Does anyone at Adobe ever sleep? The latest version of Lightroom is now available to members of Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography program or as an upgrade for those who have a Lightroom 5 perpetual license. It's an upgrade you won't want to miss because of the new and improved features.
Digital cameras can do some remarkable things, but the camera — whether film or digital — is just the starting point. In the days when film was king, magic happened in a darkroom that smelled like a chemistry lab. Today's post-camera magic happens at the computer thanks to Adobe Lightroom.
This is the best I could do with a single exposure. The highlights are blown out and there's no detail in the shadows. This is the middle ("correct exposure") image that the camera created when I set it to make bracketed exposures at 2 stops over, 2 stops under, and "correct".
This image has details in the midrange, but the rest of the image — not so much. I can throw this image away.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
Press Esc to dismiss the larger image.
This is the exposure that's 2 stops over. The shadows have details, but the highlights are unrecoverable.
By itself, this is a horrible image.
At 2 stops under, we have detail in the highlighted area, but the shadows are blocked up and the details is lost.
By itself, this is a horrible image.
Adobe provided 2 example images that I could use to show off the HDR merge, but you know me: I'd prefer to pick my own images and preferably ones that will challenge the process.
So here we have 2 images that differ by a total of 4 f/stops when Adobe recommends 2 f/stops. Part of the image is in direct sunshine and the rest is dark wood in the shadows. It's a difficult test.
One of the most surprising features of Lightroom is that you don't need 3 or 5 or 7 (or even 9) images to create an HDR image. Instead, you need just 2 images, one should be 1 or 2 stops overexposed and the other 1 or 2 stops underexposed.
The images can be raw, too, instead of processed TIFFs as is the requirement with most applications that create HDR images.
There's not a lot to select, either. Lightroom's defaults seem to be accurate. Adobe recommends images that be 1 stop over and 1 stop under, but you know that I never give software the benefit of the easy path, so these are 2 stops over and 2 stops under.
The Deghost Amount adjustment is useful for images in which motion has occurred, such as in leaves or foliage in the wind.
Here's the result of Lightroom's merge of just two images, one of which is 2 stops overexposed and the other of which is 2 stops underexposed. I keep repeating this because the entire process seems so magical.
You'll see detail even in the deepest shadows and none of the highlights are blown out.
My socks: Blown off. This is an amazing image!
Adobe provides reviewers with files that can be used to understand how new features work, but I prefer to work with my own images when possible and to make those images difficult for the application to deal with. A lot of people choose a wide angle lens when creating a panorama. That's a bad idea, so I elected to use a slight telephoto lens (a 55-250mm zoom lens at 55mm, which is the equivalent of 88mm on a full-frame 35mm camera.)
The camera should be set to manual exposure to avoid differences from frame to frame and auto-focus should be turned off. I did that, too.
Ideally a camera that's capturing images for a panorama should be on a tripod, but I held the camera by hand. In most cases, the software expects the images to proceed from left to right, so I captured the images from right to left. And finally, panoramas often work best when the images are taken in vertical format, so I used horizontal format.
Also, common sense suggests creating two or three groups of panorama images and I created just one. My starting point was 10 raw images, each about 28MB. That's one of the first points to note about Lightroom's panorama merge: It uses raw files, which means that it will have an enormous amount of information to work with.
I selected the 10 raw images and started the process by right-clicking one of the pictures and choosing Photo Merge - Panorama from the menu.
Panoramas require a projection type, but by default Lightroom will automatically select one for your images. Unless you understand exactly why you might prefer spherical, cylindrical, or perspective projection, I recommend allowing Lightroom to make the choice.
Now you might think that this would be a good time to go out for lunch, or perhaps an extended ocean voyage. After all, we've just asked Lightroom to analyze 10 raw images, figure out that they're in reverse order, determine how to stitch them together, and provide a preview.
But no.
A few seconds later the preview appears. Yes, seconds. And this is on a computer that's several years old. Granted, it has a lot of memory and I had the foresight to buy a fast processor when I assembled this computer, but still.
Lightroom selected spherical projection. If you want to see what cylindrical or perspective projection looks like, click the appropriate button and Lightroom will quickly modify the preview. As it is, all that's left for me to do is click the Merge button.
