A New (and much better) Auto Tone algorithm
Good news for those of you who use Lightroom through Adobe's subscription model (either the full Creative Cloud suite or the Photography plan, including Photoshop). Adobe has just released Lightroom Classic CC 7.1. There are a number of bug fixes in this release, including a fix for the bug where Loupedeck users could not use their Loupedeck in specific languages. There's also support for a couple of new cameras, including the Sony Alpha 7 RIII. But, perhaps most importantly, there is an interesting improved feature: the Auto option in the Tone section of the Basic panel has been completely reworked. Contrary to the old version, the tool can now also change Vibrance and Saturation and it is less prone to produce overexposed results. It uses machine-learning technology and a database of thousands of photographs (and their edits) to come up with a better automatic correction of your images. I was never a fan of the old Auto, because it seemed to be very hit or miss to me... The new Auto however is, although not perfect, quite an improvement. It's definitely worth trying out.
In the above example, Lightroom's Auto did a remarkable job of correcting this severely underexposed image.
A slightly less extreme example, where Lightroom's new Auto helped to reveal sky detail.
Delete Color Mask Sample Points
Another small new feature is that you can now Alt/Option click on an individual color sample in the new color range mask tool, to remove existing sample points. If you're unfamiliar with the range mask tool, this blog post tells you all about it and the other new features. It's one of my favourite features of the October Lightroom Classic CC update.
Lightroom D850 users will be happy to hear that there is now tethering support for their camera.
New features in Lightroom CC
The improved Auto technology is also in the new cloud-centric Lightroom CC App (and in Lightroom for iOS and Android, for that matter). Lightroom CC also received some other new features, such as:
- Tone Curve
- Split Toning
- The ability to edit the Capture Time
- A Full Screen mode (Shortcut: F)
What about Lightroom 6?
If you're a Lightroom 6 user, this update isn't for you. Adobe have announced there will be one more update 'towards the end of the year'. There probably won't be any new features in this update, but there might be support for some extra cameras. If you buy a new camera next year, you'll have to convert its raw files to DNG using the Adobe DNG Converter, if you still want to process the files in Lightroom 6.