Category Archives: Tethering for Nikon Cameras

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop | February 2023

  The latest updates to Camera Raw (15.2), Lightroom Classic (12.2) and Lightroom Desktop (6.2) have been released to customers. These updates include new camera and lens support along with bug fixes. There are also a few relatively minor features additions in Lightroom Classic that I’ll discuss below.

Develop History [Lightroom Classic]

As supplement to the History context menu a new KBSC has been added to remove history steps. Holding Alt/Option key and clicking on a history step clears all other history steps above it.

Remove History Steps

Keywords [Lightroom Classic]

A new menu option to export Keywords along with the keyword tag options, like – Person, Include on Export, etc.

When this new menu option is selected, LrC will create a ‘.csv‘ file when exporting the keywords.

The following keyword related operations have also been optimised:

  • Keywords Addition
  • Keywords Deletion
  • Keyword Filtering
  • Keywords Export

Sync for Adobe Cloud [Lightroom Classic]

Syncing of files from the Adobe Cloud has received some optimisations. This work should address the long standing issue of sync stalling during the synchronisation process.

Tethered Capture [Lightroom Classic]

When macOS Ventura 13.x was released by Apple it broke tethered capture for users of Canon and Nikon cameras. For Canon users, the issue was fixed in LrC 12.1. Adobe have now fixed the issue of Nikon cameras not getting detected for tethered capture

Map module [Lightroom Classic]

A new option ‘Show more labels’ to show more or less labels on Map view is now available in the Map module toolbar.

By default, LrC will show the ‘Less Labels’ option to ensure that the map doesn’t become overly cluttered.

The ‘Set Time Zone Offset…’ has been renamed as ‘Set Tracklog Time Offset…’ for Tracklog in LrC 12.2 Map module.

Support has also added for minutes in the Tracklog Time Offset dialog. Now, you can enter the time offset in HH:mm format, which is very helpful for location that use timezone offsets less than one hour (e.g. India and Nepal).

 

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.

Lightroom Classic & Lightroom Desktop | March 2021

The latest updates Lightroom Classic (10.2) and the Lightroom Desktop (4,2) were released to customers today (15 March). These updates are primarily to provide new camera, tethering, and lens support along with bug fixes. There are also some performance tweaks that should benefit macOS customers. More details are provided below.

Additional Camera Tethering Support (Lr Classic)

Camera tethering support has been expanded to include additional Canon cameras, which includes the EOS R5 and R6.  Additionally, the EOS R5 and R6 benefit from the  ‘Live View’ feature first seen in version 10. This feature is particularly useful for studio portraiture and product photography.

Live View Tethering with Canon EOS R5

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.

For Nikon customers, Adobe has also included beta support for tethering, albeit not yet for the Z-series cameras.

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

Library – Performance

macOS users who have been experiencing significant performance issues in the Library module since Lr Classic 10 was first introduced will be pleased to read that the issues have been fixed. The Library leverages the GPU for drawing of Images, which should help in optimising the Grid, Loupe, Survey and Compare views in Library along with Filmstrip. Therefore, you should experience better performance in in the following on both the main and secondary monitors.

  • Improved / smoother Grid scrolling with trackpad scrolling or mouse scrolling as inputs
  • Faster walking in Library Loupe view
  • Faster walking in Compare view

Note that above performance improvements should also be noticeable when using 4K and 5K monitors.

Develop – Walk Performance

The Develop module Walk behaviour on macOS systems has been improved to help with faster navigation through Images in filmstrip.

Additionally, image rendering for Navigator and Detail panel views in Develop has been improved.

Batch Edit Performance

This version also sees some optimisation the of batch edit operations. Improvements in the batch edit operations can be seen in the following workflows:

  • Copy Paste Settings
  • Sync Settings
  • Quick Develop
  • Auto Sync

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

Disclosure: As an Adobe Community Professional 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.