The new updates for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop

Tuesday 20 October 2020, 16:32 by Nando Harmsen | 5,540 views | 4 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Over the past few weeks, I have attended the announcements made in the run-up to Adobe MAX. From 20 October, these will be officially announced during the Adobe MAX event. Like so many events, Adobe MAX is an online event.

Many new things have been announced. In this article, I will only cover the things that are interesting for photographers. Photoshop in particular has received a large number of new options.

Lightroom: Advanced colour grading

Adobe has paid a lot of attention to Lightroom's speed. They promise that editing images will become much faster and smoother. But the biggest visible change is the so-called advanced colour grading.

The colour wheels coming to Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw) make creating colour profiles very easy and precise

You may have seen the three round colour wheels in other programmes. The competition uses them, but they first appeared in Adobe Premiere, a long time ago. Now Lightroom has these colour wheels too.

With the colour wheels, you can adjust the colours of the shadows, midtones and highlights separately. This gives you much better control when creating a beautiful colour profile that is unique to your photo.

The colour wheels replace the old split toning. You will therefore no longer find that in the new Lightroom. But don't worry, presets that use split toning will remain available and can still be used as before. You simply have more control available.

The major Photoshop updates

Colour grading is also available for Photoshop, in the Adobe Camera Raw filter. But besides that, there are some really nice updates. They are largely based on Adobe's version of AI, or artificial intelligence.

One of the most noticeable features is the ability to replace the sky in a photo. Photoshop provides a nice panel where you can actually see the different skies before applying them.

Colour casts are taken into account, and a new sky is applied using layers and masks, making it easy to make your own adjustments afterwards.

Another nice option is the neural filters. These make it possible to adjust portraits very easily, for example. You can also automatically add colour to a black-and-white photo, something that used to take a lot of time.

Portraits are easy to edit using the neural filters

Photoshop reads the photo and automatically adds the colour.

There are many more small changes in Photoshop that will make working in the programme more enjoyable. This at least gives you a preview of the new updates.

The new Photoshop updates at a glance

I will certainly cover the new features in more detail when they become available.

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About the author

Nando Harmsen has been photographing for more than 40 years. He specialises in wedding photography and landscape photography. Nando also gives talks, workshops, masterclasses and photo trips, and regularly reviews new and interesting equipment.

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4 comments

Laura van der Burgt wrote on Wednesday 21 October 2020 at 09:38 | reply
Clear information and very welcome! Thank you Nando.
Translated from Dutch.

Thijs van den Anker wrote on Friday 23 October 2020 at 08:32 | reply
Hi Nando. I tried to update LR. But I have an almost 9-year-old Imac, which still works very well, running High Sierra. I can no longer update to Mojave. I can't install the LR update on it. Not compatible. Now I do understand that systems change but what does this mean for my subscription. Will I no longer get any updates? What am I still paying for then. Do you have an answer for me.
Translated from Dutch.

Laura van der Burgt wrote on Sunday 25 October 2020 at 20:12 | reply
So I updated to Lightroom 10, but I really shouldn't have done that. Even though my Mac meets all the system requirements, the program has become super slow and impossible to work with. I've since gone back to version 9.
Translated from Dutch.

Nando wrote on Tuesday 27 October 2020 at 09:35 | reply
@Thijs:
I don't know. Maybe you should put this to Adobe's helpdesk.

@Laura:
That's unfortunate to hear. I haven't had this experience with the new version. Fortunately, you can still use the old version too.
Translated from Dutch.

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