Lightroom CC is here! Lightroom 6 too!

Finally, after months of rumors about its release date, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC, and also Lightroom 6, are here! I’m personally very excited as it’s the main actor of my workflow, everything I do starts from Lightroom.

The difference between Lightroom CC and Lightroom 6? The first one is part of the Creative Cloud subscription. By the way the ones who already have the CC subscription will have their Lightroom 5 freely upgraded to Lightroom CC. Lightroom 6 is the same, as a standalone version.

Here are the new features, and my take on it:

• HDR merging: the big trend of HDR abuse is (hopefully) fading, but it’s good to have it now embedded into Lightroom without having to pay for an extra plugin. You can now combine your images with different exposures into a single image with a higher dynamic range, and even output it as a RAW file. But do not abuse of it

• Performance boost: Lightroom CC & 6 are now able to use the power of your GPU to render faster. It should also run much faster on multi-core CPUs. I really hope this performance boost will be visible, at least on my fancy MacBook Pro at work.
• Panorama merge: another addition from Photoshop to Lightroom, the Panorama merge. You can now stitch together your pictures without the need of the bigger brother. Like HDR merge, the output file can be a RAW file.

• Improved slideshows: create fancy slideshows directly from Lightroom with new effects and much more customization. I think I’ve never used it even once…

• Filter brush: use a filter brush to alter your Gradient and Radial filters. This is great news, quite often I was frustrated when I wanted to apply a gradient filter on a whole part of a photo except on a smaller part that should be left alone. Now, I can paint it out with the filter brush.
• Facial recognition: another great addition, the facial recognition scans your library and group your photos depending on the people it finds. I was about to reinstall Picasa as I was really missing this feature, now I can forget it for good.

• And finally, some hidden gems, here and there:

However not everything is perfect:

• The lack of a dedicated Portrait feature, like OnOne Perfect Portrait, that could really speed up the portraits processing.
• It seems there is still no solutions for synchronizing two Lightroom catalogues used on two different computers. It’s not that uncommon today to use two computers and would be a great addition.
• Lightroom CC crashes on startup on my 2010 MacBook Pro 13″, that should be able to run it without particular issues… It’s not promising I’ll see tomorrow on my 2014 MacBook Pro Retina how it goes… Edit: Disconnect then reconnect from Creative Cloud, and all is fine!

Note that Lightroom CC works only on 64 bits environments, so if you still have an older computer/OS, now might be the time for an upgrade,

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