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Adobe’s Exciting New Updates to Lightroom, Photoshop, and ACR

new adobe updates

Adobe has released several impressive updates to its Creative Cloud programs, including Lightroom, Photoshop, and Adobe Camera Raw.

The changes give Adobe users a number of features to be excited about, including:

  • Enhanced subject selection in Photoshop
  • Easy movement from Lightroom to Photoshop on iPad
  • An interface makeover for Adobe Camera Raw
  • The addition of local hue adjustments in Lightroom

While you can read about the many new and improved features on Adobe’s blog, I’ll run through the most important new upgrades for photographers, starting with:

Adobe's Exciting New Updates to Lightroom, Photoshop, and ACR

Photoshop offers updated Select Subject tool

Photoshop’s Select Subject tool has been steadily improving since the feature was first released.

But with these new updates comes a huge advance in terms of Select Subject’s capacity to identify complex edges.

As explained by Adobe, Select Subject has advanced in two key ways:

First: “Select subject is now content aware, and applies new custom algorithms if it detects a person is in the scene.”

And second: “Hair and treatment around hair has been vastly improved.”

When it comes to subject selection, any improvements are welcome; for most folks, better selection tools means less time spent in Photoshop and more time out shooting photos.

Hair has traditionally been the most difficult aspect of selecting, even with Adobe’s most powerful tools in hand. But with these improvements, subject selection should become at least slightly easier.

Lightroom on iPad offers easy Edit in Photoshop button

If you frequently edit images in Lightroom on your iPad, you’re in luck:

Adobe has now added an easy method for moving your photos from Lightroom to Photoshop:

The Edit in Photoshop button, which you can access from the export menu in Lightroom and use to quickly open an image in Photoshop.

Adobe explains that, after editing an image to Photoshop, “you can either send it right back to Lightroom, or keep it as a new cloud document.”

This should be a massive improvement for folks frustrated by the lack of integration between Lightroom and Photoshop on iPad.

(According to Adobe, this was among the “top requests” of iPad users.)

Adobe Camera Raw starts to look sleek

the new adobe camera raw interface
The new ACR layout looks far more stylish!

It’s finally happened:

Adobe Camera Raw has shed its aging skin and turned into something better; it’s still not exactly modern, but it’s certainly much sleeker.

Take a look at ACR, and you’ll now see a new interface, one that’s designed to “feel familiar to any Lightroom user.”

The layout has changed, the sliders have changed, and you even have some tool enhancements (for instance, the Curves tool is much easier to work with).

You also get a brand new tool, which comes to both Adobe Camera RAW and Lightroom in the form of local hue adjustment:

Lightroom and ACR gain local hue adjustment feature

Lightroom (and ACR) has long offered global hue adjustment capabilities in its HSL panel:

You select the original color, then you shift it along the color spectrum via a slider.

Up until now, this has remained a global editing tool. Lightroom included no option to selectively adjust hue via the adjustment brush, radial filter, or graduated filter, which meant that selective color editing was a feature largely confined to Photoshop.

But all that has changed, because you’ll now see a new slider when using local adjustment tools, one that allows you to select an area and shift its colors via a handy hue slider.

Local hue adjustment slider

With this new local editing option, you can selectively adjust skin tones, clothing color, sunset color, and much more.

So here’s my recommendation:

Head over to your Lightroom, Photoshop, and Adobe Camera Raw applications right now.

And try out these new options!

Now I’d like to ask you:

Which of these new updates are you most excited to try? And were there any changes that you’d still like to see from Adobe? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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Jaymes Dempsey
Jaymes Dempsey

is the Managing Editor of Digital Photography School, as well as a macro and nature photographer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. To learn how to take stunning nature photos, check out his free eBook, Mastering Nature Photography: 7 Secrets For Incredible Nature Photos! And to see more of Jaymes’s work check out his website and his blog.

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