Lightroom Classic and ACR Update

Ashok Kandimalla has been in the photographic field for over three decades and has extensive experience in both film and digital photography. Being an electronics engineer by profession and a photographer, he possesses a unique and deep insight into the technical aspects of digital photography and equipment. He has published more than a 100 articles on photography and some of his writings have also been published in the well-known international magazine Popular Photography. An avid collector of photographic books and vintage cameras, Ashok has a keen interest in the history of photography and a passion for sharing his knowledge on photography through teaching and writing. He is the only Indian photographer to be featured on the Nikon Centenary website. He is presently working as a Management and Engineering consutant. He can be reached at [e-mail].

- Ashok Kandimalla

Adobe recently released a major update to their important post-processing software, the Lightroom Classic. The same update was also made available for ACR (Adobe Camera Raw), which is the Raw converter of Photoshop. The new Lightroom Classic software carries version number 11 and for ACR, it is 14.

This is perhaps the most important update in the last decade or so. Apart from the usual upgrades like support for new cameras, bug and security fixes, etc., the main enhancement is in the area of masking. This is so significant that many are referring to it as a game changer. Due to space constraints, we shall concentrate on the masking enhancements alone, for this article.

Let us start with a quick recap on masking, as implemented currently in Lightroom Classic and ACR. A mask is an area where any adjustment you do (like saturation, contrast, sharpness, etc.) is confined only to this. The mask can be defined by the user in many ways. Users of Photoshop can recall that this is similar to the concept of ‘Selection’. A selection is demarcated by ‘marching ants’ whereas in Lightroom Classic the masked area is shown by a semi-transparent coloured filter called an overlay.

Please note that we are using screen captures of Lightroom for our article. Those of ACR will be very similar. To understand why these updates to Lightroom Classic and ACR are so noteworthy, let us see what the previous versions offered. Let us start with the Tools Strip panel (Picture 1). This is located just below the histogram on the right panel. It has the following tools (from left to right):

1. Crop Overlay

2. Clone

3. Redeye elimination

4. Graduated filter

5. Radial filter

6. Adjustment Brush