This week we’ll cover a few new updates to Lightroom and Photoshop’s Camera Raw. Personally, when you see the Camera Raw updates and how we’re able to actually browse photos in it, I think it’s really interesting. I have no idea where this feature is going, but it’s pretty cool to see.
The Match Exposure feature is also nice, and something Lightroom Classic users have had for years – however they did put a different spin on it.
Enjoy and feel free to leave your comments below.
I love teaching and photography... In that order. I feel that enjoying photography, and photo editing can get WAY too complicated. So my personal mission (and favorite thing to do), is to create education that simplifies the process of taking great photos, and how to edit them to get the results you’ve always wanted.
I cannot open bridge where I can get the thumbnails. When I open bridge it shows desktop this pc. Can’t figure this out so I can follow along your video. Also can I delete photos from the thumbnails. Thanks. Elaine Lloyd
Hi Elaine. Bridge is a file browser like your Finder/File Explorer window. If you want to see thumbnails of photos you’ll have to point it to a folder that contains photos. The course you purchased will help out with this so give the videos a watch. Thanks.
Hi Matt, totally understand that Camera Raw could replace or do the same thing as LrC for many people. I do a lot of landscape and utilise the merge to panorama in LrC. It would be great if Lr mobile and I suppose Camera Raw had this function. Do you think Adobe will ever add this ?
Hi Stuart. Camera Raw has had Panorama and HDR merge since LrC has had it. LR on the iPad does not and I don’t know if or when Adobe would add it. Thanks.
After the last Photoshop virtual summit, I learned to use “Prompt to Edit” AI feature. As a photographer I do not like AI creations, however, I do like the AI distraction removal tool. Now that it is in LR, I do not have to switch to Photoshop to use the remove tool. The AI distraction feature makes it much easier to do large amounts of removal at once. For example people in my travel photos. Areas are so crowded now it distracts from the image you want to capture. Now I have the ability to remove or add where I want. I was so excited to learn how to remove the chain link fence blocking my shot of my grandson playing baseball by using Prompt To Edit. I have learned a lot from you over the year and taken almost all of your courses. I still need to do the Masking course, and after this video I will take the Bridge course as well. Thanks for all you do for us.
always good videos… On Bridge… I use it to manually cull. Would like to see Bridge evolve into a real culling program. AI? I don’t bother with credits. Don’t need em. Won’t use em.
Seems like a pretty darn good real culling program to me. I open a folder of photos and I can look through them quickly. I can’t think of much more that I need. I doubt we’ll ever see AI in Bridge though, but who knows 🙂
Hi Matt, totally with you the AI stuff. I can accept AI to a certain degree, but what is happening now is that people behind AI development (from all companies) seem to be pushing users to solutions beyond the task we are trying to accomplish. In a short while, this is detrimental to PI, ie. Photographer Intelligence !
On the AI credit cost, there is a cost running the AI backbones, and as any corporation, Adobe monetizes it’s use. Thats fair, as long as the user derives value at a reasonable cost. Unfortunately, the fact that you can’t see without paying kind of defeats the purpose of using AI. If you go to a taylor to get a customized suit, I don’t think you’d be buying unless you can try it on before committing to a payment! Maybe that a lesson for Adobe.
thanks for the very useful information
Two Comments:
1. Lr and LrC vs Bridge and ACR: I use both systems and am high on both, but I would dispute that Bridge is an effective content management system. The Catalog is my favorite reason for LrC, almost every image goes in there, is stored there forever, and seriously improves my ability to find images. I know your arguments, but I just could not resist.
2. Generative AI: I find that removing objects with Generative AI is far superior to without.
Hi Charles. You can dispute it but that’s probably the wrong term right? You’re saying it doesn’t meet your needs.
I’d say I have a pretty high need for my photography on a daily basis with the business I run. Probably more than 90% of the people I teach to. Yet LR or Bridge/ACR (no catalogs) serve me perfectly. How in any way are the photos in my workflow not “stored there forever” and easily findable? Like I said, I just think you used incorrect wording. You’re saying it works for you which I get. But there’s no dispute possible that Bridge or LR (not LRC) won’t work for many others and (may) actually be a better and easier way for them.
Yes! Hard agree, spot on! (And perhaps also worth mentioning that the output of this process is a relatively low resolution image that is no longer a true raw image, i.e. subsequent edits can no longer truly draw on the raw data.)
