Lightroom Classic CC 7.4 has been released today. This release focuses primarily on fixing bugs, as well as the usual new camera/lens support for Lightroom, but there’s a few new features too. The entire Lightroom CC ecosystem has also been updated.
Folder Color Labels
For some years, Lightroom users have been asking for color coding to make it easier to find specific folders, or to mark folders as different workflow stages. You’ll find the new color labels in the Folders panel right-click menu, and you can filter the Folders panel to show only the labeled folders by clicking on the magnifying glass in the folder search bar.
Show/Hide Presets & Profiles
It’s easy to end up with too many presets and profiles, so you can now hide groups that you don’t want to see. For years, Lightroom users have been asking for a way to disable the built-in presets, and it’s now possible!
In the Profile Browser panel, right-click on a Profile Set and choose Manage Profiles, or in the Presets panel, click the + button to choose Manage Presets, then uncheck any sets you want to hide. You can hide everything except the Favorites sets.
Disable Large Preset Preview
While the large preset preview introduced in 7.3 was a welcome addition, it does incur a performance penalty. As a result, there’s a new checkbox in Preferences > Performance tab called Enable hover preview of presets in Loupe. It’s enabled by default, but if you don’t need the large preview, you can turn it off to improve performance.
Automatically Stack After Merging
There’s a new Create Stack checkbox in the Merge to Panorama and Merge to HDR dialogs, which will automatically stack the merged photo with its originals, so you don’t have to wait until the merge completes to stack them manually.
Folder Search Performance
There were some performance issues with Lightroom 7.2’s new folder search field when used with large catalogs. This has been fixed in this release by introducing a new temporary cache file. It’s called Catalog Name Helper.lrdata and it’s stored next to the catalog. If it gets deleted, it’s automatically rebuilt.
HEIF Support
With the release of iOS 11, Apple announced that its newest devices would default to a new photo file format/container called HEIF, which stands for High Efficiency Image Format. It uses a more modern compression method than JPEG, so the file sizes are smaller.
As of today’s Lightroom releases, you can import and edit HEIF format images using Lightroom on iOS11 or later, and macOS 10.13 or later. It’s not supported on other operating systems at this time (that’s a work in progress), and HEVC videos are not currently supported, so you may still wish to remain in “most compatible” mode on your iOS device.
Facebook Changes
Facebook are changing their API, preventing desktop apps from uploading photos. As a result, from August 1 onwards, you’ll no longer be able to upload photos using the Lightroom Publish Service.
New camera support:
- Fujifilm X-T100
- PENTAX K-1 Mark II (Dynamic Pixel Shift images only show the first raw image frame)
- Phase One IQ3 100MP Trichromatic (preliminary support)
- Samsung Galaxy S9
- Samsung Galaxy S9+
- Click to view the full list of supported cameras
Tethering for new cameras:
- No new tethering in this release.
- Click to view the full list of cameras supported for tethering
New lens profiles:
- Canon EF
- IRIX 11mm F4 Firefly
- Yongnuo YN 35mm F2
- Yongnuo YN 50mm F1.8
- Nikon F
- IRIX 15mm F2.4 Firefly
- SIGMA 24-70mm F2.8 DG OS HSM A017
- Yongnuo YN 50mm F1.8
- Pentax K
- HD PENTAX-D FA* 50mm F1.4 SDM AW
- Samsung
- Samsung Galaxy S9 Rear Camera 26mm F1.4-2.5 (DNG+JPEG)
- Samsung Galaxy S9+ Rear Camera 26mm F1.4-2.5 (DNG+JPEG)
- Samsung Galaxy S9+ Rear Camera 52mm F2.4 (JPEG)
- SIGMA
- SIGMA 24-70mm F2.8 DG OS HSM A017
- Sony FE
- SIGMA 14mm F1.8 DG HSM A018
- SIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG HSM A018
- SIGMA 24mm F1.4 DG HSM A018
- SIGMA 35mm F1.4 DG HSM A018
- SIGMA 50mm F1.4 DG HSM A018
- SIGMA 85mm F1.4 DG HSM A018
- SIGMA 135mm F1.8 DG HSM A018
- TAMRON 28-75mm F/2.8 Di III RXD A036
- Click here for the full list of available Adobe Lens Profiles
Bug fixes:
There are loads of bug fixes. Adobe only publishes the bugs reported by users, which this time include:
Crashes
Import
- FIXED – Problems importing from memory cards (Windows only)
Library Module
- FIXED – iPhone videos play upside down (Windows only)
- FIXED – various Folder Search issues including performance issues
- FIXED – Some metadata not captured for MP4 when THM sidecar is present
Develop Module
- FIXED – Presets sort incorrect for numbers
- FIXED – Presets don’t save if they contain special characters
- FIXED – Presets don’t record or apply the panel toggle switch status
- FIXED – Tone curve toggle switch status wasn’t included in sync, presets or snapshots
- FIXED – Settings are reset when develop presets are applied using scripts (such as using programmable keyboards and midi devices)
- FIXED – Previous or Copy/Paste triggers a ‘Bad Argument’ error message in some cases
- FIXED – Switching off Effects panel disables Dehaze slider
- FIXED – Dehaze adjustment opens up Effects panel when accessed through the SDK
- FIXED – Crop briefly shows previous photo when GPU is enabled
- FIXED – Crop overlay in hard to see
- FIXED – Sony A7III Camera Matching profiles are broken
- FIXED – Every image imported via Lightroom mobile is marked as edited
- and a whole bunch of other profile and preset related usability issues!
Catalogs
- FIXED – Backups on macOS aren’t zipped in 7.3
Other
How do I update?
