Category Archives: Lightroom 6

Adobe Lightroom CC 2015.6 and Lightroom 6.6 Now Available

Adobe Lightroom CC 201.6 and Lightroom 6.6 where released yesterday (8 June). CC customers will find a number of new features most useful of which is Guided Upright (more below). For non CC customers this version only includes some bug fixes along with new camera and lens support.

Guided Upright

Adobe introduced the Upright tools in Lightroom 5 to help customers easily straighten images, fix horizons, and reduce or eliminate the keystone effect in buildings. However these tools were auto only and tended to work best when there are prominent vertical and horizontal lines in the photo. With Lightroom CC 2015.6 Adobe has included the ability to manually define the vertical and horizontal lines to be used for the Upright transform.

Use the following hints to get started.

Select an photo and click on the Develop Module.
Enable Lens Profile Corrections. This step is important as Upright works better with Lens Profile Corrections activated.

Updated Lens Corrections Panels in Develop Module

Note that the Upright tab has been removed from the Lens Corrections panel thus simplifying it. The new Transform panel is for all users. However, only CC customers will se the Guided Upright button.

3. Notice that there is a new ‘Transform’ Panel. Transform includes both Upright and the manual perspective correction sliders together in a convenient place.

New Transform Panel in Develop Module

The following photo is a typical example of where Guided Upright works particularly well.

Photo before applying Guided Upright

4. Within Transform panel, click on the ‘Guided’ button. Next draw the vertical and horizontal lines directly on the image and Upright automatically transforms the image. The maximum number of guide lines is 4. However, Upright will transform the image once you draw at least 2 guides.

Guided Upright in Action

If needed, you can fine tune the results with the manual transform sliders, including the new X and Y transform sliders. These can be used for repositioning/moving the image within the canvas after applying the perspective corrections to choose which part of the (warped, non-rectangular) image to show within the rectangular canvas. It’s also possible to fine tune the guide lines by clicking and dragging on the guide handles.

Fine tune transform using guide handles

Image after applying Guided Upright

Check out this great video by Julieanne Kost to learn more about Guided Upright!

Other Improvements

Lightroom CC 2015.6 and 6.6 also benefits from improved louping performance in Develop module by being smarter about anticipating which photos you’ll edit next. Basically, when you’re working in the Develop module Lightroom preloads two photos either side of the current photo. This means that when you move on, the next image will render much faster. (Update – due to performance issues resulting from over aggressive caching Adobe has released an update (2015.6.1) that improves performance on 4K and 5K displays).
Prior to 2015.6 it was only possible to create a panorama merge when the originals were available (on-line), but now you can build a panorama if smart previews are available. The downside being, a panorama created from smart previews will be smaller than one created from the images.

Syncing Photos with Adobe Cloud

I must admit that I’m not the greatest fan of Lightroom mobile/web. My main complaint being that syncing photos to the Adobe Cloud is all but impossible on low bandwidth internet connections. For example, prior to fibre broadband becoming available in my area the fastest upload speed I could achieve was in the order of 350kbs. Typically, it would take me an hour to upload 100 photos and another 10/15 minutes for them to become available on my iPad. The process was made even worse because there was no feedback on progress if a sync error occurred. Fortunately, I now have fibre broadband with upload speed in the order of 18mbs and download speed of just under 77mbs. Coincidently, Lightroom now includes (Lightroom CC only) an activity sync panel that provides visual feedback on sync progress. That said, why Adobe decided to include this panel within Lightroom Preferences is a head scratcher.

Pending Sync Activity Panel

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

Winter in the Canyons

Don Robertson, Gold King Mine Ghost Town, Jerome Between 22 November and 5 December I was lucky enough to travel to USA for second time in 2015. The trip focused primarily on the national and state parks found in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. I’d travelled to the same area in the spring of 2011 and enjoyed it a lot. As with many of my previous trips to the US this one was arranged by Roger Reynolds at PhotoVentures. In total, the group was made up of 8 photographers from various parts of the UK, although we had all travelled together on previous occasions.

On the morning of our first day we spent a few hours near Sedona in Red Rock Park by the Oak River, the area may remind you of scenes from the film ‘How the West was won’ and the many other westerns that were filmed close by. It was a beautiful morning with glorious light mixing with the trees and late fall colours along the river.

Cathedral Rock, Oak Creek, Sedona

From Sedona we made our way via Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon National Park where we would close out the day photographing the canyon from one of the viewpoints near Grand Canyon Village.

Hopi Point Overlook, Grand Canyon National Park

The second day began with an early start photographing the sunrise and morning light along the Grand Canyon rim.

Vishnu Temple and Wotans Throne from Yaki Point, Grand Canyon National Park

Later that morning we visited Desert View before heading off on our journey to Page. Along the way we stopped at Cameron for few shots of the Little Colorado River Gorge. We passed through the outskirts of The Painted Desert, the towns of The Gap, Cedar Ridge and Bitter Springs before climbing onto the Colorado Plateau with its magnificent views of Page and Lake Powell in the distance. After checking into our hotel we travelled to an overlook above Waheap bay, which has spectacular views of Lake Powell. The sunset and afterglow was well worth the trip.

