photoshop cs6

More than three years after Photoshop CS6 was released in May, 2012, Adobe has announced that it will no longer update the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) plugin incorporated in CS6 with support for new cameras or new lens profiles. The ACR update released today, 9.1.1, will be the last one.

Implications for Photoshop CS 6 Users Who Also Use Lightroom 6/CC

As of the next update to Lightroom (presumably 6.2), your Photoshop ACR plugin will no longer be as up-to-date as Lightroom. Therefore, you’ll get the following dialog when you choose to edit a raw image in Photoshop (right-click>Edit in…>Photoshop CS6):

render-using-lightroom-camera-raw

From this dialog, choose to render the image using Lightroom – Lightroom will create the PSD or TIFF file and hand it off to Photoshop, bypassing the now out-of-date Camera Raw. The only difference you’ll notice with this workflow is that the PSD or TIFF file gets created and saved even if you exit out of Photoshop without doing any work to the file. Simply delete it from within Lightroom if you don’t wish to retain it.

Additional Implications for Photoshop CS 6 Users Who Don’t User Lightroom 6/CC

If you purchase a new camera that is not supported, you’ll need to convert your raw files to the Adobe DNG format before you can edit them in ACR or Photoshop.

Here’s the Adobe announcement of this new policy of not updating Camera Raw for Photoshop CS6, with more information on converting raw files to DNG.