Category Archives: GPU Support

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop | June 2022

 The latest updates to Camera Raw (14.4), Lightroom Classic (11.4) and Lightroom Desktop (5.4) have been released to customers. These updates include new camera and lens support, and bug fixes. There are also new features and performance enhancements in each of the applications. I’ve summarised below what I consider to be the highlights. However, more details on new features and enhancements can be found by clicking on the ‘What’s New’ menu option in the ‘Help’ menu of each application.

Masking Updates

All three applications benefit from a number of usability enhancements to the masking feature, although as of this release, not all have made their way into Lightroom Desktop.

Mask Invert (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop)

With these latest updates, we now have the ability to invert a whole mask, not only a component. The command for inverting masks can be found under the three-dot menu for the mask you want to invert.

Batch Update of AI Masks (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop)

The ability to update ‘Subject’ and ‘Sky’ masks on multiple images at once is now supported.

  • An option for ‘Update All’ masks has been added in the Masking panel. This can be accessed by opening the Masking panel on an image which has missing masks.
  • Also, for the images with missing masks, we can select all of the images, then use ‘Settings > Update AI Masks’ option in the Develop module to update Subject/Sky masks.
  • An indicator will be shown under Histogram in Develop Module when the current image has any AI Masks missing.

The following lists the supported and unsupported workflows available when batch updating images with AI masks.

Supported workflows:

  • Copy and Paste
  • Auto Sync Settings
  • Previous (in the Develop module)
  • Sync settings
  • Presets

Unsupported workflows:

  • Applying Develop Preset during Import
  • Raw Default

In both these cases, the ‘Update AI Masks’ on the imported images can be used to update the masks.

Mask Amount Slider (Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic)

Masks has been revamped to include an amount slider at the top of the Mask adjustment panel, above the other edit sliders. An important caveat regarding the Amount slider is that it does not change/update the individual sliders. Instead, it increases/reduces the intensity of the effect applied in the background. It’s also important to note that whilst an image that has been edited using the Mask Amount slider will share the same appearance as Camera Raw 14.4 and Lightroom Classic 11.4 when viewed in earlier versions, the slider itself will not be available.

Masking Badges (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop)

A number of mask badges in the Masking Panel have been changed to make them more visible and their function more obvious. Badges have been positioned on the far left side of the masking panel to denote the operations for: Add, Subtract, Intersect and Invert. The badges to denote the mask type have been placed to the right of the operator badges.

Presets (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop)

New Premium and Adaptive Presets

For those who use presets to enhance or personalise their images, Adobe have included 50 new Premium presets designed for videos, portraits and live concert photos. There are also  two sets of  ‘Adaptive Presets’, which with a single click will select the ‘Sky’ to create dramatic skies or ‘Subject’ to make your subject pop. All of the presets also include ‘live’ on-screen updates. So, we can just hover the  mouse over the presets to see a preview of the preset at work.

Preset Amount Slider

And if the new presets aren’t enough, an ‘Amount’ slider has been added to enable global fine-tuning of the preset settings.

For presets that support ‘amount’, the slider is enabled and defaults to value of 100. The minimum and maximum values of the slider are 0 and 200, respectively. The slider will be enabled for most Adobe-created presets including Premium Presets. However, the slider is only enabled for presets created in earlier versions if they have scalable settings. What are scalable settings?

Scalable settings:

  • White Balance (temperature & tint)
  • Exposure
  • Contrast
  • Highlights
  • Shadows
  • Whites
  • Blacks
  • Texture
  • Clarity
  • Dehaze
  • Curves (all curves)
  • Detail (sharpening amount, luminance noise reduction amount, color noise reduction amount)
  • Color Mixer (all sliders)
  • Color Grading (hue, saturation and luminance adjustments)
  • Effects (grain & vignette amount)

Non-scalable settings:

  • Camera Profiles (e.g. Adobe Color)
  • Convert to black-and-white
  • Detail (non-amount sliders, such as the Radius and Masking sliders)
  • Color Grading: Blending, Balance
  • Lens Corrections (LrC) / Optics (ACR)
  • Geometry
  • Effects (non-amount sliders, such as Size and Roughness of grain)
  • Calibration
  • Red-eye
  • Heal and Clone
  • Masking
  • Crop

The New and Update Preset dialog includes a new checkbox to indicate whether a preset should or should not support the ‘Amount’ slider. In Preset dialog, when the currently selected settings are scalable, then the Support Amount Slider checkbox will be enabled and checked by default. Otherwise, the checkbox will be disabled and unchecked.

