise

Denoise Workflow and File Management

The process of denoising your photos is very simple.

First, Adobe recommend that photos are denoised before editing, especially healing and masking as they can be affected by noise. Edits such as Highlights, Shadows, Dehaze and Clarity can also look different in denoised photos.

Denoise can be accessed via Photo > Enhance menu, or via the ‘Denoise…’ button in the Detail panel (see above screenshot).

Adobe Denoise analyses each photo dynamically to find the optimum range, but the default ‘Amount’ value (50) is always halfway between least and full denoising. In other words, the meaning of ‘full denoising’ varies with the photo, based on the analysis.

In the Enhance dialog, you can press-and-hold anywhere within the preview image to see the photo without Denoise applied. This provides a simple way to make before/after comparisons, especially when fine-tuning the Amount setting.

As with previous Enhance features, any adjustments you may already have made to the original photo will automatically be carried over to the enhanced DNG, although denoising first is recommended for the reasons mentioned above. Any legacy luminance or colour noise adjustments are ignored, and set to zero in the new DNG file. You can edit the new DNG file just like any other raw photo, apply your favourite presets, etc.

The zoom level used in the Enhance Preview panel is 200%, which is a tad high for normal resolution displays but is fine for 4K and higher.

The Denoise process produces a new derivative DNG file with ‘Enhanced-NR’ appended to the filename. Making the result of Denoise into a DNG has all the advantages that normal raw files do, and is similar to other features that produce a DNG. These include, Merge to Panorama and Merge to HDR. However, in the case of Denoise, like the other Enhance features, the resulting DNG also contains a copy of the original mosaic data, so nothing is lost. That being said, Denoise can’t yet be applied on an already enhanced image (Super Resolution or Denoised).

To make the task of finding files that have had ‘Denoise’ applied, the engineering team have provided an option to automatically add keywords to ‘Enhanced’ images. This option can be found under File Handling tab in Preferences dialog as shown in screenshot below.

The new keyword is added to each file based on the enhance workflow you have selected.

  • Raw Details
  • Super Resolution
  • Denoise

A new badge    has also be added to Grid thumbnail and filmstrip. Apparently, the keywords and badges are to make Denoised file easier to find. Personally, I think the engineering time would have been more usefully spent in providing a ‘filter’.

No doubt, there will be numerous comparisons between Adobe Denoise and third party offerings such as those from DxO and Topaz. Each will have areas where they perform well and others where they perform less well. By way of example, some of the third party products may excel at removing all traces of noise without human intervention whereas Adobe’s Denoise at it’s default setting of 50 tends to leave a little residual noise. However, this should not be seen a shortcoming, especially since a small movement of the Amount slider is all that’s needed to remove the noise. Another example, Some 3rd party applications apply global sharpening whilst Adobe Denoise does not. Personally, I prefer to have some control over the amount of noise reduction and sharpening applied to photos, but other users prefer that the process be a single click.

A comprehensive explanation of Denoise written by Eric Chan from the Camera Raw team can be found here.

Masking

Masking continues to be improved with new tools and UI tweaks. I’ve highlighted some of the new features and UI tweaks below.

Curves [Lightroom Classic and Desktop]

A ‘Curves’ panel has been added to to Masks in Lightroom Classic and Desktop. This brings both versions of Lightroom into line with Camera Raw.

Other Curve enhancements include:

  • Indicators (dots) have also added to Tone Curve and Masking Curves panel to indicate if that Curve has active settings. See above screenshot.
  • Support has also been added for Renaming and Deleting Curve Presets through the UI. The option is only available for User Created Presets.
  • The Histogram shown in local curve will be displayed for the selected mask, and not of the entire image. See above screenshot.

Select People [Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop]

Two new attributes for the People mask.

  • Facial Hair
  • Clothes

Also, the People mask attribute ‘Face Skin is now renamed to ‘Facial Skin’.

History Step [Lightroom Classic]

The Mask Name would now be added to History step when its settings, like Exposure, Contrast, etc., are changed.

Adaptive Presets [Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop]

The Portrait Group of ‘Adaptive’ Presets has been expanded to include

  • Polished Portrait
  • Darken Beard

Library Enhancements [Lightroom Classic]

The Lightroom Classic engineering team have spent some time working to improve Scrolling and Walk Performance. However, at this time these improvements are limited to macOS systems.

For example, many Library module views now leverage native macOS capabilities for drawing/rendering of Images. This should help in optimising overall scrolling performance.

