What’s New in Lightroom CC Desktop, iOS and Android – February 2019 Release | Laura Shoe's Lightroom Training Tutorials and Tips

What's New in Lightroom CC Desktop, iOS and Android Adobe today released version 2.2 of the Lightroom CC cloud-based desktop application, along with Lightroom CC iOS 4.2 and Android 4.2. In addition to bug fixes, new camera support and new lens profiles, the desktop application received significant new features, including panorama stitching, HDR multiple-exposure merging,the Target Adjustment Tool, an Enhanced Detail process to optionally re-render raw files to potentially improve the quality of fine details, clipping indicators and more. In comparison, the iOS and Android releases are minor.

An update to Lightroom Classic CC was also released – see my Lightroom Classic article for details on this.

If you previously were prompted to agree to auto-update Lightroom CC Desktop and if you agreed, then go to Help>System Info to verify that you are now using version 2.2. Otherwise to update to 2.2, go to Help>Updates, and on the Apps tab click on Update next to Lightroom CC (not Lightroom Classic or Lightroom CC 2015!).

To update mobile, find the Lightroom CC app in the iOS App Store or the Android app in the Google Play store and update.

In This Article:

Support for New Cameras
New Lens Profiles
Lightroom CC Desktop: Panorama and HDR Merges
Lightroom CC Desktop: Target Adjustment Tool
Lightroom CC Desktop: Enhance Raw File Details
Lightroom CC Desktop: Miscellaneous
Lightroom CC iOS
Lightroom CC Android and ChromeOS

(These links to sections below may or may not work depending on what device and system you are using. If they don’t, scroll down.)

New Cameras Now Supported

No new cameras were added to the supported list this time.

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

New Lens Profiles

These new lens profiles are available throughout the Lightroom CC ecosystem, as well as in Lightroom Classic CC:

Nikon

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR
Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR + 1.4x
Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR + 1.7x
Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR + 2.0x

Click here for a list of all lens profiles available in Lightroom.

Lightroom CC Desktop: Photomerge Panorama and HDR

Now stitch panoramas together and merge multiple exposures with Photomerge Panorama, HDR, and HDR Panorama!

Photomerge Panorama

Photomerge HDR

Watch my video tutorial below to learn how to use Lightroom CC’s Photomerge Panorama, HDR and HDR Panorama, or read on below the video for highlights.

For best quality, after hitting Play click on the sprocket wheel in the bottom right and choose 720/HD.

Click Here for Basic Written Panorama and HDR Instructions

1. Photomerge Panorama

Select your source files – the editing and the file name of the first image you select will be inherited by the panorama file.
Right-click in one of the thumbnails and choose Photomerge>Panorama Merge.
Choose projection method Spherical, Cylindrical or Perspective – whichever looks best.
Use Boundary Warp and/or Auto Crop to eliminate white areas. (Cropping can always be revised afterwards.)

The resulting panorama file is automatically stacked together with the source files. (Click on the number in the top right of the thumbnail to expand or collapse the stack. The panorama is a DNG file, with the filename “source #1 filename – Pano.dng”. If your source files are raw files, then this DNG is also a raw file, with all of the editing advantages of raw files. (Since it has been demosaiced, or rendered, you can’t run the new Enhanced Details process on it – if interested, run that on your raw source files before stitching the panorama.)

2. Photomerge HDR

Dark areas in images are very noisy and lack detail. Where your scene is static, it can therefore be very beneficial to capture two exposures -one for the highlights, not blowing them out, and then one for the shadows – as bright as possible without blowing the shadows out but letting the highlights blow out.) Three exposures would be warranted if the scene has a very wide range of tones. Adobe experts recommend this approach rather than capturing many exposures very close together (e.g. 7 at 1/3 stop increments). To merge them:

Select your source files – the editing and the file name of the first image you select will be inherited by the HDR file. Otherwise the order they appear does not matter – Lightroom will analyze image content to order.
Right-click in one of the thumbnails and choose Photomerge>HDR Merge.
Auto-align the images and choose whether to have Lightroom give you a start on editing, with Auto Settings.
If elements in your images may have moved between exposures, such as trees blowing in the wind, apply deghosting so that you don’t end up with ghosting, with these elements repeated 2+ times with slight offsets. The Deghost Overlay shows where Lightroom detects ghosting issues.

