Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC 2015 Review
Lightroom CC now takes advantage of your computer’s GPU (graphics processing unit) for image-intensive tasks, so the main processor isn’t shouldering as much of the load. Computers with discrete GPUs see the most improvement, but machines with integrated GPUs (soldered onto the motherboard, such as many Intel processors) also see improvements. […] Want to see the difference yourself? In Lightroom’s preferences, you can turn off the Use Graphics Processor option in the Performance screen, an option no doubt included in case compatibility issues arise with graphics cards.
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Lightroom 5 offered a way to create HDR (high dynamic range) photos by selecting two or more shots of the same scene captured at different exposures and shuttling them over to Photoshop CC’s HDR Pro module. Instead of taking that round trip through Photoshop to merge the shots into one, Lightroom CC now includes its own HDR Merge feature.
I think I will eventually switch to Lightroom and adjust to it, but I’m not looking forward to that process.
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I guess I never understand the attraction of using all-in-one solutions like Aperture and Lightroom.
Personally, I use Bridge for cataloging, and Photoshop for editing.
Obviously you are giving up certain advanced cataloging features by using Bridge, but that seems to be more than offset by the fact Bridge keeps your files in a standard folder organizing structure, meaning you never have to worry about migration issues, or learning new interfaces.
Of course, all use-case-scenarios are different, and I'm not saying folks using all-in-one solutions are wrong in any way. But I just never get the specific logic behind that decision.
"Sure, there’s no need to migrate if you want to bake all your edits into the JPEG file…"
Thanks. Logic I can understand.
I assume my workaround of saving the Photoshop editing workfiles must have significant drawbacks I hadn't considered over the all-in-one apps in a heavy workflow...
@Chucky Photoshop seems much less efficient if you are editing a lot files at once, especially if many of them will be getting similar edits or keywords. If you want to do albums, then you either need to layer on another app or use aliases or symlinks, but of which can break. A bespoke file structure for managing managing master files, edited JPEGs, and Photoshop work files is fine, but still ties you would still need to migrate to new Photoshop versions, right? And if you have a lot of photos, the extra space to store those files vs. just the master + edit list really adds up.
All makes good sense, Michael. My editing needs are far more minimal than many, so I've never really thought it through that way. Definitely clears up my long-standing confusion on the strong demand for apps like Lightroom.
For me, the largest draw of Lightroom is the DNG format, which contains a built-in checksum of a photo's image data. Until we get a proper HFS+ replacement, having some sense of file integrity assurance for my photos is useful.