Navajo Power Station at Sunset, Page

Our third day was spent photographing Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon near Page. Originally, we had planned to split this over two days, but on arrival at the upper canyon we realised that this wouldn’t be possible due to the large number of visitors taking advantage of the excellent weather and Thanksgiving holiday.

Upper Antelope Canon, Lake Powel Navajo Tribal Park

Upper Antelope Canyon, Lake Powel Navajo Tribal Park

Our fourth day was spent photographing around the Glen Canyon Dam at Page and Horseshoe Bend then on to photograph the Toadstools of the Grand Staircase-Escalente National Monument.

Horseshoe Bend, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

The Toadstools, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Having spent 3 day at Page it was now time to on to our next destination – Zion National Park. We travelled through spectacular areas such as Vermilion Cliff Wilderness and the Paria Canyon Wilderness. We also managed a short detour to the Johnson Canyon Movie set before travelling on to the town of Springdale near Zion National Park

Old Movie Set, Johnson Canyon

We spent the next 3 days photographing in Zion National Park. As with the previous days the weather and lighting was kind to us.

Lone Tree, Zion National Park

Watchman and Virgin River at Sunset, Zion National Park

On our last day at Zion we went into the park very early hoping for a few good sunrise photos.

Sunrise at Towers of the Virgin, Zion National Park

Having had a good breakfast we began out journey Bryce. This took us past Checkerboard Mesa to Carmel Junction giving us a final opportunity to capture images of the amazing rock formations and landscapes of Zion.

By this stage the weather was getting much colder, and we’d been told that there was heavy snow at Bryce. We arrived at Bryce as the light was fading having stopped along the way to photograph the hoodoos and snow at Red Rock Canyon.

Next morning we were made our way to Sunset Point to photograph the Sunrise (crazy, but true).

Sunrise, Bryce Canyon National Park

Ampitheatre in Morning Light, Bryce Canyon National Park

Having spent two full days at Bryce we made an early start on the third. We began our journey to Hanksville taking Route 12 through Tropic to Cannonville. We continued on to Escalante. Our journey was through the heart of Garfield County and its many photographic opportunities. Along the way we passed along the Escalante River and into the heart of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This National Monument was only designated just a few years ago. On leaving the town of Escalante we travelled the 6 miles to ‘Hole in the Rock Road’ where we divert south to visit Devils Garden where we photographed the hoodoos.

Hoodoos, Devils Garden, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

From the Grand Staircase-Escalante we travelled on to Hanksville where we spent the night. Next morning we travelled the few miles from Hanksville to Frutia and into Capitol Reef National Park. We spent a good few hours in the park visiting amazing rock formations in various canyons and gorges.

Desert Varnish and Tree, Capitol Gorge, Capitol Reef National Park

Having spent just over a week in Southern Utah it was now time to head back into Arizona where we spent the next few days photographing in Monument Valley and then Canyon de Chelly.

Our first stop was Monument Valley. We arrived in good time for sunset, although the best shots were captured after the sun had dropped below the horizon. The red rocks glowed in the dying light.

Twilight, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

It was an early rise next morning to photograph the sunrise. Fortunately, I only needed to walk a few steps across the bedroom to capture them.

Sunrise, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

We spent the remainder of the morning in the park with a Navajo guide before travelling on to Chinle where we spend the next day photographing in Canyon de Chelly.

As with Monument Valley we had to arrange for a Navajo guide to take us into the canyon. As we travelled along the Chinle Wash the guide pointed out many of the Anasazi Cliff dwellings, Petroglyphs and Pictographs. The principal ruins are the White House, Antelope House, Standing Cow and Mummy Cave.

Ancient Cliff Dwelling, Canyon De Chelly National Monument

Frozen Creek, Canyon De Chelly National Monument

Having spent 13 days travelling through Southern Utah and Northern Arizona it was now time to make our way back to Phoenix via Flagstaff. We headed south along Route 89a for through Sedona to the town of Jerome. This amazing mining town appears to have remained unchanged since it was built in the previous century. From Jerome we took the short drive to the Gold King Mine & Ghost Town. This is an abandoned mining village. Here we were able to capture some the many classic american cars that are stored there.

Classic Racing Car, Gold King Mine Ghost Town, Jerome

Of course, we also managed to get a few photographs of the owner – Don Robertson.

Don Robertson, Gold King Mine Ghost Town, Jerome

The gallery can be found at Winter in the Canyons

All photographs were processed using Adobe Lightroom 6.3 on my Apple MacBook Pro. Obviously, being a laptop the display is far from ideal for serious photos editing.

June updates to Adobe CC Photography

Lightroom CC 2015.1 and Lightroom 6.1 are now available on Adobe.com. Adobe has stated that the goal of this release is to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom. Lightroom mobile for iOS v1.5 is also now available. In addition, Creative Cloud customers receive a bonus in the form of two new features.