As with a panorama, the resulting HDR file is stacked with the source files, it’s a DNG file – raw if your source files were raw – with the filename “source #1 filename – HDR.dng”, and Enhanced Details cannot be run on it.

3. Photomerge HDR Panorama

Capture multiple exposures of each frame in a panorama and then merge them together in one step:

For all panorama frames, he exposures must be captured in the same order and they must have the same difference in exposure – for example Frame 1 dark exposure, Frame 1 light exposure (+ 2 stops), Frame 2 1 dark exposure, Frame 2 light exposure (+ 2 stops).
Select your source files – the editing and the file name of the first image you select will be inherited by the HDR file. Otherwise order doesn’t matter.
Right-click in one of the thumbnails and choose Photomerge>HDR Panorama Merge.
Choose desired panorama settings (see above). You can’t choose HDR settings – images are automatically aligned, and no deghosting is applied. If you wish to apply deghosting, then do HDR merges and then Panorama merges, rather than both in one step.

Lightroom CC Desktop: Target Adjustment Tool

Now easily target and enhance specific colors and tones in your photo by dragging in your photo with the Target Adjustment Tool. This is a very welcome addition to the Color Mixer and Tone Curve panels in Lightroom CC – and the design of the T.A.T. is more elegant than the Lightroom Classic CC version!

Watch my video tutorial on the Target Adjustment Tool below, or read on below the video for written instructions.

For best quality, after hitting Play click on the sprocket wheel in the bottom right and choose 720/HD.

Click Here for Written Targeted Adjustment Tool Instructions

The Target Adjustment Tool (TAT) is available in the Color Mixer panel within Color, and the Tone Curve panel within Light. It allows you to drag in the image to adjust individual colors or ranges of tones.

Adjust Individual Colors with the TAT in the Color Mixer

Open the Color panel and then click on the Color Mixer icon (#1 above).
Click on the Target Adjustment Tool circle icon (#2).
In the Options panel at the bottom of your image choose to adjust Hue, Saturation or Luminance (brightness). Hue will shift the color towards another.
Move your cursor to the color you want to edit. The top circle (#4) is where Lightroom will sample the color. The other circles (#5) show what colors Lightroom is finding in the top circle (#4). Their relative size reflects how much of that color is present – if the sizes are equal, those two colors will be adjusted equally.
Drag to the right to increase, to the left to decrease – not up and down like in Lightroom Classic CC!
To switch to the Tone Curve TAT click on the curve icon (#6).
To close the TAT, click on the X (#7) or click back on the TAT icon (#2).

Adjust Individual Tones with the TAT in the Tone Curve

Open the Light panel and then click on the Tone Curve icon (#1 above).
Click on the Target Adjustment Tool circle icon (#2).
In the Options panel at the bottom of your image choose to adjust the parametric curve (best choice for beginners – requires no understanding of the graph), or one of the point curves – Luminance, Red, Green, Blue.
Move your cursor to the tone you want to edit. The circle is where Lightroom will sample the tone. If using the parametric curve, it will indicate whether that area falls in Highlights, Lights, Darks, or Shadows.
Drag to the right to brighten/increase, to the left to darken/decrease – don’t drag up and down like in Lightroom Classic CC!
To switch to the Color Mixer TAT, click on the curve icon (#5).
To close the TAT, click on the X (#6) or click back on the TAT icon (#2).

Lightroom CC Desktop: Enhance Raw File Details

Enhance Details is a new process that can potentially improve the quality of very fine detail and reduce artifacts and moire in raw files. It re-renders your raw file using a more sophisticated rendering (demosaicing) algorithm that is derived from artificial intelligence machine learning techniques. While it can potentially be useful to everyone (when displaying large – i.e. printing), there is more potential improvement with images captured with Fuji X-Trans sensors – Lightroom’s rendering of Nikon, Canon and other manufacturers’ raw files was already very good; there was more room for improvement with Fuji images.

