Lightroom CC and Lightroom 6 released

Today, 21st April 2015, Adobe released Lightroom CC – the long-awaited replacement for Lightroom 5. It’s also available as a stand-alone application, called Lightroom 6, which doesn’t require a subscription to the Adobe Photography Programme or the full Creative Cloud suite.

Speed

It’s faster, partly because it uses the graphics processing units (GPUs) inside modern computers to accelerate functions in the Develop module – something that Photoshop has done for a few years. Applying distortion correction, for example, used to slow down work in the Develop module, particularly on laptops – it feels quite a bit snappier now. (Check your settings in the new ‘Performance’ tab of Lightroom’s preferences.) There have also been some rewrites to make other parts of Lightroom feel a little quicker.

Merge to HDR and merge to panorama

Lightroom CC’s raw processing appears unchanged but it does offer the ability to merge photographs to HDR (ctrl-H) and to merge photographs to a panorama (ctrl-M). Earlier versions of Lightroom worked together with Photoshop to achieve similar results but Lightroom now has both functions built in and my early tests suggest that they work quite well.

Other improvements

You now have the ability to fine-tune the effect of a graduated filter by by using a brush, something that has been present in recent versions of Adobe Camera Raw (‘ACR’), the Photoshop plugin that does Photoshop’s raw conversion. Along with that comes an overlay for the graduated filter, which is good for newcomers to that tool – it helps show the direction of the graduated filter’s effect. There’s also an improved slideshow (very welcome) and face recognition, which I haven’t yet tried – I suspect it’ll be a while before we can rely on that feature.

Versions: Lightroom 6 vs Lightroom CC

You can still buy Lightroom as a standalone product (called Lightroom 6) but, despite the misguided ‘cloud’ naming, Lightroom is best purchased as part of the Adobe Photography Plan, which includes Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC 2014. There are still things that only Photoshop can do and, for less than £9 a month, you get full current versions of both Lightroom and Photoshop – that’s excellent value. I call the naming misguided because I still speak with photographers who believe that the Creative Cloud versions of Lightroom and Photoshop somehow run from the cloud or in a web browser. They don’t – they are installed on and run from your computer, just like any previous versions. Amazon has a one-year, cross-platform subscription to the Adobe Photography Plan here one-year, cross-platform subscription to the Adobe Photography Plan here that includes Lightroom and Photoshop. (At the time of writing, £99 including VAT for a year.)

Speaking of misguided naming, Lightroom’s official name became ‘Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’ some time after its initial beta test period but its filename, at least, has now reverted to just ‘Adobe Lightroom’ – a definite improvement.

The rise of Capture One

Over the last few months, we’ve received more requests for Capture One Pro training than for Lightroom training. On one hand, we’re a small company so treat this as anecdotal information and not a large-scale survey; on the other hand, we’ve been using Capture One since version 3, have offered Capture One training since version 7 was released and have seen very little mainstream interest till recently – all our bookings were for training on Lightroom, Photoshop, printing and colour management. The quality of Capture One Pro 8, the current major release, is responsible for much of the new interest. It’s a very well written application that feels complete and solid, providing the strongest ever competition to Lightroom while being very different in its approach and interface.

Is it worth switching your raw converter?

Don’t make the decision to switch between applications based purely on reviews – that should go without saying. If you are an expert user of either Lightroom or Capture One Pro, you’ll likely get better results than most users of the competing application – expertise will almost always be more important than your choice of raw conversion software. (The same goes for expertise vs. new cameras and lenses.) But it is certainly worth downloading and trying the alternative app to see if its approach and interface suit you better. In our experience, photographers often have a very strong preference for one over the other (particularly easy to see when you’re working with a large group of students being shown both applications). If you’re using an application you really enjoy, you’ll get better results with it. Currently, that’s really the best reason to switch.

Training: Lightroom CC, Lightroom 6 and Capture One Pro 8

There are books, online video and ebooks aplenty from the usual sources to help you with all these applications. Some have probably been released already covering Lightroom 6 and CC. One-to-one tuition at your own pace is a different way of learning and also a good way to supplement books and online courses to make some real progress. We’d love to hear from you: call 01303 249386 or write to develop@shootraw.co.uk. We’re based in London but travel throughout the UK to provide tuition at your studio, home or office. Professionals, novices and keen amateurs all welcome!

[UPDATE, 29 March 2014: we had an excellent group of attendees who asked all the right questions. Most were photographers but there were also people from animation, broadcasting and picture editing. Visit the DMIC page to sign up for information on future courses – there are several that might be of interest to photographers. I’ll leave the information below in place for future reference. BP.]

Next week, I’ll once again be delivering a free, two-day course on colour management for photographers in London. It was well received when we introduced it in September 2013, with very positive feedback from the attendees. Most of the people I worked with last time were photographers but one or two were also designers who regularly worked with images from various sources and wanted to know more about a colour-managed workflow.

The course is free for London-based freelancers and SMEs and will be held at the Ravensbourne campus, right next to the O2 Arena on the Greenwich Peninsula. You can find more details and apply for a place by visiting the DMIC website.