While Lightroom created the finished panorama (the process took about 2 minutes) I continued to work on other tasks in the program. This is possible because the merge runs in the background. And here it is. My panorama is ready. It's 30,994 pixels wide and the file size is 469MB! Because the camera was hand-held, cropping is required to eliminate areas with no data.
Here's the finished image. If you want to see the full 30,994-pixel image, click the image below to download it.
WARNING: Even as a JPG, it's 12MB
What happens if you want to identify the people in 47,975 images in Lightroom, some in old pictures from scanned slides and film and others from more than 10 years of digital photography — and you haven't bothered to tag most of them with names? Facial Recognition is some additional new magic that scans (your choice) only the images you're currently looking at or every image on the disk. It then identifies similar faces and allows you to add names.
Let me say at this point that choosing to search the entire catalog was probably not the best decision, particularly during the week in which I was attempting to review all of the new features. The task goes to the background and it's possible to do other work in Lightroom while the program looks for faces, but it still takes a long time.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
Press Esc to dismiss the larger image.
As the process continues, you can select one or more images of a person whose identity you've confirmed and Lightroom will begin suggesting other pictures that might contain the same person. I selected some pictures of me scanned from slides. Lightroom then suggested other images that might be me as a child. Some of them were, but some of the pictures were of my daughters when they were about the same age. Others weren't close matches at all.
What's nice about this, though, is that you can select several, dozens, or possibly even hundreds of images that Lightroom suspects contain the same person and then, with a single click, accept them all. The names are added to the meta-data as special "name" tags. They're special because, unlike other meta-tags, they are not exported with images. With a nod to privacy and security, these special tags are retained only on your computer. Other meta-data (type of camera, exposure values, and such) will be exported with images. The names are not.
Lightroom may surprise you with the faces it finds. One of the images was a photo of the former mayor of Columbus in a parade. The head size is tiny, yet Lightroom thought that I might want to identify him.
Undoubtedly you're wondering how long the process took. I'm not entirely certain, but my guess is that Lightroom scanned nearly 48,000 files and exported faces from them in approximately 10 to 14 hours. All I know for sure is that the process had been continuing for several hours when I went to bed and that it was complete only after I left the house the next morning.
Adobe made some impressive improvements to the slide show module in this version. The slide show feature was introduced at the beginning, but it hasn't received a lot of attention for several versions. It's not like Adobe's software engineers have been busy with anything else!
Lightroom 6 adds several new features: The pan and zoom option (think "Ken Burns") is in its first iteration. It's an all-or-nothing feature, so we should probably expect some enhancements in future versions. The module also now is able to listen to your soundtrack, detect beats, and transition from one image to another on the beat. This is another first-iteration feature and sometimes the beat it detects is too fast for comfortable transitions. Perhaps an option is coming that would allow the user to specify transitions on every third, fourth, or fifth beat.
There isn't enough here to compete with applications that are designed explicitly to create slide shows, but it's an excellent addition to the world's most versatile photography work-flow application.
Although access to Lightroom files via lightroom.adobe.com isn't new with this release, now would be a good time to take a look at it if you haven't already. Adobe provides 2 GB of storage space and you might think that's not very much for a backup system. You would be right except for one thing: It's not intended to be a backup system.
Web access to Lightroom files is intended to provide a way to view and share work-in-process files and to store commonly used images or other design elements for use by various Creative Cloud applications. Let's say you've visited The Wilds, the Columbus Zoo's remarkable animal preserve in eastern Ohio. Perhaps you've taken 500 pictures and now it's time to work through them, mark the rejects, and flag others for later review. Instead of doing this at the computer, you'd prefer to sit in an easy chair with your tablet or phone. Or maybe the pictures are at home and you'd like to review them during lunch at the office, or perhaps share them with some of you co-workers.
That's what this service is for. You can review the entire group of images and flag them for review, flag them for deletion, and rate them (1 through 5 stars). When you return home, you'll find the flags and ratings have been applied to the images on your desktop computer.
There's also a no-frills slide show option on lightroom.adobe.com.
