Category Archives: Presets and Profile

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, Lightroom Classic & Desktop | June 2020

The latest updates to Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and the Lightroom Cloud Ecosystem were released to customers on 16 June. Along with all the new features and enhancements the applications also get new branding iconography. Apart from the colour change and rounded corners, the most notable change is the letter ‘C’, which differentiates Classic from the cloud focused desktop version. Will this addition make it easier for customers to differentiate between the two versions of Lightroom? We’ll see!

Editing Updates

Local Hue (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom Mac/Win, iOS & Android)

The Local Hue tool can be used for both corrective and creative purposes. Using the Hue tool, you will have the ability to make large or small hue shifts (e.g. uneven skin tones) without affecting the white balance.

Graduated Filter with Local Hue

Note the checkbox labelled ‘Use Fine Adjustment’, which allows greater control over the amount of adjustment applied for a given movement of the slider.

While the screenshot included above shows the Graduate Filter, the new local hue control is also available in the Adjustment Brush and Radial Filter panels.

In below example, I’ve first selected the sky using the Range Mask, then adjusted the sky towards blue.

Before and After Hue Adjustment

For more information on Local Hue Adjustment, checkout this blog post by Greg Zulkie.

Raw Defaults (Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom Mac/Win, iOS & Android)

Raw Defaults was substantially upgraded in the February 2020 update. However, some of the important functionality previously available to users wasn’t included (e.g. ISO specific noise reduction). This omission has been addressed in the latest updates, but is also much more powerful than before. However, before looking at ISO let’s checkout the new set of ‘Default’ Presets, which can be found in the Presets panel.

The new presets are intended to provide quick shortcuts to preview and apply different Default settings. Here are the new defaults provided in the presets panel. If you don’t to use them or appear in the list, then simply make them invisible using ‘Manage Presets’, which can be accessed by right-mouse clicking on the Presets panel .

New Default Presets

ISO Adaptive Presets

Next, and I believe much more useful than the new default presets is ISO Adaptive Presets. However, you should note that this feature in only included in Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw.

An ISO Adaptive Preset allows a single preset to apply different edit settings depending on the ISO used for the image(s) to which it is being applied. In other words, you could have a single preset that automatically applies different levels of luminance noise reduction and sharpening to images with range of ISO values. Therefore, the need to specify settings for every ISO level supported by the camera is no longer required. For example, you may have established that your camera requires zero noise reduction (NR) up to ISO 400 and 20 units of NR at ISO 3200. When your ISO adaptive preset is applied to images with an ISO in-between ISO 400 and 3200, the actual NR value applied will be linearly interpolated. This process of linear interpolation with ISO Adaptive Presets is particularly useful if you use your cameras Auto ISO mode.

The procedure for creating an ISO Adaptive Preset is set out below:

Select two or more images, with different ISO values.
Edit these selected images according to your liking. You can choose different edit settings for different ISO images.
(e.g. apply different Luminance Noise Reduction values for different ISO images)
With the images still selected, click on ‘Create Preset’.
Along with selecting the various settings for the preset, make sure to select ‘Create ISO adaptive preset’ option in ‘ISO Settings’ section at the bottom of the preset creation dialog.
Click on ‘Create’ to create an ISO adaptive preset.

If two or more images, with different ISO values, are not selected, ‘Create ISO adaptive preset checkbox will be disabled.

Create ISO Adaptive Presets

For more background information on ISO Adaptive presets, check out this blog post by Lisa Ngo (Lightroom Classic Product Manager).

Centered Crop Overlay (Camera Raw & Lightroom Classic)

Crop overlays can be a useful aid to ensure that the main focus of attention is placed where you want it in the frame. The new Centered Crop Overlay is particularly useful for square format images.

Centered Crop Overlay

Develop – UI Refresh (Lightroom Classic)

Tone Curve

The Tone Curve and Color panels have received a UI refresh with their appearance now more closely matching Lightroom desktop.