To update, go to Help menu > Updates or click the Update button in the CC app. The update servers take a while to push the updates around the world, to avoid crashing the servers. You can also open the Creative Cloud app, click the … icon (top right) and select Check for Updates to give it a nudge.
Is the book updated?
The eBooks for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ are already updated for these changes, and available in the Members Area for current Classic Premium Members.
A WARNING – Be very careful to remove all old .lrtemplate Presets from the Lightroom settings folders before starting up 7.4 for the first time!!!
After updating to 7.3 and after all my .lrtemplate presets were converted to *.xmp I went to enormous pains to go through and clean up my presets, delete the rubbish and only keep the good ones. Only to have 7.4 on first start automatically re-import all my old .lrtemplate presets and put me right back to square one, albeit with more options this time to manage them from within LR but still hours of work to go through the whole lot again. All my old .lrtemplate presets now have 2 tilde ~’s added to the name, clearly the result of import 1 and then import 2. This process may even overwrite .xmp presets you have edited subsequent to the previous import/conversion to xmp operation, so be careful.
It seems 7.4 by default adds 2 tilde ~ to converted .lrtemplate presets, 7.3 only added one tilde ~.
Either way be very careful to move any previously converted .lrtemplate presets away from the old “Develop Presets” folder LR used to use. Another point I discovered is if you copy any .lrtemplate presets into the old “Develop Presets” then on the next start up LR detects them and converts to xmp/imports them to your preset list according to the folders they were found in the “Develop Presets”folder.
Yep, that’s not new to 7.4 though. That was in 7.3.1 update that came out on April 24. They reconverted the presets, adding a second tilde, in order to sort out some of the preset conversion bugs. Perhaps you skipped that update.
Yes I avoided 7.3.1 due to all the reports of issues, oh well sometimes you have to suffer needlessly for your craft 😛
Victoria you are something else . (smart huh)
Aaaaw, thanks Dennis
Victoria, can you clarify the preset business? If I go to Preferences > Show LR Presets Folder > Develop Presets, I see no *.xmp files, only ~~*.lrtemplate files. I thought the .lrtemplate files were to be converted to .xmp’s, but I see no evidence of that on my machine (MacBook Pro, OS 10.13.5). On the other hand, everything seems to work, so maybe I should just be happy.
They also moved to a new location at the same time as they were converted. They’re now in:
Windows—C: \ Users \ [your username] \ AppData \ Roaming \ Adobe \ CameraRaw \ Settings \
Mac—Macintosh HD / Users / [your username] / Library / Application Support / Adobe / CameraRaw / Settings /
or iIf Store presets with this catalog is checked in Preferences > Presets, they may be in a Lightroom Settings/Settings subfolder next to the catalog instead.
And there they were. Thanks very much, Victoria.
Thank you for your 7.4 update. Very thorough.
Because of problems with the recent updates to LR Classic, the general advice has been to delay updating to the various 7.3 versions. Given that a major update is promised soon, would that still be your advice?
7.3 had a lot of bugs. 7.4 is out now and solves most of those bugs. It seems about as stable as 7.2, based on the small number of bugs reported since its release a few days ago, so you’re probably fine to update at this point.
Thanks for the thorough update report.
Folder search _is_ fixed, afaict. I have one Catalog with over 25,000 folders — folder search was all but useless. Now works quickly.
—Kirby.
Two issues with 7.4 update a) photo merge command suspends when the images are color labeled. Remove the color label from the images and the merge then works. b) Assigning color label to the folders is a great idea. Only having the option of the same labels that are used with individual images is a bad idea. They need to be separate logic.
Interesting find George. Here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
Good afternoon. I noticed after 7.4 that yes it fixed the hanging problem yeah!
OTOH i noticed that LR mobile also now auto uploads HEIC files which is cool but they are not supported in Windows inside LR.
Any idea when they will be? I use procam which does a nice job with AEB but in heic!
-David
Since they’re using OS support on the Mac, I’d guess they’ll wait for Windows support too. I heard rumblings of Windows supporting it later this year, so hopefully not too long.
One outstanding bug is the broken touch interface (https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/touch-workspace-appears-broken-in-classic-7-3)
Perhaps Adobe not fixing this to drive customers towards LR CC instead of LR Classic CC?
While there are huge numbers of conspiracy theories out there, if you’d seen the full internal list of bugs fixed in this release, you wouldn’t believe those theories. There’s just a limit to the number of work hours in a release cycle. They’re a lovely team of guys, and they don’t sit on their hands intentionally making Lightroom users lives difficult, so I would imagine they either found it was an issue they couldn’t fix properly in time, or there were more urgent bugs that needed addressing first. In their enthusiasm to prove how hard they were working, they massively overstretched themselves in 7.3 and there were a lot of bugs to fix in 7.4 as a result. They have all the stats on how many people use either feature, so if a bug affects 1% of users and another affects 50% of users, it’s logical that data would come into the prioritization. I know it’s incredibly frustrating when you’re the one affected, but I hope a little background on what happens behind the scenes may help a little.
As far as driving customers towards CC goes, I can’t see a logical basis for that theory at this time. CC has great potential, but it’s a long way from being a replacement for Classic for most existing Classic users, so at this point in time, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot, because Classic users would move off to other software like Capture One. Adobe makes some crazy-looking decisions at times, but they are very good at making a profit, so forcing users off to other company’s software by not fixing bugs wouldn’t be logical. How they’ll try to drive Classic customers towards CC in future, I don’t know, but I’m not seeing signs of that at the moment. I don’t want to come off like a fanboy here – I point out their bugs and bad decisions as much as their good ones – but there has to be a bit of logic here somewhere.