With these changes, you should experience better performance in the following views in macOS.

  • Improved / smoother Publish Grid scrolling and People View Scrolling.
  • Improved/ smoother scrolling experience in Import Grid , Import Loupe.
  • Faster walking in Full Screen.

Other Performance tweaks have been implemented as follows:

  • Keywords – optimised ‘Purge Unused Keywords’ workflow.
  • Map – the embedded browser framework that is used to render web content Classic in Map and Web modules has been updated.

UI Enhancements [Lightroom Classic]

Eyeball icons & Edit indicators

  • Eyeball icons replace the ‘switches’ and are now visible by default for all Edit panels and Healing, Redeye, and Masking tools. They can be clicked and held to temporarily hide settings of that panel. However, should you wish to switch a panel off, then press and hold Option/Alt key to convert Eyeball icons to  a Panel Switch.
  • Edit Indicators are also available in the toolbar. For the Global Panels, Eyeball icons also act as edit indicators.

Edit in Photoshop > Select Photoshop Version

Lightroom Classic now includes an option to select Photoshop version from all the different Photoshop versions installed on your system for your ‘Edit in Photoshop’ workflows. You can select the preferred Photoshop version from ‘Photoshop version’ dropdown in Preference > External Editing tab > Edit in Adobe Photoshop section. By default, latest version of Photoshop installed is selected. Once the Photoshop version is selected, it can be used for all the Edit-In Photoshop workflows.

Open as Smart Object Layers in Photoshop

A new option  has been added to open selected images as Smart Object Layers in Photoshop.

Feature Enhancements [Lightroom Desktop]

In addition to the headline feature mentioned above, Lightroom Desktop receives the following enhancements.

  • Video Improvements (Auto – B&W – Extract frame – Export frame – Trimming improvements (Timeline, Numeric in Crop))
  • Batch Editing -Already have it, just more discoverable -Copy -Paste -X to clear current settings -Gear to specify what gets copied
  • Resize Filmstrip
  • Preference to turn off Tool Tips
  • Performance Improvements: Crop, Scrolling, Pan and Zoom
  • [Beta] Content Authenticity feature via Export (opt in) -File or Cloud – Credentials to include -Verification site – https://verify.contentauthenticity.or -See list of creators, tools, what was done -See original (See original and edit side).

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 | October 2021

Adobe  ‘Max 2021’ saw the announcement of Camera Raw 14, Lightroom Classic 11 and Lightroom Desktop 5. We’ve come to expect that each new version includes new features and this time round is no exception. New features shared across all of the applications, including iOS and Android mobile apps are: a new masking engine, camera matching profiles for Canon CR3 files, plus additional camera and lens support. There are also number of new or enhanced features specific to Lightroom Classic and others specific to the Desktop and mobile apps. I’ve identified the new features that apply to each below.

Masking (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Cloud Ecosystem)

Adobe pre-announced the new masking feature in late September, thus giving customers an early insight into the improvements it would bring to their editing workflow. The new masking feature is a significant reworking of the Selective/Local Adjustments of previous versions. Adobe have also stated that the work involved also lays a foundation for additional capabilities to come some time in the future. Additionally, they have also implemented several customer feature requests submitted over the years. These include the ability to organise masks in a named list, toggle on/off individual masks, invert masks (including brushes), and mix and match mask types to form a single complex mask.

Range Masks, which were previously only available in Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic are now included in Lightroom Desktop and mobile apps, albeit with the benefit of a new more powerful interface, and it doesn’t stop there. Adobe have also incorporated Photoshop’s machine learning-driven ‘smart’ selection features such as ‘Select Subject’ and ‘Select Sky’. As with selective and local edits/adjustments in previous versions of Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic, etc, the Masking features are non-destructive.

In below screenshots, I show the basic Masking UI followed by an example that involves building up a relatively complex mask.

The first pair of screenshots shows the UI for the mask types along with the the supported adjustments. Note that the masking panels can be docked to the side of the existing panels, left floating or docked within the existing adjustments stack.

Moving on to the example. The first screenshot in below sequence is the original image. I wanted to darken the sky and foreground rocks plus brighten the tree.

For the second screenshot I chose the ‘Select Sky’ mask from the options list. The AI masking engine selected the sky with ease.

