Lightroom 6 available at BHphoto / Adorama /
[Now Officially announced] Thanks to 43rumors, we now know for sure what is the big surprised announced for today: Adobe will very soon release Lightroom CC and Lightroom 6!
“It adds plenty of features like Facial Recognition, new panorama, new brushes for graduated and radial filters, more slideshow options, HDR (high dynamic range), as well as significant speedups (up to 1000% faster!). Also the mobile APP of Lightroom got improved with segmented view, easier rating method, improved crop and copy and paste modus. Lightroom CC will be available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography subscription ($9.99 per month) or as a standalone for $149.”
FREE E-BOOK: Rocky Nook’s Guide to HDR & Panoramas with Photo Merge in Lightroom CC!
79 Responses
Still no network support? Shame on you, Adobe!
What can you expect from a directory and file based browser, using a not fully integrated database concept? I never could understand what people were seeing in Lr as a standard workflow tool. The backbone of this software and its overall flexibility to deploy it in a multi-user multi-platform environment is very little impressive. Even less, the back & recovery capabilities, as I once experienced. Oh yes, roll in the creative cloud, this must be the true holy grail where everybody was waiting for.
This isn’t even about multi-user support. LR won’t let you put the database on a network volume like an NAS RAID, even if you only ever access it from just a single computer. A simple locking mechanism would suffice. Even InDesign can do that.
Happy there is still a standalone version. I hate CC.
useless feature for me.
Can you elaborate?
In reference to the face detect. I have no use for it at all.
hopefully we will see better X-Trans demosaicing
What a boring upgrade. And please, Adobe, when will you slim the application? There is so much unused space for gigantic buttons, lines, backgrounds etc. that could be much better used for the images themselves. On a 13″ MacBook Air this amounts to an annoying amount of noise. The images are not in focus, Lightroom is, and imho it should be the other way around.
I agree that is has a bit of a dumb consumer interface, miles apart from Capture One and such. But my images are in focus. Are you talking about the Library? Maybe go to settings and set it to bigger and better preview size. Or if Develop is the problem then you need a faster processor, or HDD or something. Good thing performance is supposed to be one of the improvement. Though they probably always say that.
Lol, just read his text again 😉
He wanted to say “the images are not THE focus” (of the application).
Oh wow facial recognition. Revolutionary. It probably comes with a selfie stick too.
I’m a bit disappointed that there is no upgrade price from Lightroom 5 to 6.
It just hasn’t really been announced yet. Everybody (but Adobe) jumped the gun for some reason.
I think I saw a price of $79 posted on another forum. If there is no improvement dealing with the X-Trans sensor, it’s not worth it for me.
Yup I saw it and upgraded. What exactly do you mean (about the X-trans sensor). I’m a Fuji shooter so I’m curious
Pretty well documented in the forums. Mostly it is the way in which LR processes fine detail but there are other issues as well. In some cases I’ve read about a slight color shift but that may have been corrected with LR5. Also, I found it was very easy to introduce haloing around high contrast areas that I did not get using Capture One Pro or Iridient Developer. Now, I know a few well respected pros that have no issues with it but they mostly shoot portraits and some, what I call, casual fashion. They have not seen the “watercoloring” effects that a lot of us have because they are not shooting landscape images with out of focus vegetation.
Hmm, at the first sight LR6 doesn’t seem to be a big step forward.
I was hoping for some better Library features and a more streamlined GUI.
I’m looking for a new tool that will replace Aperture.
At the moment I’m more tempted to use Capture One.
But I’ll evaluate that after the 30day trials…
Like wise seeking a replacement for Aperture. I don’t care for the GUI of Capture One and worry how long it’ll be around for.
Every lightroom version is supposedly getting faster (1000% this time).
What a load of BS.
Any improvement on rendering RAF files?
Oh great, facial recognition! Let’s help the Skynet find John Connor!
I’m actually a bit, concerned about that metadata getting synced to their cloud with the mobile workflow. It wouldn’t be an issue with a local catalog or local wifi sync, but combined with that cloud thing, that’s approaching facebook creepiness territory.
You should be concerned. From where I’m standing, all computers with clients photos should be air gapped. Which means, no CC. Ever.
Some time ago, word got around that unbelievable amounts of photographers had publicly accessible client proof galleries online of their half-naked-houswife-approaching-50-in-cringe-inducing-pose photos, protected only with passwords like “password” or “boudoir”.
You just can’t explain the implications of a cloud setup to that kind of person, and that’s why Adobe gets away with all this nonsense. It’s because of the mind-blowing stupidity of their average customer. That cloud sync is not even practical, it requires internet connection and takes forever to sync (unlike local wifi or USB sync would). It’s just a dirty way to make sure people have to buy their cloud stuff in order to access their photo library on their iPad, and people fall for such an obvious marketing prank because it is more convenient than what they had before due to a lack of competition. Not to mention Adobe already proved how bad their security is by sharing my credit card details with the whole world during that hack the other day.
