What new features in Lightroom 6 ?

[bitm07]

With Adobe Photoshop Lightoom 6 expected to be released later this year, what new featured would you like to see in the new version ?.

[areohbee]

* Fattened & robustened SDK.

* Bugs fixed.

* Performance improved.

FWIW, the feature set for Lr6 was probably set in stone a *long* time ago, so any suggestions will impact Lr7 or 8..., at the earliest.

PS - nothing wrong with having high hopes I guess, but I recommend maintaining low expectations - Adobe not sinking many resources into Lr these days, or so it seems from my point of view.

Cheers,

Rob

[D Fosse]

Performance actually seems to have improved dramatically since v4, but gradually and very silently. There's still some room for improvement, though. Most people would look to OpenGL as the logical next step for this, as it could take a huge load off the CPU (which certainly seems to be busy enough as it is). And Capture 1 does it.

But the engineers say it wouldn't speed anything up, so...

Personally I'd like some sort of CMYK support. And I'm sure so would all the Blurb users. But that's probably a major rewrite, so I suppose it's not going to happen.

[bitm07]

Thanks for the responses guy's

I'm not expecting a major upgrade either, it's already a great product that I would struggle to do without.   A new feature or two and little a tweak here and there would suffice for me.  Just adding White, Black, Vibrancy and Sharpening Mask sliders to the section brush and gradient tools would be enough to persuade me to upgrade. 

[areohbee]

bitm07 wrote:

A new feature or two and little a tweak here and there would suffice for me.  Just adding White, Black, Vibrancy and Sharpening Mask sliders to the section brush and gradient tools would be enough to persuade me to upgrade.

bitm07,

Worth noting: current saturation brush is a "vibrance-like" saturation - Eric Chan (member of Lr dev team) declined to go into details, but he said it's not the same as global saturation - more like global vibrance only not exactly... (personally, I'd love to see HSL added to the locals).

Eric also said we may not see too many more locals added due to design / performance limitations - but maybe they'll pull a rabbit out of their hat..

I would also love to see adjustment masking improved so painted corrections aren't so painstaking - the current auto-mask feature of the brush is barely usable in my opinion.

Regarding sharpening locals - I too would love to be able to vary not only sharpening mask but radius (and detail). Speaking of which - I think sharpness falloff lens correction would be a boon to image quality - I lump those together because an increased radius sharpening applied using a radial gradient (or better: multiple overlapping) is a fair approximation to a true (e.g. profile-based) falloff correction.

Regarding whites & blacks - they can't be adjusted locally, as you know, but you can kinda get the same effect by adjusting them globally, then using highlights and/or shadows sliders locally to compensate.

PS - I will be very surprised if face recognition is not in Lr6 (since there are signs of it in Lr5).

Cheers,

Rob

[bitm07]

Rob Cole wrote:

bitm07 wrote:

A new feature or two and little a tweak here and there would suffice for me.  Just adding White, Black, Vibrancy and Sharpening Mask sliders to the section brush and gradient tools would be enough to persuade me to upgrade.

Hi Rob

You've delved back along way in the thread to find that post.

Rob Cole wrote:

Worth noting: current saturation brush is a "vibrance-like" saturation - Eric Chan (member of Lr dev team) declined to go into details, but he said it's not the same as global saturation - more like global vibrance only not exactly... (personally, I'd love to see HSL added to the locals).

Yes, I've read in several publications that it's a cross between the global vibrancy and saturation sliders.

Rob Cole wrote:

Eric also said we may not see too many more locals added due to design / performance limitations - but maybe they'll pull a rabbit out of their hat..

Hopefully that's not why the 'Modify Graduated and Radial Filter masks with a brush' features weren't included in the Lightroom 5.5 update.  I've downloaded the 2014 Creative Cloud Photoshop CC trial just to try them out.  Expect they are just holding them back for LR6.

Rob Cole wrote:

I would also love to see adjustment masking improved so painted corrections aren't so painstaking - the current auto-mask feature of the brush is barely usable in my opinion.

I avoid using it when ever possible for that reason.

Rob Cole wrote:

Regarding whites & blacks - they can't be adjusted locally, as you know, but you can kinda get the same effect by adjusting them globally, then using highlights and/or shadows sliders locally to compensate.

In Photoshop I regularly apply levels to a selection, adding White and Black sliders would allow similar functionality in LR.

[josephp87120098]

I would love to see them redesign the library module to mimic Apple's Aperture.  It would make it so much easier to see your library of photos by stacking by events.

[Bob Somrak]

Why should Lightroom that is still available emulate the design of a discontinued program.

[josephp87120098]

That is an outstanding response. However, the same UI (Actually an enhance version) is to be used for Aperture’s replacement “Photos.” The library module is great but it is not outstanding. I believe that it could use an upgrade that makes it very easy to see by stacks of events. Yes - I truly understand the metadata search using the proper keywords to signal the the search engine to find. However, sometime when you go through stacks on Aperture it brings back memories and typically creates other visual cues for for identifying other desired relevant search. The searches are typically dependent on the author of the library versus other easily looking at stacks. Please understand I have been using LR 3, LR 4, LR 5 and soon LR 6 for years.