Export (Lightroom Classic)

Lightroom Classic can now take advantage of the GPU when exporting images. However, as with GPU acceleration in Camera Raw, there are caveats as to whether a computer will be able to take advantage of the GPU when exporting. These caveats are related to the amount and type of memory available to the GPU:

  • If the GPU has dedicated VRAM of 8 GB and above, ‘Export’ will automatically utilise the GPU.
  • If the GPU has dedicated VRAM less than 8GB, you can enable GPU for ‘Export’ using ‘Custom’ option in ‘Use Graphic Processor’ located in Performance tab of Preference dialog. However, you are unlikely to see much, if any, improvement in export times. 
  • If the GPU uses shared memory (e.g. integrated graphic cards or Apple M1 unified memory), then the minimum requirement for export automatically taking advantage of the GPU is 16GB. Again, whilst it’s possible to force GPU support on computers with less shared memory, the improvement in export times will be small, and will require that the system makes significant use of swaps to disk/ssd.

I’ve included a screenshot below that shows the various options available for enabling GPU export support. Note that with only 4GB of VRAM on this particular computer, the GPU only supports limited acceleration, which means that acceleration will be minimal, if any.

You may well be asking what GPU acceleration on for exporting bulk images actually delivers.  I’ve used three Mac M1 based systems to demonstrate. The three Macs used were:

  • Mac mini 8-core M1 with 8-core GPU, 1TB internal SSD and 16GB of unified memory;
  • 16-inch MacBook Pro 10-core M1 Pro with 16-core GPU, 2 TB internal SSD and 32GB of unified memory; and
  • Mac Studio 20-core M1 Ultra with 48-core GPU, 1TB internal SSD and 64GB of unified memory.

I imported 1000 Canon EOS R5 files into Lightroom Classic 11.4, applied lens corrections, Auto Settings in the Basic panel and default sharpening. The Export settings panel was configured for full size, Quality ’100%’ JPEG and Standard sharpening. A 2TB Samsung T5 USB-C SSD was used for the original and saved files. Using the T5 meant that the likelihood of the faster SSDs in the M1 Pro and Ultra helping the  SSD read / write times would not occur.

The averaged results from 3 tests on each computer are shown graphically below.

As above shows, with GPU acceleration enabled on computers meeting the specified memory requirements, we can expect to see significant reductions in export times. In April, I published a Blog post using Camera Raw 14.3 comparing various M1 based Mac computers with an Intel based MacBook Pro here. This post provides more details on the approach I adopted in the above tests.

Note: the times shown in above graph are for Canon EOS R5 files. The export times for other camera models and vendors are very likely to differ.

Discarding Stale or Orphaned Previews (Lightroom Classic)

Preview Management has received some attention in this version by optimising the algorithms used to identify stale and orphaned previews. With this change, LrC delete all the orphaned previews (previews of images that are removed from catalog or no longer exist) and stale previews (previews which are no longer in use) from <Catalog Name> Previews.lrdata.

Crop and Info Overlays (Lightroom Classic)

Lightroom Classic now includes a ‘Crop Overlay’ for ‘Fifths’ in the Develop module (Tools > Crop Guide Overlay > Fifths). Additionally, we can now choose to have different ‘Info Overlays’ in Library and Develop modules.

In-App Feedback & Ai Red Eye Removal (Lightroom Desktop)

In-App Feedback for Machine Learning features is available using the AI Red Eye Removal, Select Subject, or Select Sky. With this feature, you now have the option to provide feedback on the results of the AI process. An icon resembling a cartoon dialog bubble now appears in the interface when using one of these features, allowing you to provide feedback on the AI’s performance.