For me, the combination of C1 and Affinity Photo sounds more and more enticing. Especially with the latter, I’m really glad that after so many years we now finally have a professional alternative to Photoshop again. It may not be able to do some stuff as essential as 3D printing, Browse in Bridge, being bloatable with clunky Flash Panels or Share on Behance, but it’s fast, can use filters like Unsharp Mask as adjustment layers, their healing tools don’t exhibit as much bleeding and it has one-step frequency separation.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn about idiotic majority. If you don’t have a clue what “two factor authentication” means – hire someone who does. Same with the other security related issues…
The real problem is, Adobe is unsurpassed in terms of the workflow. Really. I can edit my shoots much faster in Photomechanic, but when it comes to the part when I have to convert RAWs to Jpegs… Sorry C1 and Iridient fans, but ACR and LR are the best from the speed/result perspective.
Agreed !
Speed > more time to shoot / to edit.
Let try a standard (not CC) LR6. Face recognition / geolocalisation are just options, don’t give it the informations and Connor family saved !
What about improved X-Trans support?
Good luck with that. I read on another forum the processing engine is remaining the same, so, I suspect the “good enough” philosophy is richly ingrained in Adobe’s plan.
I haven’t had a chance to download it yet but the Phoblographer indicates that x-trans rendering is much much faster. We likely won’t see any rendering difference until Adobe puts out another process version. Still, the problems with x-trans in Lightroom are largely exaggerated. There are certainly problems in certain situations but mostly they are blown out of proportion and perspective.
“Still, the problems with x-trans in Lightroom are largely exaggerated.”
No, they’re not. But what is not specified is that Lightroom’s processing is crap for NOT JUST Fuji sensors. Using Capture One Pro 8, I’m able to go back to photos I took back in 2006 on a little Canon Rebel XT and get significantly better results out of them than Lightroom (and ACR) ever made available (this is including the most recent versions of LR and ACR!) After seeing that result, as well as the significant improvements my Fuji files receive in C1P, I’m convinced that ACR’s processor has been lapped by superior tech.
+1. After using C1P you really appreciate the difference in quality of processing. That said, LR is still better for file management and neither are great for keywording. I use C1P 8 with PhotoMechanic 5 for metadata side of things.
I can respect your opinion but I disagree with it. I have also evaluated many converters and find camera raw quite excellent overall.
Have you tried it with anything shot under heavily colored club or stage lighting, or black light/UV? In ACR that kind of thing consistently turns into an ugly blotchy mess for me, with very little detail, whereas C1 and most other programs deal with it fine. And it’s not the monitor (I did my tests on a hardware calibrated 10 bit wide gamut Eizo). I agree that ACR does some things well, but it also has some major weaknesses.
The Adobe Standard profile plays its part in that, the situation is less bad with the Fuji, Canon or Nikon Camera Calibration profiles, but it’s still unacceptably bad.
Getting skintones right is a nightmare as well, which I found has a lot to do with the MelissaRGB/ProPhoto RGB color space LR uses (and by extension that problem persists when you work in Photoshop in ProPhoto RGB). I found that it is much easier to get skintones right in sRGB, though the downside is that it has a much more narrow gamut.
C1 is great in many respects and tethering is more stable than in LR, but I still find it takes me longer to get good results in C1 than it does in LR.
That’s my experience anyway. I had hoped for a new and improved process version as well. At least there is hope that the 12 second thinking pause in Develop when rendering a photo is a thing of the past with the speedups they did.
No, that’s not the kind of photography I do. I do portrait, landscape, and nature. I have done some concert stuff but with my old Nikon D800 and earlier. I didn’t have any real issues.
Faster is my #1 feature, I’ll take that any time instead of “Face detection” and other useless “features” any day.
With the little time I have had with LR6 – at least some of the sluggishness seems to be gone. Hooray! They also claim importing from external drives on a Mac should be significantly faster. We’ll see….it would be a VERY welcome improvement. Hope they did something to .RAF import also, they take longer than a 36 Mpx D800 file and is just ridiculously slow to import to LR5.7
I agree. Largely exaggerated. I have no clue why people keep on using this terrible sensor and keep complaining about it. I would already have sold my Fuji and bought another camera if it would make me complain on websites every day.
I don’t think it’s exaggerated, but maybe over stated. LR seems perfectly adequate for the vast majority of my photos, but I find it’s pretty bad at fine details in nature photography. I have certain photos of cedar trees or textured leaves that look awful in LR, but are just fine with Aperture (and Photos for OS X) as well as Iridient. It’s a small portion of my photography, but important enough to keep me with Aperture. I really hope the next process version is better.
