After releasing the last update only two months ago, Adobe today released Lightroom Classic version 7.2 with performance improvements, small but very useful new features, support for new cameras, new lens profiles and bug fixes.

If you are a Lightroom Classic subscriber, to update to Lightroom Classic 7.2, go to Help>Updates, and in the Creative Cloud application, click on Update next to “Lightroom Classic CC” (not Lightroom CC or Lightroom CC 2015).  If the update is not listed in the CC app, click on the three dots in the top right and choose Check for App Updates. If it’s still not there and it’s the day of release, then try later. Otherwise try signing out and signing in again.

It’s never a bad idea to back up your Lightroom catalog before updating. If the Backup prompt doesn’t come up when you close Lightroom, then in the menu bar in the top left of Lightroom go to Lightroom (Mac) or Edit (PC) > Preferences, and on the General tab, change the Backup frequency dropdown to “When Lightroom Next Exits”. Then close Lightroom and backup your catalog. (The backup frequency will then revert to the selection you had previously.)

Note that there is no update to, and there will not be any more updates to, the non-subscription Lightroom 6 application – the last update was Lightroom 6.14, released in December, 2017.

Tom Hogarty of Adobe promised late last year that improving Lightroom Classic performance would be a top priority, and he and the Lightroom team have continued to deliver on that promise with this update. Note though that the team isn’t done – there will be more performance improvements in future releases. Improvements in this update focus on batch processes – exports, imports, merges, etc., as opposed to interactive response as you perform tasks.

Though everyone may see some improvement, performance improvements in 7.2 will be most evident on machines with 12+ GB of RAM (memory).  According to Priya Alexander of Adobe, “In this … Lightroom Classic 7.2 release, we were able to make significant strides with our partners at Intel on addressing key performance issues. We have optimized CPU and memory usage so that performance will scale better across multiple cores on computers with at least 12 GB of RAM.”

Performance Improvements:

• The issue of Lightroom slowing down over time has been fixed for most use-cases. If Lightroom still slows down over time for you, help Adobe resolve this by reporting your experience on this Adobe page. (Note that you may still see adjustment brush lags, especially if you use noise reduction and/or sharpening, as these are very resource-intensive.)
• Faster exports
• Faster loading of thumbnails in the Import dialog
• Faster imports and auto-imports
• Faster preview and smart preview generation
• Faster moving from image to image in Loupe view
• Faster rendering of Develop adjustments
• Faster HDR and Panorama merges

Generally speaking, the more RAM and the more cores you have, the more improvement you should see. That said, how much improvement you experience will be dependent on your entire system configuration.

NOTE: While 4 GB of RAM remains the absolute minimum for Lightroom Classic, the recommended minimum is now 12 GB. If you’re not happy with Lightroom’s performance and you have less, do look into adding more.

Here are some early performance test results from Puget Systems, DP Review, and from F-Stoppers.

In a very welcome addition to the Folders panel, now easily find folders with the new Folders filter!

Note that the full hierarchy of folders is displayed for a found folder – both parent folders and subfolders of the found folder.

The filter will search across all hard drives that you have in the Folders panel – but any that you had collapsed will remain collapsed, so be sure to expand them to see any folders found.

Now also filter on favorite folders – click on the magnifier icon to get the dropdown with All and Favorite Folders:

To mark a folder as a favorite, right-click on it and choose Mark as Favorite. Favorite folders now have a little star on the folder icon.

Known issues:

• When the Folder Filter box is cleared, enumeration of folders is slow. If the program is closed during this period, this process may continue in the background and prevent the user reopening Lightroom immediately.
• When turning off the filter or returning from Favorites to All, the order of hard drives in the Folders panel may change. Restarting Lightroom will resolve this.

With this convenient new feature we can automatically create collections from individual folders, and collections sets and collections from folder hierarchies. This is particularly useful if you use Lightroom mobile or web, since only collections can be synced, not folders. It’s also useful if you’re transitioning to the new cloud-based Lightroom CC, as you can migrate your collections and collections sets, but not your folders.

To create a collection from a folder, right-click on the folder and choose Create Collection...

To replicate all or part of your folder hierarchy as collection sets and collections, right-click on the highest level folder that you want to include, and choose Create Collection Set. In the Folders panel in the screenshot below left, I right-clicked on Photos Go Here and chose Create Collection Set. This gave me a hierarchy of collection sets for Photos Go Here and years within it, and collections for each of my date/shoot folders.

Filter on whether photos have edits or not using the Library Filter bar or smart collections. In the Library Filter bar, Edited/Unedited appears in both the Attribute section and the Metadata section.

In the Attribute section, the first button is Edited and the second is Unedited. Note that if you click on Edited, clicking then on Unedited doesn’t turn the Edited criterion off! Instead both are turned on and you have photos that are edited and photos that are not edited. To turn the Edited filter off, click on it a second time. This holds also for Unedited.

Metadata section:

Known issues:

• I am finding this to be buggy at this point: photos with no edits (as evidenced by no edit badges) sometimes show in the Attribute filter as Edited if there is a “From Lr Mobile” Develop history state. For these photos, Metadata Edit filter count shows Unedited, but grid shows Edited.

Click here for a comprehensive video tutorial on how to search for photos (filter) using Lightroom’s Library Filter bar.

You can also filter in smart collections for whether photos have edits – use the Has Edits field for images that have adjustments and/or have been cropped, or Has Adjustments for just adjustments.

Right-click on a Map pin in the Map module to create a collection with all photos from that location:

Raw files from the following new cameras can now be imported:

• Fujifilm X-A5
• Fujifilm X-A20
• Panasonic LUMIX DC-GF10 (DC-GF90)
• Panasonic LUMIX DC-GH5s

Click here to see a list of all cameras supported in each version of Lightroom (and Camera Raw).

Here are the customer-reported bugs that were fixed:

• Info overlay disappears when moving between modules
• Watermark omitted from embedded thumbnails of exported JPEGs

Other bugs have been fixed that Adobe discovered internally or that its partners reported – so even though a bug that was affecting you isn’t listed here as fixed, it’s possible that it was.

If you are experiencing bugs, please report them to Adobe on this webpage.

What’s New in Lightroom CC Desktop 1.2, and in Lightroom CC iOS and Android