Some notes

This isn’t a course on advanced colour science – it’s a practical, two-day programme that focusses on a colour-managed workflow, how to improve your results and how to avoid common problems (e.g. publishing online images that look desaturated when your clients view them on iPads and other tablets, or making prints that look too dark and murky). Among other things, we’ll cover colour spaces, camera settings, the colour settings in applications like Photoshop and Lightroom, how to profile and calibrate a display, how to work with soft proofs (which are a little like on-screen simulations of your print) and how to work with colour profiles when you print.

There will be iMac workstations for you to use; you will print using an Epson 3880 Stylus Pro printer, on baryta-based paper. You’re encouraged to bring your own images and even a laptop if you have one.

Click here to apply. I look forward to seeing some of you there.

I’ve just finished reading Jeff Schewe’s latest book, The Digital Negative.

It’s not suitable for a newcomer (for that, Lightroom users could try the Kelby or the Bampton) and it’s not a dry, technical textbook either but if you have built up some experience either with Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), The Digital Negative will provide excellent detail about technique and some valuable background about digital photographic workflow in general. Schewe knows his stuff and he knows some people at Adobe who know their stuff — it’s full of well informed and well tested information and techniques.

The Digital Negative appears to allow the personality of its author to come through largely unfiltered (Jeff’s editors might disagree) so this is decidedly not a bland book. You get a very clear sense of the author’s feelings on photography itself, on processing and on workflow. Many technical books try to be as objective and impersonal as possible; that’s completely understandable but it’s not the Jeff Schewe way and I think this book is all the better for being occasionally blunt.

A successful commercial photographer for many years, Jeff works closely with Adobe on testing early versions of their products and gets lots of insider knowledge, as you’ll know if you’ve looked at any of his previous written work or the video tutorials he does with Michael Reichmann. Our outdated video recommendations, still online here and here, should be replaced with the current Lightroom courses and Camera to Print and Screen. (You might wonder why, as a company providing one-on-one workflow training, we happily recommend books and online courses in Lightroom; the answer is that the one-on-one time you spend with us always complements what you learn from videos or a book — it’s interactive and gets you quick, thorough answers to your specific questions.)

Advanced Lightroom user?

If that phrase describes you, there’s another likely bonus. I was very pleased, as a demanding user of every version of Lightroom since the first public beta, to find myself agreeing with most of Jeff’s workflow recommendations; I suspect the same will be true for you but don’t write the book off — you’ll definitely learn new things and come across some fresh insights (and, of course, be generally cheered up by the written confirmation of what you’ve discovered yourself, through the processing and organisation of tens or hundreds of thousands of photographs).

eBook formats

Technical books that rely on photographs and diagrams have, until recently, been best read in print. For The Digital Negative, I tried the electronic editions and was generally pleased. I went with Peachpit (link here) because it provides the book in three formats: a PDF, which you can read on just about any device, the Kindle format and an ePub, which works with many e-reader applications (including Apple’s iBooks app on iPhones and iPads). You get to download all three and find out which works best for you on your device. The only quibble for me has been that the crude watermarking (your name is stamped at the bottom of each page) cuts into some of the photographs on some pages — that would annoy me in a photographic monograph more than it does in this instructional book and on balance, the sheer convenience means that I can still recommend going electronic for this one.

Amazon UK has the printed book or their Kindle edition (which I haven’t tried).

Shoot Raw news

It has been a very good year for us, I’m happy to say. We’ve been working throughout London as well as the north and the south of England (and even for a bit in mainland Europe), doing one-on-one Lightroom and Photoshop work with photographers, getting people printing, helping solve colour management puzzles, making custom print profiles and even helping to design and build a website or two for photographers. When things are quieter, we’re hoping to put details of some of this work online in a revised version of our own site, together with some of the testimonials we’ve received. Till then, if you’d like more information about the kind of work we do and some examples of the broad range of photographers we’re working with, please use the (now very short!) contact form – we’d love to hear from you.

Update on 15 August, 2011: we’re no longer taking bookings for this workshop (although, as always, we do have one-on-one Lightroom training on offer — we usually need only a week’s notice). Please use the contact form to get in touch. End of update — original post continues below.

While we’ve been busy providing photographers with personal Lightroom tuition and other creatives with technical help of all sorts, many of you have been waiting for group training sessions and have been writing to say so. Thank you for your patience! We’re planning a workshop based on a non-destructive Lightroom 3 workflow, to be held in London, probably in late August. We’ll go over catalogue functions, development and high-quality output.

Where and when?

Late August, in London. Before we decide on the location and date, we’d like your help; if you think you might be interested in attending a Lightroom course like this (or would just like to join the mailing list for future London workshops), please complete our short survey. It’s multiple choice and takes less than a minute to do; just click the radio buttons and let us know whether we’re on the right track. [Link removed – workshop over.]

If you know other photographers at any level who have been waiting to get to a Lightroom workflow training course of this sort in London and the South East, please point them to the survey page. (Link now removed – survey complete.)

Any questions? Please get in touch by e-mail or phone (0333 577 5703). Thank you!