For the third screenshot I used the ‘Select Subject’ option. In this example, it also selected parts of the sky. Using the Luminance Range mask allowed me to sample the sky that I didn’t want this particular mask to affect when I made my adjustments. I also used the redesigned Luminance Range slider tool to fine-tune the selection.

For the fourth screenshot I first used ‘Color Range’ to sample the foreground. However, as expected, parts of the tree also shared the same colour and were therefore included in the mask. To remove the tree from the mask, I chose ‘Subtract’ and ‘Subject’.

Finally, I adjusted the adjustment slider settings on a mask by mask basis.

In this latest iteration, the range masks now work globally, although using the add and subtract controls they can still be applied within a gradient, just as before. As such, we no longer need to create a range mask as part of a graduate or radial filter. There is also greater control over the luminance range’s falloff, although this may cause some irritation/confusion on first use.

The data (bitmap files) associated with ‘sky’ and ‘subject’ masks is stored in a Lightroom Classic catalog data container (lrcat-data) or in the case of Camera Raw, a secondary sidecar file (.acr) or within DNG files if they are your preferred file format. To avoid losing ‘sky’ and ‘subject’ data It is essential that you do not delete the ‘lrcat-data’ container or ‘.acr’ sidecar.

For users who prefer to use keyboard shortcuts rather than a mouse or pen, Adobe have provided an extensive set of shortcuts specific to masking. These can be accessed by clicking on the ? button at top right corner of the mask panel.

Masks can be copied / pasted or synced to other images. There is no restriction on the type of masks that can be copied / pasted or synced, although in the case of file to file copy /paste / sync, the procedure for ‘sky’ and ‘subject’ masks requires that you ‘Update’ the mask. This step is not required if the source file is a Virtual Copy.

Camera Matching Profiles (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Cloud Ecosystem)

They’ve been a long time coming, but at last, Camera Matching profiles for the following Canon EOS cameras that use the CR3 file format are available.

  • Canon EOS 1DX III
  • Canon EOS R3
  • Canon EOS R5
  • Canon EOS R6

Hopefully, the availability of these long awaited camera profiles signal that future Canon camera using the CR3 file format will be ‘fully’ supported.

Multitasking (Lightroom Classic)

The Library module is now capable of multitasking. With this change, catalog read operations, which in earlier versions were sequential resulted in blocking other catalog operations, which caused users a lot of fustration. For example, if you apply a preset to a set of images and want to navigate to a different set of images in different folder (i.e. a catalog read operation), then you can now do it simultaneously without having to wait for previous operations to complete. Another example of where blocking occurred was when renaming large numbers of files. In below screenshot, I show what happens in earlier versions if we try to change folders while the renaming process is ongoing. Obviously, this isn’t particularly helpful. However, with multitasking, changing folders during the renaming process means that grid area will be immediately populated and you can start the renaming process, then start the next Library task.

Metadata Panel (Lightroom Classic)

The Library module Metadata panel has been redesigned to give more control to the user. This redesign includes the following:

Active Image / All Images

  • When multiple images are selected, you now have the choice between seeing the metadata for the active image or for all images (same as that in older versions). This means that when a large number of images are selected and choosing ‘Target Photo’, you can avoid the long enumeration process that blocked other operations.
  • Above works in tandem with the Metadata > Show Metadata for Target Photo Only menu option.

Customize Metadata Default Panel

Another popular feature request that has been addressed in this release is the ability to create a custom metadata field list. Simply click on the ‘Customize’ button at the bottom of the Metadata Panel when ‘Default’ is selected in the pop-up menu. By selecting this option, you will be able to customise the metadata displayed in the default Metadata Panel for the selected image(s). However, care should be taken with the number of fields selected as too many can have an adverse impact on Library module performance.

The metadata fields within the panel can also be reordered to your preference

Edit-Only Mode

A new mode called ‘Edit-Only’ is now available within the Metadata panel. When enabled (i.e. click on eye icon at top left corner of panel) Edit-Only mode, you can edit all visible metadata fields in the Metadata panel for the selected Active Image or All Images. Note that no current metadata values are displayed in Edit-Only mode of Metadata panel.

Auto Save into XMP (Lightroom Classic)

With this release, Adobe have introduced enhancements for when ‘Automatically write changes into XMP’ option is enabled in Catalog Settings.

