What I Like About Lightroom 2018

Hi Folks,

I thought I would share with you what I like about the changes in Lightroom 2018. I’m intentionally not going into great detail on any features for brevity. There are already many videos out that do so. Beginning with the Classic version the increase in speed is obvious and quite welcomed. Your experience may vary depending on the computer you are using so for a reference, I am using an i7 four core Pentium processor running Windows 10 with 24Gbs of Ram and a relatively robust graphics card. The noticeable speed increase is based on the difference using the previous version on the same system. One of the features I love is related to that speed increase in a roundabout way. Now if you go from “Lights Out” in the “Compare” view back to the “Grid” view, you no longer have to get out of “Lights Out” to see the full grid with info displayed. Previously, you pretty much had to switch out of “Lights Out” to view the full “Grid View”. Sometimes it’s the little things. If you are someone who switches back and forth from those two views while selecting your images to edit as I do this is a small change but a big plus. Third but not least, if you do the bulk of your editing in LR or would like to, is the addition of Luminance and Color Range masking features in conjunction to the various brush type adjustment tools. Personally I will continue to do the bulk of my editing in Photoshop where there is much more, fine control. Nevertheless these are a great addition to LR.

To touch on my favorite updates to the mobile version (LR CC) without getting into the whole name change controversy, Search has been added, which is something I have been asking Adobe to include in the mobile version for a couple of years. With search comes the addition of keyword syncing across platforms from LR Classic to the mobile version. Thank you very much Adobe! Editing in the mobile version has made great advances with every update this past year. That has continued with the latest update and become even more seamless without requiring a separate move to a develop module. Personally, my use of editing on a mobile device is primarily concentrated on initial raw processing after capturing in raw with my iPhone, also facilitated using LR. It has tremendous editing tools that certainly will be quite useful if you are someone who is a very mobile person, either traveling often or an iPhone photographer.

If you are interested in my take on Subscription vs Perpetual licensing you may check out the separate piece that I wrote on that topic and so titled.