I mostly play around with the different sharpening controls until I get what I like. There’s always a compromise, though. I’m also pretty meticulous about my exposure choices, aperture, and applying those settings.
yeah…maybe stoppoing down on some of the nature stuff might help. I know i’m doing a fair amount of pixel peeping, but what you’ve seen what Iridient can do, it can be hard not to wish Adobe would’t be right there, too.
thanks for your reply and happy shooting.
Likely not. But I am still waiting for my CC to provide LR 6.
My first impression – Nothing changed. X-Trans with Adobe still sucks!
I only have one question: does LR6 have decent RAW conversion for Fuji X at last?
No new process?
No upgrade pricing either. Looks like one rents it for US$120/year along with Photoshop or buys it for US$150. Before standalone owners could upgrade for about US$80. Hmmmmm, sound like a kick in the pants for those of us who have been buying Lightroom for many years.
I just bought it an upgrade for $79 from Adobe, so……
How did you buy the upgrade so quickly? I thought you needed to ‘apply for an upgrade’ and wait two days, at this address:
https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/upgrade-policy-product-announcement.html
Use this link. EDIT button. Change “Full” to “Upgrade”, then select what version you are upgrading from.
https://www.adobe.com/ca/cart.html?marketSegment=COM&PID=3485381
Do I understand correctly that Adobe’s announcement today is just that Lightroom CC will be available at some unspecified date in the near future? It hasn’t appeared yet as a download option on CC, and Lightroom 5 is still listed there as the current version.
They’re rolling it out incrementally. You’ll see it today eventually.
BTW, quitting and reopening the Adobe Cloud app does not work. Try signing out and signing back in and you might see the update.
You’ll get faster rendering but no better IQ
Just downloaded the Trial. Same shit in Developing X-Trans .raf Files. Today Adobe died for me. What a crappy company! F*** off!
Switching to Capture One last September was the right move.
You can always render and process the files through Capture One and export your variants as TIFF files to Lightroom CC.
I agree, This latest version doesn’t do demosaicing RAF files as well as Capture One but Fuji’s film simulations are there in CC…
If you like the look of Classic Chrome
for example.
I’m using the trial now. Really “excited” to discover that I have to try the “CC” version—which means installing the Creative Cloud for Desktop app before I can install the trial. No longer is it a simple exe file which can be downloaded and utilized on multiple computers.
I am really struck by how little is being offered in terms of new features. It’s been two years. Is Adobe just out of ideas? The only one that seems useful to me is the ability to edit a gradient or radial filter, functionality that has been available in C1 for a while now. C1 also offers something akin to layers which remains absent in LR.
That said, I wasn’t really looking for new features as much as improvements in the area of speed and IQ. My initial impression is that performance has increased somewhat—but not in any earth shattering way. In the Develop module I get to “5-one thousand” before I get a completely rendered preview of an RAF file. That is faster than in LR5 but still not fast. I don’t want to make any definitive statements about IQ but my first impression is that nothing has changed. If not for a workflow that embeds the RAW file as a smart object in all my PSD files, I would completely transition to C1.
Exactly. This is how they suck you in to a monthly payment plan. Great for Adobe’s accounting. Bad for the average user who wants – understandably – to own their software instead of rent it.
Installed through the creative cloud…but it doesn’t start on Win81 64bit. Now I de-installed the old version to see if there’s a conflict. Not a good experience. Now I am puzzled and support will only work during office hours.
OK lets stop the FUD…
here is the link to buy the stand alone non-CC Photoshop Lightroom 6 version “full” $149.00 US and upgrade $79.00 US.
When you get to the link page, scroll down to “Photoshop Lightroom 6” you will see the price of $149.00 and a “buy” link, click on the buy link, you can then change “full” to “upgrade” etc, then start download.
https://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/software._sl_id-contentfilter_sl_catalog_sl_software_sl_mostpopular.html?promoid=KLXMV
hope this helps
It’s kinda maddening – and a little sleazy – how Adobe makes it so difficult to get Lightroom 6, compared to how hard they try to suck you in to Creative Cloud on the website at every opportunity.
I got LR6 and I’m waiting for confirmation. I don’t want to sign up to a monthly payment for my software to anyone.
One thing concerns me though. TheVerge noted that LR6 (as opposed to LR CC) won’t include ‘feature updates’. Does that mean that LR6 is the end of the road for Lightroom as a standalone download, and that future versions will required entering the ninth circle of Creative Cloud hell?