While this feature does sometimes improve fine detail quality, I had to look through many, many images to find a few that show significant improvements – and in most cases I have to zoom way in to see the differences.

In this old Canon image, zoomed to 4:1, blue/yellow edges in the unenhanced version are very choppy and there are artifacts surrounding the edges. These are notably reduced in the enhanced version. As I discuss in my full Enhanced Detail article and video tutorial, blue against yellow (or orange or red) is a special circumstance where the regular Lightroom algorithm has trouble. All else equal it is easier to see improvements in small files such as this 8 MP one – so you may be able to now get more out of your old digital images, as well as out of small crops from large files.

Canon 8 MP Image, zoomed to 4:1

(These differences may be too subtle to see on high resolution monitors – try reducing your monitor resolution or try your own examples)

Lightroom Classic/CC Enhanced Details

Fuji owners have seen issues with how Lightroom’s regular algorithm renders images from X-Trans sensors. such as more false colors. The Enhanced Details algorithm does a significantly better job in certain circumstances.

Fuji X-Trans 24 MP image, zoomed to 4:1:

Image courtesy of Adobe Product Manager Josh Haftel (Instagram: @joshhaftel)

To run Enhanced Details – in Mac OS 10.13 and higher, Windows 10 Oct 2018 release (1809) and newer – right-click in your raw file and choose Enhanced Details. This will not overwrite your original raw file, it will produce a new DNG file – with a file size of 2-5 times larger than the original.

Click here to go to my video tutorial and article covering Enhanced Details.

Lightroom CC Desktop: Miscellaneous

Clipping Indicators

Now display what areas of your photos are blown out (completely overexposed, pure white) and blocked up (completely underexposed, pure black). Show the histogram by clicking on the three dots (#1 below) and choosing Show Histogram. To display in red areas that are blocked up (shadows clipped), click on the triangle above the histogram to the left (#2). To display areas blown out (highlights clipped), click on the triangle above to the right (#3).

Shadow and Highlight Clipping Indicators in Lightroom CC Desktop

Don’t forget to click back on these triangles to turn the indicators off – the question, “Why are parts of my image red / blue?” is a common one in the forums.

Search by Album Name

Type part of an album name to jump to that album. To find all photos that are not in any album, type album: and then select “Not in any album”.

Web Sharing Options

Some of the shared album webpage design options that previously we had to go to lightroom.adobe.com to access have now made their way into Lightroom CC Desktop. To access these for an album already shared to the web, right-click on the album and choose Share Settings. When initially sharing an album (right-click on the album>Share to Web), click on Customize.

Choose from Photo Grid, One Up and Column formats, and Dark vs. Light background. Note that at lightroom.adobe.com we can break the album into sections with heading and subheadings for each – this still isn’t possible in Lightroom CC Desktop.

Disable People Analysis

To stop Lightroom from analyzing your images for faces, go to Lightroom (Mac) or Edit (PC) > Preferences, and on the General tab, and click on the People View switch to turn it off:

Disable People View in LIghtroom CC

As the message says, you’ll still see people in People View that were previously named or grouped together as being similar faces, but no further analysis will take place and the data derived from your images that Lightroom uses to assess face similarity will be deleted off of Adobe’s servers.
If you re-enable People view analysis, allow 90 minutes for this to take effect.

Lightroom CC iOS (iPad and iPhone)

Ad hoc shares: Now share individual photos or selections of multiple photos to the web (without sharing an entire album). Select photo(s), then tap on the three-dot menu in the top right in Loupe view or the Share icon in Grid view, then Share to Web.
Within Presets, there is now a Show Partially Incompatible Presets setting that defaults to on. To access, in Edit, tap on Presets, then on the three-dots-in-a-circle icon in the top right. With this setting off, presets that, for example, include a profile applicable only to raw files, would not display when you’re editing a JPEG. With the setting on, the preset would display and could be applied, minus the profile.
Adobe reports that they have focused “primarily on behind-the-scenes updates and preparation for exciting features that will be coming soon.”