  • With this change, Develop module edits will be saved to the XMP sidecar file only after active image selection changes in Lightroom Classic or focus is moved to another application (e.g. Edit in Photoshop). This behaviour is unlike previous versions where every single edit operation was immediately saved into XMP. For example, in earlier versions, if you adjusted the exposure slider 10 times, the XMP sidecar file would be updated 10 times. The new behaviour is that XMP will be updated only once, with all the edits being written in one go.
  • Save to XMP sidecar is triggered automatically when there is any change in image metadata and the progress of save into XMP would be displayed in activity centre. There is no need to select the images manually.

Auto Save into XMP Progress bar

  • When enabled , you should be able to see the actual images count for which XMP writing is in- progress. However, this particular feature will likely only be visible when XMP writing is to a large number of files.

Auto Save into XMP Pause button

  • A ‘Saving XMP’ pause button has been added in activity centre to pause and resume the Auto Save into XMP.
  • This  button is only displayed when ‘Automatically write changes into XMP’ option is enabled in Catalog Settings.

I suspect above changes to XMP save behaviour will be welcomed by customers who would prefer to automatically save Develop module edits to the XMP sidecar but were deterred from doing so because of the significant performance hit that the previous behaviour caused.

Catalog Upgrades and Backups (Lightroom Classic)

Catalog updates and backups are not new to Lightroom Classic. However, with the introduction of the new masking feature, the upgrade and backup processes have become more complex, albeit still automatic.

Lightroom Classic will upgrade your 10.x or older catalogs to 11 when first launched. However, as mentioned above, the Smart Selection generated masks along with the 3D LUT (from profiles) will be stored next to catalog in a folder named <CatalogName>.lrcat-data. This folder will also be added to catalog backup, as this data is needed for rendering user edits properly.

Catalog Workflows

With this release, updates to various catalog workflows have been made to accommodate masks. These are:

Catalog Import

Masks, corresponding to the images imported from the source catalog, will be copied to destination catalog’s ‘.lrcat-data’ folder.

Catalog Export

Masks, corresponding to the images exported from the source catalog, will be copied to exported catalog’s ‘.lrcat-data’ folder.

Catalog Backup

Unless it is empty (i.e. does not contain ‘sky’ and/or subject’ masks, the ‘.lrcat-data’ folder will be included while backing up the catalog (.lrcat)

Catalog Optimisation

The key changes to the optimisation process are:

  • Any mask which is not being referred to by any image will be removed during a catalog optimise operation. This reduces the possibility of orphaned masks and saves on storage space.
  • If a mask is being referred to by an image through current settings, before settings, snapshots, or history, it will not be removed during the cleanup.
  • Lightroom Classic now relaunches after completion of Optimise operation.

Library Filter (Lightroom Classic)

With this release, there’s an option to Filter by a Date in Metadata filter. Therefore, you can now filter images by a specific date in any year range. This is often referred to as ‘On this date…’ and has been a long requested feature.

Premium Presets II (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Cloud Ecosystem)

The original set of Premium Presets that first shipped in the June 2021 releases were found to be extremely popular with customers, and Adobe have followed up with additional sets of Premium presets.

Recommended Presets (Lightroom Cloud Ecosystem)

The ‘Recommended Presets’ feature is new to the Presets panel of Lightroom Desktop and mobile. When you select the ‘Recommended’ tab in the Presets panel, Lightroom looks through the tens of thousands of customer presets that are available in the Discover section and uses cloud based Artificial Intelligence to suggest some that may work well with your particular image.

GPS Field (Lightroom Desktop)

There is a new GPS field in the Info panel. This field will display the coordinates if the selected photo already has coordinate metadata.

Sync Time Remaining (Lightroom Desktop)

When Lightroom Desktop is syncing photos it will now give you an estimate of how long it will take for the sync to complete. The estimate is displayed in the pop-up menu that you get when you click on the cloud icon in the upper right corner of the application window.

Crop Overlays (Lightroom Desktop)

Lightroom Desktop now has a variety of crop overlays, in addition to the default rule of thirds overlay. The crop overlay can be switched using the pop-up in the crop panel, or by pressing ‘O’ while the crop tool is active. Pressing ‘shift-O’ will cycle the orientation of the selected crop overlay.

Operating System Requirements

macOS

  • Support for macOS Mojave (10.14.x) has been dropped. The minimum macOS version supported is macOS Catalina (10.15).
  • You will not be able to install Lightroom Classic 11.0 or later builds on macOS Mojave (10.14.x).
  • If you are using macOS Mojave (10.14.x), Adobe recommend that you update your OS to at least macOS Catalina (10.15).