More FUD…
LR 6 will get the normal updates just like LR 5 did and LR 4 before that. The “normal” LR 6 updates will be for new cameras and lenses that have yet to be made. The “normal” LR 6 updates will also include programming fixes, however, LR 6 will not get any “new” features, the “new” features, in real time, will only go to LR CC, as that is Adobe’s income model now, however, with that said, I expect in 18 to 24 months, there will be LR 7, and you will be able to buy that.
I skipped LR 5 as there was nothing there I needed.
I am on LR 4.4 and PS CS 6. I have been getting all the Camera Raw updates in PS CS 6, so I can open any new camera RAW files. At some point I will get LR 6.
I am interested in the new LR 6 Panorama feature, but many of my panoramas are in excess of 1GB before flattening the layers and the new LR 6 has a limit of 512MB, so I am not sure how that will work.
Here, try this link for a more complete list of what is new in LR 6 / CC.
http://www.lightroomqueen.com/whats-new-lightroom-cc-6-0/
Has anyone seen the improved speed? I’m properly configured, my GPU is detected by Lightroom and the “Use Graphics Processor” checkbox is marked but I’m not really seeing any speed improvements.
I’m currently rebuild my smart previews and 1:1 previews, maybe that’s the problem.
So, anyone seeing speed improvements?
Yes, I’m seeing a very noticeable speed increase.
Yes, once I paused Face Recognition speed improved.
I have exactly the same problem. Win8.1 64-bit and it doesn’t start. I’ve tried with Admin rights, without, uninstallation, PC restart and nothing work.
I wonder if you managed to sort it out ?
Uhm, Fuji… now would be a good time to release that tethering plug-in…
Almost all professional fashion and advertising photographers use C1, and it’s also the dedicated raw converter for PhaseOne medium format cameras. It’s been around longer than Lightroom and it’s not going away any time soon.
Try signing out of your account in the Creative Cloud client, closing the client (I closed it via the task manager) and then signing in again. That did it for me. Although I had to do it twice.
Thanks – will try tonight. I removed all traces from the old lightroom version and after the forth de-installation / re-installation it still doesn’t work. So that’s my last attempt. really strange. rgs Chris
not particularly strange –exactly the same for me. If Adobe fail to fix this imminently then LR 4 is probably going to have been the last ever Adobe product I buy. The login/out from CC doesn’t help at all
Adobe support just told me to logout from CC and then to login again…humm… they gave me the following link, which I am going to try when at home.
https://helpx.adobe.com/de/creative-cloud/kb/sign-in-out-creative-cloud-desktop-app.html
the link is the same one they have given to all the hundreds of people who are flooding the Adobe forums with the same problem. Obviously it works for many but for those for whom it doesn’t, they seem to be utterly clueless
it did work for me now, but can I say that’s a glitch ? or somewhat ridiculous ?
Very frustrated! I just downloaded the new Lightroom from CC and I keep getting an error message that says “An error occurred when attempting to change modules.” This is the first time I have ried to instal it on a new Mac Mini running Yosemite. Any thoughts??
Adobe died for me (as a true innovator) already a long time ago. Like more big software companies they have come to a complete standstill in redeveloping the core concepts of their tools and drag users into license and cloud concepts in a trial to bind them into their system forever. For the rest every new version is nearly identical to the previous one, adds a few ‘easy development’ features and fixes finally issues that were 3 versions earlier already a hassle, just to fill the release note. Unfortunately, a big community from schools, over photographers to DTP-offices only live by the word ‘Adobe, Adobe’. Apple has chosen to kill Aperture to replaced it with a free-ware iphone gimmick. As most, I saw this coming but in way too many trials, I couldn’t find C1 an evident choice. The tool is very pro, the quality of the output in f.i. the Fuji-case better than Lr, but the interface is a complete pain too and somehow, I don’t see this working well with real large libraries, on a Mac (a very recent one…) it was already so damned slow with just some test databases containing a few tens of pictures. So really desperate I entered the Lr-arena november last year. It’s a worse tool than I expected. The RAW conversions are OK but very far from being the best, the tab-screen UI sucks, the import & export engines were written by someone on a sunday afternoon, the adjustments do what they do in any other tool but most of all I still hate it to work with this glorified file & directory browser concept. It’s as fail safe as crossing the ocean on a log of wood. Everything related to managing different copies, library & image management is so disappointing compared to the flexibility I had with Aperture. Apple: it’s really the biggest shame in history what you did to your once so beloved pro/advanced photography (and, earlier, video) community.
after following the instructions below LR6 worked for me. really really annoying, Adobe guys !
https://helpx.adobe.com/de/creative-cloud/kb/sign-in-out-creative-cloud-desktop-app.html
Answered my own question 🙂 Needed to enable “read & write” for everyone in my library. Working fine now.
Hi Fuji101, which library you mean? The Mac Library (~/Library/) or the LR library? I am not so fluent in Mac yet. Thanks.