If you have the CC version of Lightroom, Adobe snuck a new feature in there (as well as some camera and lens updates) last week. If you get the update, you’ll actually see a screen the next time you launch Lightroom that show’s you what’s new. Mostly it’s performance updates and new support for cameras and lenses. But they did sneak in a new feature called Reference View.
Lightroom CC’s New Reference View
So what is Reference View. Well, it’s a way to let you compare a “reference” photo while editing another photo in the Develop module. Let’s say you saw a cool style on a photo and you want to try to reverse engineer it in the Develop module. Or maybe you’re shooting an event with lighting that was changing constantly and you want all of the photos from the event to have a similar style. Reference View let’s you pull up a photo along side of the photo you’re editing to use as a reference. I did a quick 4 minute video about it below, so you can check that out to see how it works.
So if you’re wondering what’s new in Lightroom CC that pretty much covers the December 2016 update. Thanks for stopping by! Have a good one 🙂
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.
Enjoyed the ‘reference and active’ video….the mechanics to finding the secret sauce becomes another teaching too…cool!
Matt, I read the description of the LR course but I’m wondering how extensive the discussion is of catalogues. I have a feeling I need to create a new one of my 60,000 photos and would like more understand of the ins and outs/pros and cons of doing so. Is that covered in the class?
I Vicki – here’s the outline for that part of the course. Section 15 below is probably the big part on catalogs.
SECTION 1: Organizing & Importing Your Photos (86 minutes)
1. Watch this first! How Lightroom Really Works
2. Where to store your photo library
3. Getting photos on to your photo drive
4. Quick Tip: Setting up the demo photos
5. What to do with existing photos
6. Making a Backup
7. Quick Tip: It’s Okay to Delete Now
8. Importing in to Lightroom (Part 1)
9. Importing in to Lightroom (Part 2)
10. Quick Tip: Where are your photos?
11. Moving/Changing photos and folders from within Lightroom
12. What to do when Lightroom can’t find your photos
13. Converting to DNG
14. Changing the capture time
15. Renaming Photos
16. Importing and Synchronizing Folders
SECTION 14: Backing Up Lightroom and Your Photos (34 minutes)
1. How Lightroom backup works
2. About backup drives
3. How to Mirror Your Backup drives
4. Creating a third “cloud” copy
5. Backing up the Lightroom catalog
6. Catastrophe strikes! How to restore from a backup
7. How to move to a larger backup system
SECTION 15: Catalogs (43 minutes)
1. What Is A Catalog?
2. Where to store the Lightroom catalog?
3. What if you want to move your photos?
4. How Many Photos Can A Catalog Hold?
5. Using Multiple Catalogs
6. How to Merge Multiple Catalogs?
7. Quick Tip: How does LR know what catalog to open?
8. Change the name of a catalog
9. What if my catalog becomes corrupt?
10. Backing up your catalog
11. Are my Lightroom changes visible elsewhere?
12. Using a Catalog on Laptop and Desktop
13. Moving Catalog and Lightroom to New Computer
14. Catalogs and networks
15. How to start over fresh
Thank you, Matt!
I think the reference tool would be great if you were putting together diptychs or triptychs. Even with all originals and pasting the develop settings, they don’t always match the way you may want so while you can get it very close, having one of the photos as a reference would allow for finer tweaks to make a stronger presentation of multiple photos.