Windows

  • Support for Windows 10 v1903 has been dropped. The minimum Windows 10 version supported would v1909 (or later).
  • You will not be able to install Lightroom Classic 10.0 or later builds on Windows 10 v1903. Installation would be allowed on Windows Server 2016 or later.
  • If you are using Windows 10 v1903, Adobe recommend that you update your OS to at least Windows v1909.

New Camera & Lens Support

  • Details on camera support can be found here
  • Details on lens support can be found here

Bug Fixes

  • Lightroom Classic bug fixes listed here
  • Lightroom Desktop bug fixes listed here
  • Camera Raw bug fixes listed here

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

Adobe Lightroom CC | October 2018

The last major update to Lightroom CC  was back in October 2017 (v 3.0). This latest update (v 4.0) includes several new features that customers have requested over the last 12 months.

So, what’s new in Lightroom CC | October 2018?

People View

(Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and ChromeOS)

People View allows you to quickly find and name people in your photos. It’s powered by Adobe Sensei. Using this machine learning technology from Adobe Lightroom CC automatically tags people in photos and provides you with an easy way to see all the photos the person appears in.

Adobe Sensei-powered People View in Lightroom CC for mobile (iOS)

Improved Search

(Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and ChromeOS)

Searching has always been one of the stronger features in Lightroom CC. This is mainly due to the advanced server side technology (Adobe Sensei). Search suggestions are presented as you as soon as you start typing in the Search bar, recommending things like cameras, lenses, shutter speeds, apertures, ISOs, keywords, locations, and more.

Example of autocomplete suggestions when using Search in Lightroom CC for mobile (iOS)

For example, you can type ‘car’ in the Search bar to quickly search for all photos that have cars in them. You can also search your photos using ‘facets’. With facet’s you type a name (e.g. ‘camera’) followed by a colon ‘:’ to display a list of camera models used. I’ve included a list of currently supported facets below:

  • keyword:
  • camera:
  • lens:
  • location:
  • rating:
  • flag:
  • flash:
  • orientation:
  • iso:
  • type:
  • f-stop:
  • ss:
  • edited:
  • media:

The Filter UI in Lightroom CC for the Desktop has also received some attention.

Improved ‘Filter’ organisation and layout Lightroom CC Desktop

Additional sharing options for Share to Web

Sharing photos has some useful improvements. For example, you can now choose to only share images that are flagged or have a particular star rating while also providing control over the display theme and appearance.

Display options when sharing collections on web in Lightroom CC for mobile

Guided Tutorials

New guided tutorials for First-Time Adjustments and Healing Brush have been added to iOS and the Android versions now has tutorials for First-Time Adjustments, Target Adjustment Tool, and Guided Upright. The new guided tutorials can be found under Help & Support in Lightroom CC for mobile. If you’re not sure what guided tutorials are or don’t use Lightroom CC on a mobile device, then below screenshot shows how they can be accessed in Lightroom CC (Desktop).

Guided Tutorials on Lightroom CC (Desktop)

HEVC file support on macOS

Lightroom CC now supports Apple’s HEVC video format (High Efficiency Video Coding, also known as H.265) on macOS High Sierra (10.13) or later.

For more information, see HEVC video files support.

Camera and Lens Support

A full list of cameras and lens profiles supported by Lightroom CC can be found at:

Adobe Launches all new desktop – Lightroom CC

The Adobe Max conference provides the company with an opportunity to showcase new applications to the great and good of  designers, photographers, web coders, video-makers, illustrators, and developers. At this years event, held in Las Vegas, they announced a brand new application for photographers – Lightroom CC on Desktop. Below is a brief overview of this new application.

So what is Lightroom CC on Desktop and who is it for?

Lightroom CC is designed and built around 3 guiding principles:

  • Powerful Yet Simple – Lightroom CC will offer the powerful image editing that you want, while being simple and intuitive to use. Adobe’s goal is that it will have everything you need and nothing you don’t.
  • Seamless experience across all your devices – Lightroom CC will work the same across desktop, mobile and web. This allows you to move across your devices without needing to relearn. Your photos and edits are all where you’d expect them to be.
  • Cloud Based – Everything you do in Lightroom CC is synced to the cloud. This means that you can access and work with your photos from any device (including multiple computers), and can easily share photos with others. All of your photos and all of the work that you do with them will be automatically backed up all the time.

Lightroom CC is based on a subscription model rather than a perpetual licence. This may, be a barrier for some, but then again Lightroom Classic is also subscription only now.