Gradient filters are wonderful. In days long gone, photographers could buy radial filters for their lenses and use them to darken and add detail to a sky without affecting exposure on the ground. The trouble with filters on lenses was that you had only a single chance to get it right.
Lightroom's gradient filters can be applied, modified, rotated, adjusted and even have additional components added — not just darkening but modifying color and tint, contrast, highlights and shadows, sharpness and detail, and more. But the trouble with Lightroom's gradient filters is that no matter how they're applied they're gradients. As a result, they may affect parts of an image that you would prefer not to affect with the filter.
The image shown here is the original.
Lightroom 6 provides an answer to that problem: A new filter brush. To demonstrate it, I'll use an image provided by Adobe because it's an excellent example of the kind of image that would need this treatment. The image has a bright sky that it somewhat washed out and an irregularly shaped rock in the foreground. A gradient filter applied to this image will either leave some of the sky unaffected or the filter will affect the rock. Both of those options are bad, but adding needless modifications to the darker area is usually the better of the 2 bad choices.
That's how I proceeded with this image, applying the filter from the sky down into the area of the rock. But that makes the rock too dark. To fix that problem, all I need do is use the filter brush to remove the effect from the areas of the image where I don't want it.
I'll start with the orignal raw image and step through the entire process. Whenever I import a new image, I turn on 2 actions by default to enable lens profile corrections and remove chromatic abberation. In this image, I've applied those actions. You'll notice slight improvements over the basic lens geometry.
Nearly any raw image needs a clarity boost, so I've applied that and also increased the vibrance a bit.
Vibrance and saturation are similar controls, but vibrance is more subtle.
Next, I selected the sky color and reduced the lumanance a bit to darken the sky and add apparent detail.
Now it's time to add the gradient filter.
I reduced the color temperature a bit (introducing more blue), dropped the exposure, and increased both contrast and sharpness a bit.
The result is fine for the sky, but not so good on the rock and the distance hills and buildings.
When I turned on the mask visibility, the problem was obvious. The gradient filter (shown in red here) extends into areas where the reduced exposure and color modifications aren't wanted.
By enabling the Filter Brush, I was able to paint away the gradient filter in the areas where I didn't want it.
And here's the result. All of the effects are somewhat more pronounced than I would like them to be normally. I did this to clearly illustrate the differences between the original image and the modified image.
This is the kind of change that would be trivial to make in Photoshop with layers and masks. It is a very welcome addition to Lightroom.
You'll see some of the next images in magazine reviews and on other websites because they're provided by Adobe. I chose to use them in addition to the images I created because they provide additional information about the improvements in this version.
The images are in 3 sets, two groups that will be used to create panorama images and one group to create a high dynamic range image.
This is a challenging panorama because it's an interior photograph. The photographer used vertical format and covered a relatively narrow angle. The perspective projection works better for this series of images.
Here's the preview that Lightroom offered.
And here's the final result.
Here are 2 images that are both disappointing in that neither captured what the photographer saw. The image on the left has good detail in the sky, but the flowers are too dark. The image on the right had good detail in the flowers, but the sky is completely washed out.
The key to Lightroom's ability to create an outstanding HDR image such as this from just 2 images is its reliance on raw images.
Extreme wide angle lenses are are expensive and generally don't get a lot of use. In addition to that, expensive extreme wide angle lenses tend to introduce linear distortion unless you have pockets deep enough to purchase astonishingly expensive extreme wide angle lenses. Even worse, most digital cameras have APS-C sensors, which means that they crop the image and effectively magnify the lens's angle of view.
So a 16mm lens has the effective view of a 24mm lens on a standard 35mm camera. That still a wide angle, but nowhere near what would be required to capture a panoramic view. For those times when you need a truly wide view, there's nothing better than the ability to stitch one together from a series of images.
Here's what Lightroom suggested for this series of images. In this case, I've also selected Auto Crop so that Lightroom will eliminate parts of the merged image that are without data.
The cropping is non destructive. Even if you select Auto Crop, the full image is still saved.
Here's the finished image. If you want to see the full 16,757-pixel image, click the image below to download it.