New Tone Curve UI

In addition to the new UI, it’s now possible to adjust the curves using the keyboard.

Additional right-click (Control + Click on macOS) options for Point curve have been added:

Reset Channel

Reset All Channels

Copy Channel Settings

Paste Channel Settings

Snap to Grid

Show All Curves

For Point curves, grid coordinates of a control point are now shown using absolute values instead of percentages
You can adjust an active (highlighted) control point using Up and Down Arrow keys
The ability to pin a control point and adjust its value using input/output text-box has been added

Color Panel

The buttons used in new Color Panel UI are a lot more vivid than those in the previous panel. This should make it easier for customers to pick out the individual buttons.

New Color Panel UI

Sync UI (Lightroom Classic)

Sync in Lightroom Classic now has its own dedicated icon in the upper right corner next to the other main modules.

There are different state icons to indicate the current state of sync.

The new sync info panel is shown below. You can hover-over the cloud icon for more info about the current state icon. For example, hovering over the cloud icon while a sync is in progress will show the number of assets currently being synced. Clicking on the icon opens a pop up giving more options and details based on the current state of the sync.

New Sync Info Panel

Other Lightroom Classic Enhancements and Improvements

Develop – Edit Sliders Performance Improvements

With 9.3, there has been some optimisation to improve Edit Slider interaction with rendering in Develop module.

As part of these changes, Navigator view, Detail thumbnail, and Filmstrip thumbnail are not updated when dragging a slider without releasing the mouse. They’ll be updated as soon when slider movement ends and mouse button released.

Library Grid – Improvements

With 9.3, there has been some optimisation to improve the Grid scrolling experience on larger catalogs. These improvements will be less apparent if using macOS.

Collection Search – Improvements

New architecture for searching Collections should provide search speed similar to that found in Folder search. Typically, the improvements to search performance will be more beneficial in catalogs with large number of collections.

HEVC Support for Windows

HEVC videos are supported on Windows.

Video and Slideshow Library – Upgraded

The Video library for Lightroom Classic has been updated. This upgrade will impact on the workflow related to Videos and all of Slideshow module.

Metadata – Three-Dimensional Projection

A new section has been added to the Metadata panel for Three Dimensional Projections. This addition will enable you view/edit Three-Dimensional Projection metadata info in Lightroom Classic.

Other Lightroom Cloud Ecosystem Enhancements

Watermark (Lightroom Mac /Win)

You can quickly add a customised watermark to your photo using the new Watermark Editor

Lightroom Mac/Win – Watermark Editor

Any changes to settings are also synced across the mobile platforms of Lightroom.

Versions (Lightroom, iOS & Android)

Versions are similar to Snapshots in Lightroom Classic. They allow you to apply multiple edits creatively to the same image. For example, in below screenshot you’ll see that I have applied some basic tonal and colour edits to the original image, then converted to Black and White. Any edits applied as part of the Black & White conversion or subsequently have no affect on the original or the colour version.

Lightroom Mac / Win Versions

Versions sync across the Lightroom Ecosystem. So, will be available on your mobile devices.

Learning and Inspiration

Guided Tutorial and Discover have both received a good deal of attention in this release. If you’re not sure what this is, then below summary by Sharad Mangalick (Lightroom Mac / Win Product Manager) should help.

‘Guided Tutorials (available in the Lightroom Learn section), allows you to learn by doing, and you can actually adjust each slider with guidance and instruction provided by the instructor along the way. Instructors give the critical context for why they made their editing choices, and you can practice using their image directly in Lightroom. These are for when you want to go deeper and practice. Interactive Edits (available in the Lightroom Discover section) let you see the step-by-step edits on a photo, view camera information, and even download a preset to apply the settings to your own images.’