Have you ever tried the Aperture Library module?

[erickboileau]

The most important one is to be as good or better than capture One

[det1rac]

I agree with GPU support and better multi/core/processor usage.   Pre-processing also would be nice so there isn't any lag when you go to the next image.   LR should be assuming you will do this and start processing that work before you navigate to that image.  With SSDs and modern CPUs / RAM LR should be near realtime.

[jbmonco]

+1 for robustened

[bshamilton]

It is a great tool!

Great ideas, bitm07.

Perhaps even a color range type of selection option?

[bitm07]

bshamilton wrote:

It is a great tool!

Great ideas, bitm07.

Perhaps even a color range type of selection option?

Any method of changing individual colours in a selection would be great two.  It shouldn't be overly difficult for Adobe to implement either.

[elie-d]

My no. 1 request would be for brush/filter sharpening that is independent of the global (Detail) sharpening, so I could have, for instance, global high radius - usm - edge masked sharpening and locally applied low radius Smart Sharpening for detailed areas. LR's claimed implementation of Fraser Three Stage sharpening is kind of weak in the Creative stage at present.

[Awaken]

Completely agree. I want to be able to have 2 different sharpness settings!

[areohbee]

bshamilton wrote:

Perhaps even a color range type of selection option?

The ability to auto-select/mask adjustments based on HSL (and whatever else) would be a welcome addition to the develop tools.

Current auto-masking mode of brush leaves much to be desired.

Rob

[KevetS]

The option to purchase any additional modules the LR team may be planning would be (for me) a great feature.

I personally have no need of the map, book or web modules, so the option to purchase, or not purchase modules, would help prevent LR from becoming bloatware.

I can dream, can't I?

[JP Hess]

The Lightroom executable program is really quite small, a little over 4 MB. All of those different features are already modularized and Lightroom swaps out when using them. If you don't want to use certain modules you can uncheck them and they will be hidden from your view. And their existence Isn't really slowing Lightroom performance.

[widetrack12]

Some way to attach shooting notes to a photograph. Not to be viewed by a client, just personal notes as to how the photo was shot jusr for my reference.  Such as "sun low over left shoulder". As great a database as LR 5 is, it should be possible to included a section/field for shooting notes or additional info on the photo for reference instead of relying on memory or trying to coordinate another database or notes.

Allow adjustment brush to be active for HSL adjustments in addition to the standard adjustments.

Thanks

[areohbee]

widetrack12 wrote:

personal notes

This part is fairly easy to do now, by one of two ways:

* Borrow an existing (unused) IPTC field for your notes. (If you want to change the label in Lr, you can - via TranslatedStrings.txt).

* Use a plugin like jb's "Big Note", or my 'Custom Metadata'.

Consider jf's Metadata Viewer Preset Editor to have your notes in a tidy metadata set for viewing.

PS - Warning: a plug for plugins: so much of what people want out of Lr is already available via (cheap or free) plugins, but much of it is klunkily implemented due to SDK limitations - this being the reason I think Adobe might get more bang for their buck by simply robustening the SDK - there's a whole (small) world of plugin authors that will add the missing features, SDK-willing...

Granted many Lr users will do without desired features before stooping to a plugin - but that would change some, if plugins were slicker/better..

Rob

[JG_Coleman]

widetrack12 wrote:

Some way to attach shooting notes to a photograph. Not to be viewed by a client, just personal notes as to how the photo was shot jusr for my reference.  Such as "sun low over left shoulder". As great a database as LR 5 is, it should be possible to included a section/field for shooting notes or additional info on the photo for reference instead of relying on memory or trying to coordinate another database or notes.

Allow adjustment brush to be active for HSL adjustments in addition to the standard adjustments.

Thanks

Agree 100% about being able to enter notes.

I've always wished there was an ability to keep notes in Lightroom.  You've mentioned "Shooting Notes", which I think is a good idea.  Personally, I've always wanted "Develop Notes".

At any rate, a general "Notes" field would work in either case.  Each user could keep whatever notes they needed for each image and virtual copy.

Since day one I've always found myself wishing I had this feature; I've always sort of been baffled that it hasn't made its way into the software over the course of five versions.

That being said, it's  a small, mostly negligible, deficiency in an otherwise superb piece of software.  It just seems like such a simple, no-brainer addition which is low-overhead (in terms of the code required) and that most users would take advantage of at least every once in a while.  Maybe most people don't care about taking notes as much as I do?  I don't know, but I've got my fingers crossed for this one.

[Bob Somrak]

JG_Coleman wrote:

Agree 100% about being able to enter notes.

Why don't you just use the "User Comment" field.  I don't know what the limit is but you can put a bunch of stuff there.

[areohbee]

'User Comment' can be found in "EXIF" metadata viewing preset (or "EXIF and IPTC").

Edit: remainder of this post deleted - too far off-topic..

[Geoff in Africa]

I can only see User Comment in the EXIF Preset Rob, note the EXIF and IPTC.

Thanks Bob, I had never noticed that field as I usually have the dual info preset showing... I think I will use that a lot for my "comments"!!!