Lightroom 6 or Lightroom CC?

I’ve been using Adobe Lightroom since its inception and owned every edition of the product. I began my photographic career at much the same time as Lightroom 1.0 was launching and over the years it has grown into an exceptionally powerful suite of features. I’ve written a number of pieces on Lightroom performance – specifically with regards to Lightroom on the tube Mac Pro and my new 5K iMac  – and with Lightroom 6, or Lightroom CC, as it may come to be called, rumoured to launch today, I am intending to post some new articles looking at the improvements. Since moving to the 5K iMac there have been a few niggles with regards in-app performance. Essentially all has been fine, but there have been issues in a few annoying areas.

• Crop Tool – Takes forever to begin and end the crop process. This varies, but it’s far slower than it ought to be. As a much used tool this is annoyance number one.
• Slideshow Module – Slideshows at 5K simply don’t work. They stutter along in a fashion that is simply too jerky to be of any real value.
• Soft Proofing – Making adjustments in soft proofing is now slow slow that it’s almost impossible to see the alterations that have been made.

There are a few other issues, but these are the key things that spring to mind. The word is that the next Lightroom, be that Lightroom 6 or Lightroom CC, is going be supporting GPU acceleration – a feature I have long clamoured for – and hopefully that will provide sufficient leverage to smooth out many of these kinks. That aside, it’ll be interesting to see some of the new features that Lightroom 6/CC brings to the table. There is talk of HDR, advanced B&W edits, non-destructive editing – confusing as to my mind both of the second two are already present – but personally I’d like to see face recognition. Often labelled as a gimmick, to me, as a wedding photographer, that’s a feature that would hugely ease the cataloging and location of images.

Anyway, hopefully this isn’t another false alarm and in the next few hours we should be able to start talking in earnest about Lightroom 6 or Lightroom CC. I’ll update this post if/when the application launches and keep you up to date with progress on forthcoming articles.