Starting with the June release, you can now contribute your own images and their edits to the Lightroom Discover section. The new “Share Edits” menu option allows you to share your editing process with the world, to help other photographers learn from your edits. When you submit your edit, Lightroom automatically creates a before-and-after sequence that combines your straight-out-of-the-camera image with your final edited image, so that others can see and learn from your edits. You can even let others save your edit settings as a preset that can be applied to their own photos.

Lightroom Mac / Win – ‘Share Edits’

Camera Raw

New User Interface (UI)

On first launching Camera Raw 12.3, you will immediately notice that the UI has a new look and with this improved functionality.

The new UI and operation owes much to Lightroom Classic and more recently Lightroom Mac / Win. The tabbed panels that graced Camera Raw from the first version have been replaced by scrollable panels on the right side of the content window. There is currently no way to reorder the individual panels.

The toolbar has also be repositioned with buttons similar to those used in Lightroom Mac / Win.

Overall, I find the new UI is much easier to navigate, and it also scales much better on 4K and 5K monitors.

New Camera Raw UI

Update: 23 June 20

Some customers have commented on the absence of adjustment sliders such as Radius, Detail Masking, etc in the ‘Detail’ panel. Fortunately, the sliders haven’t been removed or forgotten by the engineers. Instead, they have been hidden to reduce the vertical height of the panel (i.e. less height = less scrolling). To make the hidden sliders visible it’s a simple matter on clicking on the disclosure triangle as shown in below screenshot. The disclosure triangles are also provided in the ‘Optics’, ‘Geometry’ and ‘Effects’ panels.

Expand Tool Panels with Disclosure Buttons

In addition to the new UI, Camera Raw has received its own share of new features. These are described in What’s New document that I’ve included a link for below.

Additional Information

For more information on what’s new and improved in each product, see the What’s New page for:

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:

Supported camera models
Supported lens profiles

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:

Supported camera models
Supported lens profiles

Adobe Lightroom Classic 7.5 | August 2018

This release of Lightroom Classic CC adds new features and enhancements, support for new cameras and lenses, and bug fixes. Full details of what’s new and fixed in Lightroom 7.5 can be found on the application support page

The new features most likely to attract customer attention are in the Book module. They include the ability to customise pages plus two new book types (i.e. Blurb Magazine and Trade Books). There is also for importing Presets and Profiles, and HEIC support in Windows.

Book Enhancements

Blurb Book Styles

The new book styles can be accessed from the the Book Settings panel as top right corner of Book module.

New Blurb Book styles – Blurb Magazine and Blurb Trade Book

New Paper Type

By popular request, Adobe have also added Blurb’s Layflat paper.

New Paper Type – Standard Layflat

In the ‘Book Settings’ panel, select Book as ‘Blurb Photo Book’
In the ‘Paper Type’ drop-down list, you can choose from Premium Lustre, Premium Matte, ProLine Uncoated, ProLine Pearl Photo, Standard, and the newly introduced Standard Layflat. When using Standard Layflat, the minimum page count is 33 due to the binding requirements. The minimum page count for all other paper types is 20.

Other Book enhancements include:

Select where page numbers are printed on a book, including on only left or right pages, or all pages.
Customise cells within a page.
Add Photo Border.
Add multiple cells on a page, move specific cells to the front or back and drag the cell exactly where you want it.

Photo Border

Upload Presets and Profiles in bulk

You can now import multiple presets or profiles in a zip file into Lightroom Classic. Do the following:

Navigate to the Develop module.
From the menu bar, choose File > Import Develop Profiles and Presets.
In the Presets panel, click the plus (+) icon at the upper-right corner and choose Import Presets from the menu.
In the Basic panel, click the ( ) Show Profile Browser icon in the Profile area.
In Profile Browser, click the plus (+) icon at the upper-left corner and choose Import Profiles from the menu.

Import Presets

Camera and Lens Support

Details on Camera and Lens support by Lightroom Classic can be found on following pages

More details of this release along with upcoming releases for mobile devices can be read here.