The resolution has gotten way better. Somewhere between 2000 and 4000 pixels depending on credit usage – so it’s gotten pretty high, and to a point where most people wouldn’t need much more.
Matt,
I am in agreement with respect to what we, as photographers, want out of AI. It comes down to my retention of the creative aspect on any photo. All the editing, etc are my own personal choices. As you mentioned, some of the current AI tools are great. I love the ability to take out unwanted items within a photo. Thanks for your updates, as always.
You are right on about generative AI in Lightroom. Thank you for your critique.
There is now Reflection Removal in LR Classic, ACR and Photoshop. One would assume that the programming is the same for all three. I tested all three on the same image. LR Classic and ACR gave the same results which were not completely satisfactory. PS on the other hand, did a much better job.
Matt
THANK YOU for doing detail tutorials on ACR and BRIDGE.
Lightroom is a total pain – even just getting the photos into the program! Bridge is so simple – and ACR is so simple to access right from inside PS !
❣️❣️
Nice Matt, I feel the same way you did in your video. When I have novice photography students in my studio who, horrified, ask me how it’s possible that I don’t take full advantage of what A.I. has to offer, I always respond like this: “You know what a drug dealer does to addicts? At first, he offers small doses for free, and then, when you can’t live without it anymore, he’ll jack up the prices like crazy.” I think this whole situation with AI assistance is similar. I get that a little help with removing objects or making masking easier is fine… but beyond that, I think we’re drifting further and further away from what real photography is—everything becomes fake, contrived, and surreal. So I’m among those who don’t accept it, and I certainly don’t want to pay for things I don’t want to use! Sorry for the personal rant.
Thinking of that “skipped” AI. For a few months I have been using the free ChatGPT to find how to do things you know LrC (No argument, just the one I’ve used exclusively for 15+ years.) can do, or I imagine should do but can’t remember which rock to look under. It has been close to 100% to return a good answer. Most responses are detailed enough just to share with my daughter 2200 miles west of here. It often gives detailed explanations which can be too long. So I replied once I know that stuff just cut to the chase. It apologized and since just cuts to the case.
Great video Matt, I agree with all you say about Adobe and Lightroom. I love LR, but minor tweeks to the AI functions would be very helpful as you suggest. Adobe suite is definitely the best for photographers.
Completely agree with what you stated about the generative nonsense in LRc and the direction of the software. Love the masking and AI DeNoise but don’t want the generative stuff beyond perhaps some very basic features like expanding the canvas. I have no idea about their revenue streams, but my cohort is largely of the same opinion. I think they should leave that prompt driven, generative feature set to PS. I pay for the photography plan to use LRc as my DAM and editor of choice. If they force too much of this on us, and LRc suffers, I will rethink my position.
I suspect the time has come for Adobe to split out AI functions that use credits from those that don’t, and give us two streams. Let’s call them Adobe Workhorse and Adobe Creative. Workhorse contains all the functions that don’t use Credits, and Creative has all the fancy Banana stuff that ordinary photographers never use, and which do use Credits. Then the photographic ground-grubbers amongst us can use Workhorse, and the rest can fork out extra for Creative and Credits. I cannot even begin to think how Lr and LrC would co-exist in this environment; more and more I am attracted by Bridge and ACR/Ps. [Parenthetic aside: I’ve no idea why Adobe ever split Lightroom into LrC and Lr.]
You just skipped the most important part of Adobe Camera Raw. The Vectorscope is a god send for portrait photographers for photographers showing runway or just people on the street or wedding..
Hi. This is not a new feature. I’ve covered this in at least 2 video before. Thanks.
So since I am and always have been a LR Classic user, are my days numbered? I have never used LR Desktop and fear I have a learning curve ahead of me. I understand they are basically the same but if you have been a LR Classic user for cataloging, editing in other applications like DxO, Topaz I am sure there are differences. Time will tell……
Thanks again, Matt. Agree with your rant! So keep on ranting – somebody ay Adobe may listen!
If as seems to be the general thought Lightroom classic will become the poor relation is a move to Lightroom worthwhile or would it be better to use bridge and camera raw
The use of AI you seek for Lihjht Room IS available through ChatGP…. Im no AI fundi but this guy
is …. see I Let ChatGPT Edit My Photos in Lightroom by Glyn Dewis on either his subscription channel or youtube.
This is possible on all adobe platforms…. amazing. Chesk it out.
Hi Peter. I don’t want to go to ChatGPT to edit my photos. I want to use the program I pay for to do it.
