Category Archives: Enhanced Details

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.

Lightroom Classic & Lightroom Desktop | June 2021


The latest updates Lightroom Classic (10.3) and the Lightroom Desktop (4,3) were released to customers today (8 June). These updates include new features along with new camera and lens support, and bug fixes. Best of all is that Lightroom Classic is, as of 10.3, Mac ARM-native.

Mac ARM Support (Lightroom Classic)

Lightroom Desktop has been able to run natively on computers using the Apple M1 since late last year. With version 10.3, Lightroom Classic customers using Apple M1 based computers will also be able run the application natively rather than via the Rosetta emulation. However, if  using Tethered Capture on a Macs with Apple Silicon, then you’ll be prompted to relaunch the application using Rosetta.

Super Resolution (Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop)

Super Resolution first shipped with Camera Raw 10.2 and was generally well received by customers. Now it’s the turn of Lightroom Classic and Desktop.

Super Resolution relies on Machine Learning technologies developed by Adobe, and can be used to create an image with 2x the width and 2x the height of the original image, or 4x the total pixel count. Most file types such as JPEG and TIFF are supported.

Super Resolution is especially useful when you need to make large prints or increase the resolution of an image that has been heavily cropped. For example, below screenshot of LrC shows a chance shot of a Great Horned Owl. I think it was a surprised to see me as I was to see it. Needless to say, the owl fills only a small segment of the frame and at its native size is barely large enough for a 5 by 7 inch print.

Steps to create a Super Resolution image in Lightroom Classic:

    • Right click on an image and select Enhance or from Photo menu > Enhance

    • In the dialog box, you’ll find ‘Raw Details’ (previously known as Enhance details) and Super Resolution.
    • Select Super Resolution and click on Enhance button.

The final image is easily large enough for an 8 by 10 inch or larger print. However, depending on the quality of the original the resultant image can be prone to artefacts (typically colour spots on high contrast lines, etc). So, my recommendation is that this feature is used only when absolutely necessary. There is no substitute for real pixels!

As with Camera Raw, there is also a headless option, which is activated by holding down the Option/Alt key when right-mouse-clicking on ‘Enhance’ in context menu.

Like ‘Raw Details’, Super Resolution uses the GPU in your computer to undertake millions of highly complex calculations. More details on the ‘Super Resolution’ feature can be found in the blog post by Eric Chan

Develop Presets (Lightroom Classic)

Many Lightroom Classic customers will recall the major revamp of Develop Presets and Profiles introduced in version 7.3 (April 2018). Since then Develop Presets and Profiles have been interchangeable between Lightroom and Camera Raw. In fact, newly saved or imported Develop presets in Lightroom Classic were stored in the Camera Raw Settings folder. Unfortunately, inconsistencies between the two apps caused confusion for some customers. So, to improve consistency between Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw, Develop presets will now be saved using a flat file structure instead of current hierarchy-based system using preset’s group name as folder names. That being said, inside of Lightroom Classic, new presets will continue to be neatly contained within Preset Groups. It is only at filesystem level that they will saved into a single folder. Fortunately, there is no change in the structure of how your existing presets are stored on your computer.

The folder into which the presets will be saved is:

  • macOS – “<userHome>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/Settings”, and
  • Windows – “<userHome>\Appdata\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings”

It’s also recommended that for exporting the presets you use the preset export workflow instead of directly accessing the presets from filesystem.

Another Preset related changed is the ‘Process Version’ checkbox. With this release, Lightroom Classic no longer shows any warning when the option for Process Version is unchecked in the Preset creation/edit dialog. The Process Version checkbox will be auto selected if any related setting is checked. This change will also affect Copy/Paste and Sync Settings dialog.

Develop Presets (Lightroom Desktop and Mobile Devices)

The “Presets” button in Lightroom Desktop has been moved to the top of the edit stack.

