Lightroom Classic users have been asking for a roadmap for the product for this year, and Adobe has responded, laying out the team’s general direction for 2020. Lisa Ngo, Adobe Lightroom Classic Product Manager, in her blog post laying out what was new in the February 2020 update, wrotewrote (bold added by me):
As fellow photographers and creatives, we care about the impact all Lightroom products have on our customers. We’ve been listening to your feedback and requests and we’re excited to share what’s coming out today and a preview of what we are actively working on for 2020.
For Lightroom Classic, performance, quality, and stability have all been a primary focus for our team. Since October 2018, we’ve released significant performance updates like GPU (graphics processing unit) accelerated editing, faster and more stable tethering, Library improvements, and more. But we’re not done. The team is constantly testing and re-evaluating the speed and quality of new and existing features, and in 2020 we are working to deliver more GPU-enabled functionality to get you to your “done” point smoother and faster.
Image editing, organizing, and workflow efficiency are also important functions to Lightroom Classic that we want to continually improve for both new and long-time customers. Within the last year and a half, we’ve added key updates like the Texture slider, Flat Field Correction, HDR and Panorama Merge, collection color labels, PNG support, AI-empowered features such as Enhance Details and Panorama Fill Edge, and much more.
Adobe is dedicated to developing the best in class tools and experiences to help all photographers find and express their visions. That’s why we’re actively investing in more Develop tools (including [artificial intelligence/machine learning] features), workflow optimization, as well as refining the interface and experience to empower photographers of all levels to achieve desired results faster and easier than ever before. As customers of our own product, we’re personally excited to share these upcoming updates with you in 2020 and the years to come.
Read Lisa’s full blog post here.
Read my blog post on what’s new in the February 2020 Lightroom Classic release here.
Now that the cloud-based Lightroom is two years old and gets more features with almost every update, some Lightroom Classic users are asking whether Classic will continue to be developed and supported by Adobe. Given that the two Lightroom products have different strengths and appeal to different users, and given that Adobe is clearly working to improve and refine Classic, I don’t believe that Classic’s demise is around the corner – my own bet is that Adobe will continue to develop and support it as long as customers continue to subscribe to and use it.
I have not updated to Mac Catalina or to the 2 latest updates if LR Classic because of the huge number of problems raised in the Adobe Photoshop Forum. When will it be safe to upgrade both LR and Apple IOS?????
Sorry for the delay, Darryll. Regarding Catalina, there are not many issues with Lightroom Classic compatibility. Most of those that there were were fixed several releases ago. Here’s the list of known issues: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/macos-catalina-compatibility.html#Knowncompatibilityissues.I consider it generally safe to upgrade (but I never promise smooth-sailing for 100.0% of people.)
Regarding the last couple of Classic updates: over 300 bugs were fixed in the 9.2 release, and I’m not seeing a lot of reported problems with 9.2 listed as acknowledged (which indicates that Adobe has agreed that there is a bug), particularly affecting many users.
Bottom line, there will always be some bugs, but these releases look solid to me. If you update and find that there’s a bug that negatively affects you, you can use the Creative Cloud app to revert.
Thank you Laura. Your reply and information provided are much appreciated..