Compare View (Lightroom Desktop)

Lightroom Desktop now includes a Compare View with an option to place images side-by-side or stacked. The images can also be swapped.

Video (Lightroom Desktop)

You no longer need to leave Lightroom Desktop if you wish to make an edit to a video before sharing it on social media or elsewhere. Many of the Camera Raw edit controls that you are accustomed to using with your photos can also be used to edit your videos. You can also trim a video clip, altering its in-point and/or out-point to cut off any part of the beginning and/or end that you don’t want.

Batch Auto Settings (Lightroom Desktop)

You can now apply Auto Settings to any number of photos at once. Simply, select multiple photos in the grid, then invoke the command via the Photos menu or via the contextual menu.

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 Expert I receive a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Camera Raw 14.3 – GPU Support for Open and Save

 If there is one thing that Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom users tend to fixate on, it’s performance, particularly how each leverages the CPU and GPU. So, I find it surprising that more hasn’t been written about the recent GPU enhancements for opening and saving files that was introduced in Camera Raw 14.3. More details of what Adobe have to say about this can be found in the release notes 

I suspect the reason that little has been made of the enhanced GPU support is that Camera Raw isn’t particularly easy to use when working with multiple images, which may explain why relatively few users using the multi-image workflow. On the other hand, Lightroom Classic, which doesn’t currently benefit from GPU acceleration while saving files (exporting) is ideal for this type of workflow. Hopefully, we’ll see this addressed in the future.

Having drawn attention to the enhanced GPU support I expect readers will be keen to know how much improvement can be expected and whether their particular  computer + GPU configuration will benefit.  Again, Adobe have provided updated information on system requirements, which can be found here.

The improvements in ‘Open’ and ‘Save’ described are based on a combination of both CPU and GPU rather than just the GPU. This is important because simply transferring the workload from the CPU to the GPU would leave the former idle for the duration of the ‘Save’ process, which may not be the best use of very powerful resources.

While there’s lots of other helpful information in the documents linked above, the most important part, in terms of GPU support for ‘Open’ and ‘Save’, is shown below.

Notice that the memory requirements are actually a lot more onerous than the minimum requirements, and particularly so when the GPU is sharing memory with the CPU, etc.  Does this mean that users with less memory than specified above will miss out? Possibly! However, to check whether your particular configuration can benefit requires a bit of tweaking to Camera Raws Performance > GPU Preference as shown in below screenshot.

Camera Raw – Performance Preferences

Camera Raw checks the GPU capabilities during launch, and if it meets the requirements for full GPU acceleration will set the preference to ‘Auto’. If the test fails, the preference will be set to Off, and while we can manually override the preference and maybe even be able to turn on full acceleration, it’s likely that only very limited improvement will be seen in save times. By way of example, I have a late 2019 MacBook Pro i9 with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500m GPU with 4GB of dedicated VRAM. The GPU fails the initial test because it doesn’t have sufficient dedicated VRAM.

So, now that we know how to establish whether a particular GPU will provide full acceleration it’s time to check the degree of improvement. For this, I’ve used three Mac M1 based systems and the Intel i9 MacBook Pro mentioned above. The three Macs are:

  • Mac mini 8-core M1 with 8-core GPU, 1TB internal SSD and 16GB of unified memory;
  • 16-inch MacBook Pro 10-core M1 Pro with 16-core GPU, 2 TB internal SSD and 32GB of unified memory;
  • Mac Studio 20-core M1 Ultra with 48-core GPU, 1TB internal SSD and 64GB of unified memory; and
  • 16-inch MacBook Pro 8-core i9 with AMD Radeon Pro 5500m 4GB VRAM, 1TB internal SSD and 16GB ram.

I loaded 100* Canon EOS R5 files into Photoshop hosted Camera Raw 14.3, applied lens corrections, Auto Settings in the Basic panel and default sharpening. The Camera Raw ‘Save’ panel was configured for full size, Quality ’12’ JPEG. A 2TB Samsung T5 USB-C SSD was used for the original and saved files. Using the T5 meant that the likelihood of the faster SSDs in the M1 Pro and Ultra helping the  SSD read / write times would not occur.