WARNING: Even as a JPG, it's 27MB
Some panoramas, particularly indoor images, are created from layers of images: A top layer of horizontal images, a middle layer, and a bottom layer. Just to give Lightroom 6 something to choke on, I gave it 12 images — 3 each with the camera pointed up, level, and down. Once again, I held the camera by hand instead of using a tripod.
Here's the starting point:
And the result:
Want to see the full 8304 by 11,390-pixel image? Download a 27MB JPG copy.
Lightroom is the most comprehensive photography work flow application available.There's no question that Lightroom deserves its 5-cat rating. There is simply no other application that does so much and does it so well. Adobe is continuing its policy of offering Lightroom as a Creative Cloud component or with a perpetual license. I feel that the best value for photographers is the $10-per-month program that includes Lightroom and Photoshop. If that seems like a lot of money, consider how much you would pay for just film and processing every month if you were still using film. If you want just the Lightroom perpetual license, expect to pay $140 to $150. Upgrades from version 5 are $80. I'll let you do the math.
More information is available on the Adobe website:
Developers of the Internet of Things (IoT) seem to have learned little from history. Security is questionable at best as we race to connect every possible device with every other possible device. Perhaps it's time for someone to think about the risks. And perhaps somebody is.
That somebody is BT, formerly known as British Telecom. BT says that it is the world's oldest communications company. The Electric Telegraph Company, incorporated in 1846, developed a nationwide communications network in Britain. This week, BT announced the launch of "BT Assure Ethical Hacking for Vehicles", a new security service developed to test the exposure of connected vehicles to cyber-attacks and help all market players develop security solutions.
Connected vehicles, which range from passenger cars to trucks and buses, and can also include vehicles such as bulldozers and fork lifts, rely Wi-Fi and Bluetooth or other mobile data links to provide on-board features and value-added services. Connectivity allows predictive systems to bypass traffic jams, reduce carbon emissions, improve safety, and increase vehicle performance.
But the prevalence of these technologies raises concerns about the ability of hackers to gain access to and control of the essential functions and features of those vehicles as well as for others to use information on drivers' habits for commercial purposes without the consent — or even the knowledge — of the operators.
BT says that its goal is to identify vulnerabilities by imitating hacker attacks and then providing recommendations to mitigate the problems. BT Assure Ethical Hacking for Vehicles includes a range of tests targeted at the "attack surfaces" of the vehicle. These include common interfaces that are available inside the vehicle (Bluetooth links, USB ports, or the DVD drive, for example), as well as external connections such as links to mobile networks or power plugs.
Tests are intended to examine end-to-end security by verifying all the systems that interact with the connected vehicle. The ultimate objective is to identify vulnerabilities that would allow unauthorized alteration of configuration settings or that would introduce malware into the vehicle. Some of the potential attack vectors identified so far include laptops computers used by maintenance engineers, infotainment providers, and other supporting systems.
It's clear that Microsoft is nearing completion of Windows 10. Windows 8.1 users receive occasional messages on screen promoting the Technical Preview, even though the Microsoft website still warns that the preview edition shouldn't be used on production machines. Microsoft pushed out build 10,061 in the fast circle on Thursday. Development seems to be a bit ahead of schedule, with release anticipated during the summer. How about July?
Advanced Micro Devices, AMD, is the second largest manufacturer of CPUs for computers and AMD's president and CEO, Lisa Su, recently said, on a call with investors and journalists, that the Windows 10 launch would occur "at the end of July". Because of that, said Su, AMD is expecting "a bit of a delay to the normal back-to-school season inventory build-up." That might have been an unintentional slip. Or not. Who knows!?
Microsoft is sticking with "this summer". The launch is expected to occur worldwide (190 countries in 111 languages), but nobody at Microsoft is willing to specify a date. Clearly AMD is in a position to be advised well ahead of time what Microsoft's intentions are, the date could be a mistake. Or a trial balloon. Or just some ground clutter on the radar.
The Windows 10 Technical Previous is clearly nearing an end. There's a conference later this month and we'll probably know more then. It's generally expected that Microsoft will release the name of the new browser (currently still called "Project Spartan") at that conference.