Lightroom CC on the desktop

Dehaze
Photographers of every skill level will be aware that many outdoor scenes have some amount of haze due to atmospheric conditions. Dehaze is a new feature introduced in Lightroom CC 2015.1 for removing/adding haze and fog to/from your photos. You can control how much haze to remove by adjusting a new slider in the Effects panel in the Dehaze section. This feature can also be used in the other direction to increase the amount of haze.

Lightroom CC 2015.1 Effects Panel

Adobe have recommended a workflow for getting the best results from this new too – Adjust the white balance of the image before applying the Dehaze control. You may also find that the saturation levels in some images needs to be reduced slightly relative to what would be normal had Dehaze not been applied. Below you’ll see a Before/After example of an image where the Dehaze control has been used to reduce the atmospheric haze in the distant mountains. This example also required that I applied a slightly smaller amount of saturation/vibrance than what I’d normally apply.

Before / After Example of Dehaze in Use

Local White and Black Adjustment Sliders

The second new feature and potentially more useful than Dehaze are a pair of sliders within each of the 3 local adjustment tools: Gradient Filter, Radial Filter and Local adjustment brush. These sliders are useful for finetuning tonality near the brightest and darkest parts of the picture. For instance, they can be used to increase the contrast of highlights.

Lightroom CC 2015.1 Graduated Filter Panel

As with Dehaze above Adobe have recommended a workflow when using the Blacks and Whites sliders – Make your global adjustments first and then use the local adjustments to fine tune. Use the clip warning indicators in the Histogram to help avoid clipping highlights and shadows.

Again, note that the features described above are only available in Lightroom CC 2015

Lightroom mobile on iOS:

Lightroom mobile has also been updated as part of the June release. Areas updated include:

Video support: You can now import, and sync your iPhone and iPad created videos from Lightroom on iOS to the web and desktop. More adjustment tools

Vignettes: Adjust the Color channel and B&W mix Tone Curve

New Camera Support

Fujifilm XT10 Nikon 1 J5
Nikon D810A Panasonic DMCG7 Pentax KS2 Pentax K3 II (*)

* Preliminary support. The multishot Pixel Shift Resolution and HDR features are still under investigation.

For a full list of newly supported lenses and bug fixes refer to the Lightroom Journal Blog on Adobe Blogs

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

Victoria Bampton releases Adobe Lightroom CC / 6 – The Missing FAQ

lr6faq-sq300-150x150 Victoria Bampton (aka The Lightroom Queen) recently dropped me a note to say that the 6th edition of her Lightroom – The Missing FAQ book is now available.

As a long established member of the Lightroom Pre-release Group Victoria is well placed to get the inside track on the new features found within Lightroom CC/6. In this latest edition of her well regarded Missing FAQ series of books Victoria again shares this information and knowledge in an easy to read format. Anyone serious about getting the best from Lightroom CC/6 shouldn’t think twice about getting a copy.

So, what’s new in the Lightroom CC/6 book?

Victoria writes – When you have a Lightroom question, where do you look? Do you spend hours searching the web? From now on, you look right here.

About the Book

As the name suggests, Adobe Lightroom CC/6 – The Missing FAQ is primarily designed as a conversational FAQ-style reference book, giving you the detailed information you need to make informed choices, whether you’ve been using Lightroom for a few months or a few years. No more pressing buttons without understanding the repercussions!

Unlike most other Lightroom books, this isn’t just the theory of how Lightroom’s supposed to work, but also the workarounds and solutions for the times when it doesn’t behave the way you’d expect.

Who’s the book written for?

For less experienced users, the Fast Track weaves its way through the book, with short tutorials that guide you through a simple workflow, allowing you to gain confidence before diving into the more advanced questions. To get an idea of the style, download my free Quick Start eBook.

The book then switches to a conversational question & answer format, going into greater detail for intermediate and advanced users. There are questions ranging from simple ones like how to import photos, to much more in-depth details about how the previews are used and how to create your own camera profiles. Check the Table of Contents tab to see the full list of questions covered in this release.

What’s new?

The LR CC/6 version is a major rewrite that’s taken 2 years to complete, and I’m confident it’s my best yet. The information is now easier for less experienced users to understand, and easier to find using the comprehensive new index. If you’ve read previous versions, don’t worry, all of the advanced information is still there and has been expanded too. The book’s also available in color print for the first time. To learn more about the rewrite, check the “A Major Rewrite” tab on this page.

Is it worth reading?

For many years, the Adobe Lightroom – The Missing FAQ books have been among the most popular Lightroom books available. They have almost all 5 star reviews on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Some of my favorites from the Lightroom 5 book are copied on the Reviews tab. Many of the Articles on this website are taken directly from the book, if you’d like to read some excerpts.

When you have a Lightroom question, where do you look? Do you spend hours searching the web? From now on, you look right here.

Computer Darkroom

Website published by Ian Lyons

Category Archives: Lightroom 6

Adobe Lightroom CC 2015.6 and Lightroom 6.6 Now Available

Winter in the Canyons

June updates to Adobe CC Photography

Victoria Bampton releases Adobe Lightroom CC / 6 – The Missing FAQ

About the Book

Who’s the book written for?

What’s new?

Is it worth reading?

About the Book

Who’s the book written for?

What’s new?

Is it worth reading?