The averaged results from 4 tests on each computer are shown graphically below.

Camera Raw 14.3 – Comparison with GPU Acceleration Off / Auto

Taking the  Intel based i9 first, notice that enabling full GPU acceleration on the system has only marginally improved the time to save the files. Furthermore, the CPU and GPU were never even close to being maxed out. However, when GPU acceleration was disabled, the CPU was maxed out for the duration of the test. Therefore, in this instance, manually setting the GPU to full acceleration is of little benefit because the necessary VRAM is not available.

We can also see from above graph that the time to ‘save’ the 100 files as JPEGs on each of the M1 based systems is substantially better than the Intel i9 based based system. I suspect, had the Intel based system had the minimum requirement of 8GB of VRAM, then it would have performed much better. Would it have beaten the the Mac mini M1? I doubt it.

If we now consider how the Mac mini M1 performed we can see that it just manages to meet the minimum memory requirements for full GPU acceleration. Therefore, it doesn’t benefit to the same extent as the M1 Pro or Ultra from enabling full GPU acceleration. Even so, it’s 2.5 times faster at saving the files than the Intel i9 MacBook Pro.

The comparison between the M1 Pro and Ultra are where things get more interesting. The M1 Ultra has three times the number of GPU cores and double the number of CPU cores as the M1 Pro, yet the results are probably closer than the core count would suggest. Is the less than expected difference due to throttling or poor utilisation of the GPU? Not that I could see! In fact, during the GPU enabled tests, the GPU and CPU cores on each ranged between 80% and 100% throughout.  There was no sign of the M1 Pro maxing out the CPU or GPU for prolonged periods nor was there any indication that that the M1 Ultra was cruising along just enough to look busy. Based on what I was seeing throughout the tests, my guess is that there is scope for further optimisation, but not to the extent that would allow for the M1 Ultra being 3 times faster than the M1 Pro.

In closing, I think it important to note that the purpose of this blog post was to highlight the new enhanced GPU support in Camera Raw 14.3 and how each of the M1 based Macs used in the tests benefit from same. Hopefully, I’ve done enough to demonstrate that Adobe have at least started to optimise the performance of applications of interest to photographers using M1 Macs rather than simply port them from Intel x86 to Apple ARM 64 code. I’m also hopeful that we’ll see further improvements over the coming months, especially those of us who prefer Lightroom Classic to Camera Raw.

Update 22 April 2022

(*) I’ve also ran tests with 1000 EOS R5 files and found the same pattern of results to those for the lesser number of files. The important takeaway from the extended tests is that even after 30 minutes of near maximum CPU/GPU use, none of the systems throttled.

In below screenshot, I’ve shown Activity Monitor graphs for the M1 Ultra CPU and GPU at approximately 1/3 way through exporting 1000 EOS R5 files. The graphs demonstrate that both the CPU and GPU are well loaded during the export process.

 

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

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Lightroom | October 2020

Adobe used the 2020 Max event on 20-22 October to announce new versions of Camera Raw 13.0, Lightroom Classic 10.0 and Lightroom Desktop 4.0. New features include: three-way color grading and enhanced zooming control in Camera Raw, Classic and Desktop, and improved tethering in Classic.

Color Grading (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop)

Color Grading using three-way color wheels is the number one headline feature of Camera Raw 13.0, Lightroom Classic 10.0 and Lightroom Desktop 4.0. However, rather than adding to the existing tools for editing colours in images Color Grading replaces Split Toning, but don’t panic yet.

Color Grading with Three-way Color Wheels

Color Grading allows you to apply a color tint to shadows, midtones, and highlights along with global Hue on the image. Like Split Toning, you can set a hue and saturation, plus you can now also specify a luminance for each range.

Color Grading is widely used in videography but much less so in stills photography. Nevertheless, it provides a much more flexible and powerful tool for creative color editing. Also, given that it’s now available in applications primarily intended for editing still photos I suspect we’ll see color graded images becoming much more common.