Lightroom Desktop – New Home for Presets button

Also, if you tend to use edit presets, then you’ll be pleased to read that there is a set of new presets for you to try out on the Lightroom Desktop and mobile devices. These new presets are described as ‘Premium Presets’ by Adobe, which is their way of indicating that they will be only be available to paying customers. On desktop, that effectively means they’re available to virtually everyone. On mobile, Freemium users will not be able to use these presets. They will see the ‘Premium Presets’ in the UI and on attempting to use them the app will present an upsell message, similar to other features which are already available only to paying customers.

Lightroom Desktop – Premium Presets

In-App Learn and Discover (Lightroom Desktop, Mobile Devices and Web)

The in-app ‘Learn’ tutorials you can now step backwards, in addition to forwards. See top right corner in below screenshot.

‘Learn’ In-app Navigation

  • Tutorials now support Color Grading
  • ‘Discover’ playback now allows you to expand local adjustments to show allthe changed parameters
  • Learn More Button for incompatible HDR Videos (Windows)

Collaborative Editing (Lightroom Desktop, Mobile Devices and Web)

You can now share an an album and invite others to edit your images. You will also receive a notification when someone edits your photo in the shared album. No doubt this particular feature will be attractive to customers who are keen to see how others will edit their photos.

The process for initing others to edit your photos is relatively straight forward. You first need to create a shared album, then choose ‘Share & Invite’. Next, click on the ‘Edit’ button (red bounded button in below screenshot fooled by ‘Done’.

While editors always have access to Metadata, location it’s possible to extend this to others who don’t have editing access.

It’s also worth noting that when you grant Editor access, other users can view/edit all photos within the shared album. Therefore, if you want to retain any edits you’ve already applied to an photo, then it’s important that you create a Version. Other users with whom you’ve saved the album can also contribute new photos to the album as well as edit them.

More details on Collaborative Editing can be found here

VRAM Optimisation (Lightroom Classic)

With this release, the engineering team have spent some time optimising how the VRAM is utilised in the Develop module.

It’s hoped that this work will address Develop module slowness issues reported by Windows and Mac users in 10.2. The performance improvement should be more noticeable with higher amounts of VRAM (e.g. 8GB and higher). Machines with VRAM 4GB or lower will not see significant difference in performance.

Other Performance Improvements (Lightroom Classic)

Metadata

With the release,  certain Metadata panel related operations have been optimised. This show help with the following issues:

  • When multiple images are selected, the time taken to update the data in Metadata panel increases.
  • When one or multiple images are selected, the data in the Metadata panel tends to refresh (reload).
  • When updating metadata for multiple images, the Metadata panel tends to refresh (reload).

Tone Curve

The performance of Tone Curve on macOS has been improved when using custom colour profiles.

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

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 Professional I receive a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Camera Raw | March 2021

The latest update to Camera Raw, was released to customers today (9 March). This update is primarily to provide new camera and lens support plus bug fixes. However, Camera Raw 13.2 also includes new features and enhancements. One of which  will be of particular benefit to customers with images captured on low Mega Pixel cameras or require significant cropping.

New Features and Enhancements

  • Enhance Super Resolution: doubles image resolution. It’s ideal for large displays and prints. It’s also the second feature in the ‘Enhance’ family, which makes use of Adobe’s Machine Learning technologies.
  • Filter and Sort the Filmstrip: Added ability to filter and sort photos visible in the Filmstrip.
  • Customise Edit panel: Hide, show and reorder Edit panel.
  • Apple ProRaw Profile: Apple ProRaw photos appear closer to the in-camera look.
  • Native support for Arm processors.

Enhance Super Resolution

Super Resolution relies on Machine Learning technologies developed by Adobe. In developing the algorithms, millions of existing images were analysed. The result is feature that allows you to double the size of existing raw images to a much higher quality than previous upscaling tools in Photoshop, Camera Raw or Lightroom. It’s particularly useful for upsizing raw images captured on older DSLRs that were limited to 12MP and lower. However, it’s equally useful for upsizing heavily cropped raw images from more recent DSLRs and Mirrorless cameras.