Regarding Adobe wasting their time and our time and money on Generative fill in Adobe lightroom classic, I completely agree that it is a terrible focus for the technology and the scarce developers.
If Adobe abandons Classic, I will abandon Adobe.
Hi. I’m curious because that’s a bold statement. So if Adobe stop supporting LR Classic what would you do? Adobe is too smart to stop support for it without giving you an alternative to keep your edits and organization right? So you’d abandon what I’m guessing is years of editing, to use another program that will not see your edits and have to redo all of that work again?
Where would you go that would be better, or a suitable replacement?
Went to YouTube to comment but comments are turned off. My experience is that Adobe does NOT care about its users, especially obvious in places like Premiere. I’ve spoken directly with several employees, and was even recognized as their #1 beta tester for Premiere back in 2010 when the betas were private. I came out of that experience not just suspecting, but knowing that a lot of the employees are “My way or the highway” types of egomaniacs, unwilling to see the perspective of their users. Frankly, there’s so many illogical and broken things in their software that never should have made it past a first round of quality control. Even when they try to improve things, they do it in an incredibly callous “FU users!” type of way, such as their upcoming Color tab in Premiere which immediately replaces rather than complements the current Lumetri workflow. Ditching Lumetri completely, as imperfect as it is, to force users into a new workspace that many will never even need for basic color correction is the “My way or the highway” attitude I talk about. If they were smart and actually cared about their users, instead of forcing a whole new interface on their users, they could implement an intelligent approach to color correction, using an “Export frame to Lightroom” feature that would instantly open any video frame in Lightroom, for users to be able to use its much better tools, and have all of the adjustments instantly appear back in Premiere, with the ability to further refine as well as copy paste between clips. THAT would be a great new feature, rather than ramming a whole new interface down our throats and ditching Lumetri to boot.
Don’t ignore Reflection removal for nature & wildlife. If you have captive animals, usually birds, behind wire cages with a long telephoto that blurs out most but not all of the foreground wire mesh, try reflection removal. When it works it’s pretty impressive at cleaning it up. Agree with you on what AI should be doing for workflow rather than generative slop.
will the work I do here on the images be available if I open up the image in Lightroom too?
I think Adobe is trying to increase its recurring revenue, and AI credits are an easy way to do that, even if, in my opinion, they don’t really fit the purpose of photo editing software like Lightroom Desktop.
I don’t think it’s a completely crazy idea, either. I’m sure some people can benefit from having generative AI in Lightroom. But still, I think it should be a much higher priority to bring Lightroom Desktop up to speed with Camera Raw, which has quite a few features that still haven’t made it into Lightroom.
And what about Lightroom Classic? In its case, it’s even harder for Adobe to generate additional recurring revenue. With Lightroom Desktop, you pay for cloud storage — more photos, more storage, more money. With Lightroom Classic, you don’t even have that. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve felt for a long time that Lightroom Classic’s days are numbered. I’m afraid that sooner or later, Adobe will either discontinue it or simply keep it alive with minimal updates.
While I’m very unhappy with the current state of Lightroom Classic, and there are other things I’m critical of Adobe for, also understand that Adobe is a corporation, and at the end of the day, the bottom line comes first. Just like with any other company, I don’t think it’s fair to paint Adobe as greedy villains, either. In fact, they could charge for storing Smart Previews in the cloud or for using the Remove tool, but they don’t. After all, they have to make money somehow, too.
Thanks for your videos, as always! 👍
Regarding your “What about LR Classic?” question. I think 1) the name should help tell you it’s future and 2) the lack of anything related to classic coming from Adobe should definitely tell you all you need to know. Check out Adobe Max’s schedule. See if you can find a LR Classic class on the list (hint: there’s not). I think Adobe has already shown they’re keeping it alive with minimal updates right? 🙂
Will they ever take it away completely? I have no idea. But I already think we’re in “just keeping it alive” phase personally – it’s just that nobody really wants to admit it.
So glad to hear somebody finally say something about these generative AI credits. I’ve experimented with them and if the result doesn’t work or the AI simply gets it wrong, you’ve just wasted your credits.
That’s what I don’t like about where Adobe is going. AI should encourage experimentation, trying things, making adjustments, and redoing something when it doesn’t work. Instead, you’re penalized every time you try. It feels like a money grab.
I’m going to take your suggestion and start providing feedback. Adobe needs to hear from the creatives actually using these tools.