As I mentioned above, Color Grading replaces Split Toning. However, you can still get the old Split Toning behaviour with the new controls by moving the Blending slider to 100. It’s also helpful that using older Split Tone presets or opening older images with Split Tone settings will automatically set the Blending slider to 100 and zero out all midtone settings and all luminance settings. In addition to the three-way color wheels there is a global option as shown below. Using the Global control allows you to change the overall color of your photo while not affecting any existing shadow, midtone or highlight adjustments.

Global Color Grading

The Shift and Alt/Option keys can be used to make precise adjustments of Hue and Saturation on the color wheel. Additionally, while hovering the curser over the Color Wheels, you can adjust Hue and Saturation values using arrow keys with Option/Alt modifier.

More information and examples of Color Grading in action can be found here. The is also an excellent Adobe Blog in which Max Wendt, the lead engineer for the Color Grading feature, describes each of the controls

Zoom (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop)

Zooming in Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop have always been an area that users felt could be improved. With these new versions, Adobe have provided two additional zoom options; i.e.  ‘Scrubby’ and ‘Box Zoom’. These should enable finer control over zoom levels in loupe, compare and reference views.

Note that the following screenshots and keyboard shortcuts apply to Lightroom Classic 10

  • Scrubby Zoom: Dragging the mouse right/left along with Shift key pressed to zoom in/out of the image
  • Box Zoom: Drawing a box on an image with Command/Control key pressed to zoom into the selected area.
  • There are now only three Zoom options in the Navigator: Fit/Fill, 100%, and the right option shows percentages, ranging between 6% and 1600% except 100%.

Lightroom Classic – Navigator Zoom Options

  • The Zoom slider in the toolbar above the filmstrip has been divided into two equal sections, with the first section ranging between 6% and 100%; and the second section ranging between 100% and 1600%.

Loupe view – Zoom Slider

  • Command/Control + Option/Alt + 0 (zero) is used to zoom into 100% (1:1 in 9.4 or earlier).
  • Command/Control + and – used to zoom in and out of the image respectively.

Catalog Upgrade (Lightroom Classic)

Catalog upgrades from one full version to another (e.g. V9 to V10) have always been a source of confusion and irritation for many Lightroom Classic users. Not least because the new catalog name wasn’t particularly meaningful (i.e. the suffix ‘-2’ was added to the old name). As a result, it’s not unusual for a user to have multiple old copies of their catalog, which are only differentiated by the number of times the ‘-2’ suffix has been been added to the original catalog name.

To help reduce the confusion caused by the catalog naming convention Adobe have used since version 1.0, they have added text-box to the catalog upgrade dialog. The new dialog includes a field into which you can insert your preferred catalog name. The default value for this is  <currentCatalogName>-v10.  In below screenshots, I’ve shown my catalog will appear with the new default catalog name, then with my customised catalog name.

Lightroom Classic 10 – New Default Catalog Name

Lightroom Classic 10 – Customised Catalog Name

Tether Live View (Lightroom Classic)

While the ability to tether some cameras with Lightroom Classic has been possible for a long time, the actual feature set available to the user has been limited to controlling the camera. With Lightroom Classic 10, Adobe has added ‘Live View’ albeit only for Canon cameras at present. This feature is particularly useful for studio portraiture and product photography.

Tethered Capture – Live View

When Live View is on, you will also see Focus control buttons, including Auto- Focus  button in the Tether bar. However, the focus controls are enabled only if the lens is in Auto Focus mode.

More details on Tethered Capture and Live View can be found here.

UI Updates (Lightroom Classic)

Adobe has for some time now been updating the UI font used in many of their applications, and Lightroom Classic now uses this font (i.e. ‘Adobe Clean’).

You may asking yourself why I’ve even mentioned this, especially as a new font shouldn’t have any impact on how the application functions. Normally, this would be true, but in some  situations, the new font can result in excessive vertical spacing. This means that whilst the text may be more readable, some panels will be longer than they were in previous versions. I’ve included an example of the difference between the Keywording panel in 9.4 (left) and 10 (right) below. Hopefully, issues such as this will be fixed in future updates.

