New features of Adobe Lightroom CC 2015

Adobe has just released Creative Cloud 2015 and with it many new enhancements and functionalities for both Adobe Lightroom ( as part of the CC subscription) and Adobe Photoshop.

Here are focussing on Lightroom and the numerous changes brought to Photoshop will be seen in due time as part of the new series “Learn Photoshop”.

Dehaze

This feature enables you to remove partially or totally any haze you may have in your photograph as the result of mist, fog or shooting directly into the light (like the sun).

One finds the functionality in the Develop module inside the Effect panel on the right:

It is very simple to use, simply move the cursor to the right to remove the haze:

Before

After

What the tool actually does is increase the contrast level in your photograph, add some vibrancy and reduce the highlight. Depending on the luminosity of your photograph you may experience some black clipping when moving the slider towards the right.

There is a way to actually see the clipping by simply hold the ALT (Option on the Mac) key while clicking on the cursor. After testing this I must admit i do not find this mask very useful and prefer activating the Black clipping alert at the top left of the histogram which shows blue patches where the clipping occurs.

Haze

While dehazing a photograph is very interesting and sometimes needed to save a shot in post production, one may want to add some haze in a picture for creative purposes. I am personally very fond of the matte effect for portraits. So the same Dehaze tool can be used to add haze in, all one needs to do is move the cursor towards the left:

Before

After

Whites & Blacks

You may have noticed that in the Basic panel inside the Develop module, there are two cursors to alter the Whites and the Blacks in your image:

In Lightroom CC 2015, this feature has now been added to the Adjustment Brush, the Radial and Graduated filters:

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Conclusion

The Dehaze/Haze tool is clearly not a gimmick, and I must admit it works really well, and I can imagine it will save some of your photographs or add some really compelling creative effect. With regard to the Whites and Black cursors, I always found they were missing at least for the Adjustment Brush, so I really welcome this update. Overall, any enhancement is always a bonus and when it is meaningful one can only be happy. However, this update will taste rather sour for the owners of the perpetual licensed Lightroom as their 6.1 update does not include the added functionalities. They will have to wait for LR7. I must admit that personally, this is somewhat rather infuriating as those functionalities come only two months after the release of LR6. I read the reason the new features cannot be added to a perpetual license software is taxed. Since I am not a tax specialist I cannot validate but surely it won’t prevent people from thinking it is just a matter of money and Adobe only cares for the subscribed users. To be continued…

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