The various subscription plans that Adobe are offering include, the existing Creative Cloud Photography plan available to Lightroom Classic and Photoshop customers. This plan will include a fairly meagre 20GB or Cloud storage for $9.99/month, but is really only intended as taster. However, for an additional $10/month, you can increase storage to 1TB. Alternatively, you can choose to skip Lightroom Classic and Photoshop but take the 1TB of storage instead, and this again will cost $9.99/month.

Interface and Use

Turning now to the application itself, we can see that the UI is broadly similar in appearance and content to Lightroom CC for mobile and web clients. This approach is consistent with with the objective of making all of the client applications in CC ecosystem

Lightroom CC on Desktop – My Photos View

The above screenshot shows Lightroom CC in the ‘My Photos’ view with ‘Square grid enabled. However, as with Lightroom CC for mobile devices there is also a ‘Photo grid’ view, which arranges the photos so that they use the grid space in a more optimised way.

To enable the left or right side panels you can click on one of the buttons or use keyboard shortcuts (i.e. ‘P’ for the left side panel and ‘E’, “I’ or’K’ for the right side panel). The following screenshots shows the application in ‘Edit’, ‘Keywords’ and ‘Info’ view, respectively.

Edit View

Keywords View

Info View

The ‘My Photos’ panel shows a list of imported or synced photos by date.

You can also create individual ‘Albums’, and organise multiple albums within a folder hierarchy.

My Photos

Photos can be added to multiple albums, and will be synced to all devices within your CC ecosystem.

Lightroom CC on Desktop displays much less information on thumbnails than Lightroom Classic, and many will find the absence of badges to indicate whether a photo has been edited or not less than helpful. The little information provided in the form of badges is shown on below screenshot.

Thumbnail Badges

The thumbnails also have a context menu, from which you can quickly access some commands.

Thumbnail Context Menu

The right side ‘Edit’ panel largely mirrors the location and adjustments currently available for iOS and Android devices. However, we can expect to see new adjustments being added over time.

Tone and Colour Adjustments

Search

Searching in Lightroom CC uses Sensei machine-learning technology to identify features in images. In theory, this makes every image in your catalog searchable based on its content without you having to apply keywords/tags. However, in reality it’s not always as accurate as some would have us believe. For example, I typed ‘mountain’ into the search field and obtained below results. As you can see, some of the images are a long way’s from being a mountain. That being said, for many photographers it’s sufficiently accurate that they’ll not bother applying their own keywords to images.

Photo Search

Photo Storage

Local storage of your images is supported, although Adobe’s preferred storage location is the cloud. The following screenshot shows how you can configure the application to store some or all of your photos locally as well as on the cloud.

Local Storage Preference

Syncing Photos with the cloud

Unlike Lightroom Classic all photos added to Lightroom CC on Desktop will automatically be synced to the Adobe Cloud and your mobile devices. However, there may be occasions when you would prefer to delay sync to take place until later. To do so, simply click on the cloud badge at top right corner of the application, then click on the Pause button as shown below.

Pause Syncing

Above has been a veery quick overview of Lightroom CC on Desktop. If you would like more information on the application or other apps within the Lightroom CC ecosystem then visit the Getting Started page. Adobe have also provided a number of short tutorials to help prospective users quickly get up and running:

  1. Explore the application
  2. Add and organise photos
  3. Use Lightroom CC with Photoshop
  4. Edit your photos from anywhere

Minimum Hardware and OS requirements

Windows 

  • Intel® or AMD processor with 64-bit support*
  • Windows 10 (64-bit) Version 1511 or later
  • 4 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended)
  • 1 GB of Video RAM (VRAM). 2 GB of dedicated VRAM is suggested for large, high-resolution monitors, such as 4K- and 5K-resolution monitors
  • 10 GB of available hard-disk space
  • OpenGL 3.3 and DirectX 10-capable video adapter for GPU-related functionality
  • Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.

macOS

  • Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support*
  • MacOS 10.12 (Sierra), Mac OS X v10.11 (El Capitan)
  • 4 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended)
  • 1 GB of Video RAM (VRAM). 2 GB of dedicated VRAM is suggested for large, high-resolution monitors, such as 4K- and 5K-resolution monitors.
  • 10 GB of available hard-disk space (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash storage devices)
  • OpenGL 3.3–capable video adapter for GPU-related functionality
  • Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.