Comparison between old and new UI font

UI Updates (Lightroom Desktop)

The Tone Curve, Color Mixers, Color Grading, and Defringe panels now all have small indicator dots which let you know if edits have been made to the various settings. In the screenshot below, for example, you can see the dot indicating that edits have been made to the Red and Blue curve.

Lightroom Desktop 4.0 – Edit Indicators

UI Updates (Camera Raw)

Customising your workspace

You can now choose to display only those Editing panels that you need. There is also a Compact Layout option in Camera Raw Preferences. Right-mouse click any of the header bars to access these new customisation options.

Camera Raw 13.0 – Edit Panel Visibility

Camera Raw 13.0 – Compact or Normal Slider Spacing

Following user feedback regarding some aspects of the new UI introduced in Camera Raw 12.3, the following changes have been made:

  • Updated the ACR preferences to include the three high-level filmstrip options, and moved the filmstrip options up to the second group after the renamed “Panels” group, which now includes the compact mode option.

Camera Raw 13 Preferences

  • Combined two “filmstrip” menus, a popup menu and a context menu, into a single menu. You can access this menu in both places. The tooltip for the filmstrip snap icon has been updated to include information about “click and hold for filmstrip menu.”
  • Cleaned up ratings/labels UI.
  • Added keyboard shortcut in menu for rating – also hints in the ratings and labels menus.
  • Adding Shift-B as KBSC to toggle between Heal and Clone type while using Sport Heal tool
  • Made the swap preview and set before buttons always apply to add the selected images.
  • When opening the main dialog the first time, always scroll top of the edit stack but not after a compact mode change
  • This build now has a drag resizable edit stack.

Custom Sort Order (Lightroom Classic)

Adobe have made some enhancements to Custom sort order for a collection/folder. They have fixed the issue whereby a user was not able to make changes to Custom sort order after changing it multiple times.

Folder and Collection Scrolling Optimization (Lightroom Classic)

Optimisation of the scrolling behaviour in folder and collection panel. The scrolling improvements will be more evident while scrolling through large number of folders/collections with different color labels.

Performance (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop)

Adobe have expanded the tools supported by GPU acceleration is enabled. The additional tools include the: Adjustment Brush, Linear Gradient and Circular Gradient. GPU support for these tools should go along way to improve their use on 4K and 5K monitors. Unfortunately, the Spot Heal/Clone tool still doesn’t make use of GPU acceleration.

Lightroom Classic – Enable Full GPU Acceleration

Graphical Watermark (Lightroom Desktop)

You are no longer limited to text watermarks, you can now use a graphic (PNG or JPEG) for a watermark. The graphical watermark settings will now sync between all Lightroom clients.

Lightroom Desktop – Graphical Watermark

Export with Previous Settings (Lightroom Desktop)

In the Share menu there is now a “Previous Settings” export shortcut, which will use whatever settings you used on your previous export.

Lightroom Desktop – Export with Previous Settings

More Information

  • To learn more about Camera Raw 13.0, see here
  • To learn more about Lightroom Classic 10, see here
  • To learn more about Lightroom Desktop 4.0, see here

System Requirements

The System Requirements for Lightroom Classic 10 and Lightroom Desktop 4.0 are shown below.

System Requirements

Camera & Lens Support (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop)

For a full list of supported cameras and lens profiles for Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic,  and Lightroom Cloud Ecosystem see these resources:

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

Lightroom Classic 9.2 | February 2020

Lightroom Classic 9.2 was released today 10 February. New Camera defaults and settings UI, PSB file support, Secondary Display Selection, and improvements in Auto-Sync workflow. In addition, this update delivers some minor performance improvements, bug fixes and new camera support / new lens support.

Lightroom Classic 9.2

Default by Camera Settings

Many Lightroom Classic customers will already be familiar with the Camera Raw Defaults feature that’s been around since the early days of Lightroom. However, useful as it was, it lacks a UI, and doesn’t include support the camera profiles and presets introduced in Lightroom Classic 7.3. Additionally, photographers often take advantage of the picture styles or profiles settings within their cameras. Unfortunately, when importing into Lightroom Classic with the default set to Adobe Color, the image will often look quite different from the camera preview and will require time to adjust it back to the desired look.

