Lightroom Classic 16.0 Is Here: AI Blemish Removal, Depth Maps, and Glow Effects ✨

Lightroom Classic 16.0 is here! The November 2026 release gives you new ways to retouch portraits, shape light and color, make precise local adjustments, and streamline your everyday workflow.

The Highlights

• Vectorscope makes it to LrC: Check color accuracy in the Histogram panel by choosing a preview color space and evaluating hue, saturation, color casts, and skin tones.

• New Glow effects and styles: Go soft, dreamy, or cinematic with Bloom, Halation, and Diffusion, plus five new selected styles.

• Color Grading in masks: Adjust shadows, midtones, and highlights independently inside selected masked areas.

• Auto Focus Overlay: See supported camera focus points right on your original Canon, Nikon, or Sony raw images in the Library and Develop modules. Right-click in Loupe view and select Show Autofocus Points to see exactly where your lens locked focus.

• AI-powered blemish removal tool: Automatically detects and removes skin blemishes, moles, and freckles. Fine-tune with the Remove and Restore brushes, and edit individual faces one at a time.

• AI-generated depth maps: Select foreground, background, and everything in between, even when your image has no embedded depth information.

• Customizable Masking panel: Rearrange masking sections, add the sliders you use most to Favorites, and adjust how controls are displayed.

• Improved import filtering: Filter photos by file type, in-camera ratings, color labels, or protected status with the redesigned import filter bar. You can also use these same filters in Assisted Culling to narrow down your best shots.

• History Step Cleanup: Clear your edit history manually across multiple photos, folders, or collections, or schedule an automatic cleanup to shrink your catalog. Your current image appearance stays as is.

• Fix stretched faces: Correct edge and corner stretching in wide-angle group shots and selfies using the new Projection slider in Upright modes.

• Extended Temperature Range: Warmer images get more room, with expanded Temp slider limits, down to 1500 for raw and -150 for non-raw files.

• Expanded cameras and lenses support: More tethered cameras, newly supported camera models, and more lenses.

Bugs squashed, thanks to you! 🐛

• Syncing photos to the cloud no longer gets stuck in the uploading state.
• (macOS) Memory usage no longer keeps climbing until Lightroom Classic crashes
• Lightroom Classic no longer becomes unresponsive when you update location metadata in the Map module.
• After a restart, the GPS badge on a photo no longer shows the wrong location in the Map module.
• Previews for certain photos with Content Credentials no longer fail to render or get stuck loading.

See the full list of fixed issues.

Your turn 👂

Once you've explored Lightroom Classic 16.0, tell us what's making the biggest difference in your workflow. Are you using AI blemish removal on portraits, playing with Glow, or finding new possibilities with depth maps and Color Grading in masks? Share what you're trying, what's working, and what you'd like to see next.