To use the ‘Enhance Super Resolution’ feature in Camera Raw you right-mouse-click on the image to open the context menu, then choose ‘Enhance’

The Enhance setting dialog will open. Next make sure that you have ‘Super Resolution’ checked. There is also a headless option, which is activated by holding down the Option/Alt key when right-mouse-clicking on ‘Enhance’. Also, note that Enhance Details is automatically applied.

Like ‘Enhanced Details’, Super Resolution uses the GPU in your computer to undertake millions of highly complex calculations for each image. More details on the ‘Super Resolution’ feature can be found in the blog post by Eric Chan

Apple ProRaw

Apple ProRAW combines the information of a standard RAW format along with iPhone image processing, which gives you more flexibility when editing the exposure, colour and white balance in your photo. Unfortunately, until this latest release of Camera Raw it wasn’t possible for Adobe applications to make full use of the format. However, Apple ProRaw images can now imported into Camera Raw using the ProRaw Profile, and will also appear closer to their in-camera look.

Apple M1 and Windows ARM support

Camera Raw 13.2 is natively compatible with Apple devices with M1 processors and Windows machines with ARM processors.

  • Details of Camera Raw bUg Fixes can be found here
  • New camera support can be found here

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

Adobe Lightroom Classic 8.2 | February 2019

Adobe Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC (Cloud-based version) were released to customers on 12 February 2019. The headline new feature in these updates was ‘Enhance Details’ , which is  a brand new approach to demosaicing raw photos. It can be found in Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic CC, and Lightroom CC for Mac and Windows.

Adobe claim that with Enhance Details algorithm you can increase the resolution of both Bayer and X-Trans based photos by up to 30%. Enhance Details works on any raw file apart from files converted to a linear raw file, HDR or Panorama merged files. While applicable to any raw file format, Fujifilm X-Trans based cameras benefit most from applying Enhance Details. Adobe have prepared a white paper, which can be found here. I used this image because disappointingly I could find no image within my own library that demonstrated the improvements that Enhanced Details is capable of delivering. I suspect many Lightroom users will be equally disappointed.

Lightroom Classic 8.2 – Enhanced Detail

Using Enhanced Details

  • The Enhance Details option can be accessed by Right clicking (Control + clicking) on a selection (single or batch) in Library/Develop Loupe, Grid, or Film Strip andselecting “Enhance Details” from the context menu.
  • “Enhance Details” will create a new DNG file next to the original file on disk and the file name will be appended with “-enhanced” for identification.
  • The resulting DNG contains both the mosaic data and the enhanced RGB data.
  • The new enhance image will carry all the metadata and develop settings as that of the original image.
  • Upon ‘Enhance details’ selection from the context menu, when a single image is selected, a Preview dialog box will be shown.
  • A preview of the image(zoomed) will be displayed with enhance details applied. One can long press to view the image without enhance details applied.
  • One can zoom in/out the image in the preview dialog box.
  • If image is zoomed into an area and one launches “Enhance Details” previewdialog, zoomed area will be shown in the preview dialog considering it as area of interest.
  • When more than 1 images are selected, Lightroom Classic would directly start the DNG creation process.
  • Enhance Details option is available in Photo menu for Library and Develop panel.
  • The following Keyboard shortcuts are available:macOS – CONTROL+OPTION+IWindows – CTRL+ALT+INote:
  • Enhance Details requires macOS 10.13 (or later) or, Windows 10 (Oct 2018 Release – i.e 1809).
  • Enhanced Details is computationally intensive and may take a bit time to run for each image. It performs best with a fast GPU.
  • Enhanced Details  can be applied to most raw file formats but not to JPEGs, TIFFs, HEICs or De- mosaiced images.

Tethered Capture

Lightroom Classic also includes an update to tethering, whcih now allows Nikon cameras to utilise the improvements made available for Canon cameras in the October 2018 update.

A full list of cameras tether support in Lightroom Classic 8.0 can be found at Tethered Camera Support

All of the application within the Lightroom ecosystem have also been updated to support new cameras and lenses.