The above shortcomings have now been addressed by a new dialog in which you can choose to apply Raw Default Settings preferences globally or a camera model by camera model basis. With the new raw default settings dialog, you can now use Camera Settings as the default to preserve the ‘as shot’ look and reduce your edit time. The new UI can be found in the Lightroom Preferences dialog under Presets tab.

Camera Default Settings

The Master setting applies to raw files from all cameras.

Adobe Defaults means the default settings that Adobe provides (this option matches legacy behaviour from previous versions of Lightroom Classic).

Camera Settings is an attempt to match the in-camera settings. However, behaviour varies from camera to camera depending on the degree of support. For many popular cameras, this option simply selects the appropriate Camera Matching colour profile. Therefore, if you have a Canon 5D MkIV and use Picture Style = Landscape in the camera, then this would default to using the Camera Landscape colour profile. For some recent models such as the Nikon Z series, there are even more detailed settings that more closely approximate the in-camera settings (i.e. choosing Camera Settings will not only affect the colour profile, but also other settings in the Basic and Detail panels).

Preset means you can just choose whichever preset you want. For example, you can make a preset that picks your favorite profile (e.g. Adobe Landscape), increases Sharpening, and turns on a post-crop vignette and make that your default.

Use defaults specific to camera model enablers you to customise (as described above) on a model by model. Therefore, if you have two cameras, say, a Canon EOS 5D MkIV and a Sony A7 III and you want to use different defaults for each, you can do that.

While this new system is much more powerful and flexible than before, the existing Default Develop Settings (from previous versions) are not compatible with it. As such, any previous default settings you’ve already saved in Lightroom Classic will not be carried over to the new system.

A detailed explanation on how this feature works and how to create/apply settings based on ISO can be found in: default settings for importing raw images on Adobe’s Help pages

Note that this feature is also available in Adobe Camera Raw 12.2

Photoshop Large Document (PSB) File Support

Landscape photographers who stitch multiple images to create very large panorama images will be acutely aware of support within Lightroom Classic for Adobe PSB files.

Starting with 9.2 this is no longer the case, you can import, catalog, and edit Large Document Format (.psb) files within Lightroom Classic. However, like all files within Classic, the maximum dimensions are 65,000 pixels on the long edge or 512 megapixels.

Additional GPU Accelerated Editing

Expanding on GPU support, 9.2 sees the addition of full GPU acceleration for Lens Correction and Transform adjustments.

eGPU Empowered Enhanced Details

Enhance Details now leverages external GPUs on macOS 10.15 (Catalina) for faster processing.

Secondary Display Selection

Another long awaited feature enhancement  included in 9.2 is the ability to select which monitor to use as the secondary view when multiple monitors are available. A good example of this is when using three or more displays, opening a second window will now automatically appear in the designated monitor that may have better resolution, colour calibration, etc. for your workflow needs.

Simply, go to Lightroom Preferences dialog and use the Display tab to select the monitor for secondary view. Lightroom will show the secondary view on the selected monitor.

Secondary Display Configuration

Auto-Sync Improvements

One of the most powerful yet poorly understood options in the Develop module is Auto-Sync. With Auto-Sync enabled (multiple images must first have been selected), any adjustments applied to the most selected image will be automatically applied to the other selected images. Unfortunately, this can also work against you in that resetting adjustments applied to an image will also reset any other selected images. By adding a notification overlay and a more visible button, Adobe hope to prevent unintentional batch edits, etc. The notifications can be turned off in the Preferences Interface tab.

Auto-Sync Improvements

Export – Updates

A ‘Done’ button has been added to the Export Dialog.

  • Done – Dismiss the Export dialog and remember changes in export settings.
  • Cancel – Dismiss the Export dialog without remembering changes in export settings.
  • Export – Perform export

New Mainstream Cameras Supported by 9.2

  • Canon EOS-1Dx Mark III
  • Nikon Coolpix P950
  • Nikon D780
  • Phase One IQ4 150MP (Preliminary)

Camera & Lens Support

For a full list of supported cameras and lens profiles for Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic,  and Lightroom Cloud Ecosystem see these resources: