The Lightroom cloud ecosystem has been updated today, with updates for Windows & Mac (6.4) and iOS & Android (8.4). (Lightroom Classic has also been updated.) There are some enhancements and various bug fixes.
New bugs in June release…
New User Interface for Mobile
The big news in this month’s release is a major redesign of the mobile app. I’ll be honest, when you first open the app, it might look a bit confusing. There are now 2 grid views! So let’s take a quick guided tour… I’ll use the iOS screenshots, but Android is almost identical. (If you want a deeper dive, the eBooks of Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro are already updated for these changes.)
Along the bottom of the screen are 3 tabs: Device (iOS) / Gallery (Android), Lightroom and Discover.
If you use the Lightroom Cloud Ecosystem or Lightroom Classic to organize your photos, the Lightroom tab is your new home. Initially it shows the old Grid view, which you’re already familiar with. The list of albums (collections) is now hiding under a pop-up at the top of the Grid, where it says All photos in the left screenshot. When you tap on a photo in the Grid, you get through to the Detail view, as you did before. The menus have all been rearranged too, but everything’s still there somewhere.
The new Device tab on iOS, or Gallery tab on Android, is designed for people who prefer to use their device’s own photo management app (Photos app/Gallery app) to organize their photos, and who just want to use Lightroom for its editing tools. The Grid shows the photos stored in the Photos/Gallery app, and using the pop-up at the top of the Grid, you can browse your Photos/Gallery app albums. There’s an important caution here… just because you can view the photos in the Device/Gallery tab doesn’t mean they’re IN Lightroom yet, so don’t delete them from the Photos/Gallery app!
When you tap on a photo, it opens into the Edit view. If you do any kind of edit, whether sliders, crop, or adding metadata, the photo is automatically added to Lightroom’s library and if you have a subscription, it’s also synced to the cloud. When you return to the Grid, edited photos have a LR badge showing that it’s been edited. If you tap on a photo with a LR badge, it opens Lightroom’s copy of the photo back into the Edit view, complete with its non-destructive edits.
Have a look round and let us know in the comments what you think of the changes!
Early Access to new Edit view
On Android, and hopefully coming soon to iPhones too, is an early access preview of the new Edit view that’s currently under development. If you want to give it a try, go to Preferences > Early Access and turn on the switch. You can also send feedback from this screen.
The bottom bar has buttons for Presets, Crop, Sliders, Masking and Healing tools. Tapping on the buttons opens the tool options or panel buttons. As a result, there’s a lot less scrolling along the edit toolbar. In the Sliders view, the Optics & Profile panels are hidden by default, but you can turn them on in … menu > View Options.
What do you think of the changes?
Other Changes on the Desktop
- There’s a new Refine Saturation slider under the RGB point curve. Adjusting the RGB point curve affects the saturation of colors and usually this give most visually pleasing result. However, there may be times when you want to reduce the change in saturation, for example, when a highly saturated color loses detail.
- Grain is now available as a Masking adjustment. Like local Noise Reduction, it increases or decreases the effect of global Grain adjustments.
- The Presets and Versions buttons have now been moved to the right panel bar for easier access.
- When using the Color Mix/HSL sliders, hold down Alt/ Opt to show the active hue in color while the rest is grayscale, to help identify which hues are being adjusted.
Other Changes on Mobile
- The Long Exposure and Depth Capture Tech Previews have sadly been removed. Hopefully they’ll return in future.
- Shared Albums & Photos are now displayed as a special folder in the Albums panel, rather than as a separate tab.
- iOS – The Versions and Reset buttons have moved, they’re now found under the Undo button at the top of the screen.
- Android – The Previous button has disappeared from the edit toolbar, it’s now in the … menu.
- Learn tutorials have been removed from the mobile apps due to the ongoing Edit view redevelopment, but Discover tutorials are still available.
- There’s a new Create Edit Replay option in the Share menu, which exports a short time-lapse video of your edits to share on social media.
- The list of Export options in the Share menu has been slimmed down for simplicity, but all of the options you need are still in the Export As menu command.
New camera support:
- Pentax
- PENTAX K-3 Mark III Monochrome
- Sony
- Sony Xperia 1 V Front Camera
- Sony Xperia 1 V Ultrawide Camera
- Sony Xperia 1 V Wide Camera
- Sony Xperia 1 V Zoom Camera
- Sony ZV-1M2
- Sony ZV-E1
- Click to view the full list of supported cameras
New Lens Profiles
Many compact and mirrorless cameras have built-in lens profiles, but other cameras use lens profiles to correct for lens defects such as barrel/pincushion distortion and vignetting. New profiles are added with each Lightroom release. Click here for the full list of available Adobe Lens Profiles.
Bug Fixes
As always, the engineers have been working hard to fix bugs. Adobe only publishes the ones that were reported by users:
- [Desktop]: Crashes on Open
- [Desktop]: Crop keyboard shortcut doesn’t save changes
- [Desktop]: Graphical Watermark not visible on image in dialog but is visible in Export preview
- [Desktop]: Translation mistake (Preference panel – Italian)
- [Desktop]: Presets live preview not working when AI masks are applied
- If you find a bug, click here to learn how to report it to Adobe.
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 overloading the servers. You can also open the Creative Cloud app, click Update on the left, then click the … icon (top right) and Check for Updates to give it a nudge. To update on mobile, visit the App Store (iOS) / Play Store (Android).
Is the book updated?
- The eBooks for Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro are already updated for these changes, and can be downloaded immediately after purchasing. If you already have a current Lightroom Cloud Premium Membership, the updated eBooks are available for download in your Members Area.
I’d rather they’d spent some time working on gps location being shown than these changes. Why are they taking so long to implement this feature? For me it’s a major problem with photos from dozens of locations.
What feature are you meaning, Mark? GPS location is shown in Info?
Hi! Thanks for summarizing. I can’t seem to “pick” my photos by pressing “P” anymore. Do you know what the new shortcut is?
Hi Stephanie
‘p’ is Pick when using mobile. On the Desktop it’s ‘z’.
It is so sad that Adobe refuses to work on the poorly implemented LrC/ Lr interface. Even if you follow the “right” workflow; importing in you photos in Lr and synchronise to LrC, you still need to maintain your tags (and some other metadata) in the two (LrC/Lr) environments seperately. Still don’t understand why Adobe doesn’t fix these issues.
Many have asked for that. They weren’t originally designed to fully integrate, and there’s an issue with Keywords – Classic lets you use hierarchical, but the Cloud doesn’t. It’s a bit of a chestnut… but a cleaner integration would be good!
Hi. I just got an iPad to keep editing my catalog when I travel. But can’t seem to find the way. Look like you’ve already walked this path. Can you provide any input on the workflow please.
Assuming you mean Lightroom Classic catalog, you can’t run that on the iPad. You can achieve editing photos that are in your catalog by using the Adobe Cloud – our free ‘Travel Workflow’ eBook explains how (log onto our site, visit Downloads)
new collections in LrC on MAC don’t come over to LR mobil ?
rebooted mac – all fixed