Reviews |Adobe deploys new Lightroom plan, Photoshop tools in massive Creative Cloud update

Adobe deploys new Lightroom plan, Photoshop tools in massive Creative Cloud update

Adobe deploys new Lightroom plan, Photoshop tools in massive Creative Cloud update
News

Adobe has announced a massive update to its Creative Cloud platform, which includes a brand new Lightroom service, new Photoshop tools and the end of new camera support for Lightroom 6.

There’s a lot to take in from Adobe’s announcement today, which also introduces new applications such as Adobe XD CC for experience design, Adobe Dimension CC for 2D to 3D compositing and Character Animator CC for 2D animation.

To help you digest it all, we’ll summarise some of the key point: the announcements today that are most relevant to you as a photographer are mostly around Lightroom.

Lightroom CC Plan

First, there’s going to be a new Lightroom CC app and cloud service. Your images will be stored online with up to 1TB storage, with more available at extra cost.

The desktop app is redesigned and streamlined so that it looks a lot more like the current mobile and web apps. The idea is that all your images will be stored in the cloud and available everywhere, on any device.

So with Lightroom CC photographers will be able to make edits on one device and automatically synchronise their changes everywhere.

Lightroom CC will also make it easier to organise your images, adding features like searchable keywords.

It’s also powered by Adobe’s Sensei artificial intelligence technology and offers new built-in sharing tools that allow you to share images directly to your social media channels or create custom web galleries that can be viewed through a share link or via Lightroom CC’s new integration with Adobe Portfolio.

This new Lightroom CC plan includes just Lightroom and the 1TB storage for $9.99 per month.

Lightroom Classic

Not a fan of Lightroom Mobile? Adobe is also releasing an updated version of the current Lightroom desktop app for those who prefer to work in the existing way, which will be rebranded Lightroom CC Classic.

Lightroom Classic has some new features, including performance enhancements and Color and Luminance Range masking for more selective graduated and radial filter adjustments.

There’s also an enhanced Embedded Preview workflow that enables users to scroll through large sets of photos to select a subset of images significantly faster than before, Adobe says.

But the main thing to know with Lightroom Classic is that, in contrast with the cloud-centric workflow of Lightroom CC, the new Lightroom Classic CC continues to focus a traditional desktop-based workflow with local storage and file and folder control.

Lightroom pricing

Adobe Lightroom will be available across three different price plans:

An updated Creative Cloud Photography plan with 1TB storage includes Lightroom CC, Lightroom for mobile and web, Photoshop CC, Adobe Spark with premium features, Adobe Portfolio, and 1 TB of cloud storage and is priced £16.64/month excl. VAT, but available at £12.48/month excl. VAT for the first year for existing Creative Cloud Photography customers

An updated Creative Cloud Photography plan adds Lightroom CC with an additional 20 GB of storage and remains at £8.32/month excl. VAT. It also still includes Lightroom for mobile and web, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC, Adobe Spark with premium features, Adobe Portfolio, and 20 GB of cloud storage. Creative Cloud All Apps members also have access to the new Lightroom CC service.

The new Lightroom CC plan includes Lightroom CC, Lightroom for mobile and web, Adobe Spark with premium features, Adobe Portfolio, and 1 TB of cloud storage (£8.32/month excl. VAT).

Lightroom 6

The other big story of the day is that Adobe will cease new camera support for Lightroom 6 at the end of this year. So today’s announcement effectively spells the end of Lightroom as a regular non-subscription product.

Photoshop CC

Photoshop will get a few new features, including the new Curvature pen tool that Adobe already showed us a couple months ago.

On the whole, though, the other Photoshop updates seem relatively minor (at least in comparison to the big Lightroom news).

The other main updates to Photoshop CC are improvements in learning via Sensei and enhanced performance.

Other updates include expanded services within Adobe Stock, which the company now says boasts more than 100 million images, videos, illustrations and vectors.

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