DXO has released ViewPoint 6, the latest version of its software for correcting geometry, perspective and distortion. The big change in this version is the addition of AI masks to ReShape Fusion, the tool for adjusting individual parts of a scene within the frame. You can now apply a geometric correction to one element of an image using AI selection to mask the area.

The software also works with RAW files and has basic RAW editing tools, including exposure compensation and white balance. I've written about how useful ViewPoint can be before, when I pointed out how to use it to fix the "stretchy people" effect you get at the edges of wide-angle shots.

I should say up front that I haven't had much time to try ViewPoint 6 out myself yet, so this is more of an announcement than a review. I may follow up with my own thoughts once I've spent more time with it. For now, here's what's new in version 6.

AI Masks in ReShape Fusion

If you have elements within a scene that still look distorted, even with conventional distortion correction, View Point lets you correct that element independently. This tool is in ViewPoint 5, but you had to manually isolate and correct the element you wanted to correct. With the new AI masks, ReShape Fusion can isolate that element for you, and you can control how far the change spreads into the rest of the image.

One example of where this can be useful is when cropping. Conventional perspective tools work on the whole image. When you straighten converging verticals, the entire picture plane tilts, the rectangle becomes a trapezoid, and you have to crop to get a rectangle back. The stronger the correction, the more of the image you lose. By working on a single element instead, DXO says that for many images the correction no longer costs you the edges of the frame.

DXO is also keen to point out that nothing is generated here. ViewPoint doesn't create new pixels or fill anything in at the edges. It rearranges what's already in the photo, and the dimensions of the frame stay the same. That's a different approach from the generative fill tools some other applications now use for this kind of problem.

AI Selection, Not Generative AI

It’s important to note that the AI part of this tool is limited to making the selection. The corrections themselves are still done by hand.

You start by drawing a rectangle around the subject. ViewPoint then detects the element inside it and builds a mask that follows its outline. The mesh used for the correction is built to match that outline, so the control points sit on the subject itself rather than on a uniform grid across the whole image. The density of the mesh also varies, with a coarse grid in areas that don't need changing and a finer one where you're working.

From there, you adjust the mesh directly. You can:

• Subdivide regions for finer control, or merge them where you don't need the detail

• Direct the subdivision inside or outside the selection

• Switch individual control points on or off

• Control how far a change reaches into the rest of the image

That last one is important, because reshaping one part of an image always pulls on whatever is around it. DXO gives the example of a face near the edge of a group portrait, which can be brought back towards normal proportions while limiting how much the adjustment affects the people beside it. The same mesh can also be used to reposition or resize an element that looks out of proportion with the rest of the scene.

The Other Geometry Tools

The rest of ViewPoint's toolset carries over from the previous version. The software is built around three common geometry problems, all of which become more noticeable with wide-angle lenses:

• Barrel distortion, where straight lines bow outwards

• Converging verticals, caused by tilting the camera

• Volume deformation, where subjects near the edge of the frame look stretched

Lens distortion is corrected automatically using DXO's lens modules, which are based on lab measurements of thousands of camera and lens combinations, and the maximum field of view is preserved. Volume Deformation corrects stretching at the edges horizontally, vertically or both. There are also automatic and manual perspective tools for full-frame corrections, with ReShape Fusion handling the localised adjustments, along with horizon correction and the Miniature Effect.

ViewPoint tends to be thought of as a tool for architecture, and that's where it's most obviously useful. But the same problems come up in interiors, real estate, events, travel, street, portrait and landscape photography, so it's applicable to a lot more than buildings.

RAW Editing

ViewPoint 6 can open RAW files directly in the standalone application, along with TIFF and JPEG, without converting them first or round-tripping through another application. RAW files are rendered using DXO's own camera profile in the DXO Wide Gamut colour space. ViewPoint also reads the image metadata to download and apply the matching DXO Camera-Matching Profile, and corrects distortion automatically.

There are two new controls for preparing the image before you start on the geometry:

• Exposure Compensation, with a range of -4.00 to +4.00 EV, available for all formats

• White Balance, with presets, Temperature and Tint sliders and an eyedropper for RAW files. JPEG and TIFF files get a single slider and the same eyedropper.

Editing is non-destructive. Corrections are saved to a sidecar file next to the image, so the original file is never changed, and your edits are still there when you reopen the image later. ViewPoint's sidecar files are kept separate from the ones PhotoLab writes, so the two applications won't interfere with each other. However, to bake in the distortion correction for use in another application, you will still need to export the corrected image. Finished images can be exported as 8-bit or 16-bit TIFF, or as JPEG.

Standalone, Plug-in or Inside PhotoLab

ViewPoint 6 works as a standalone application and as a plug-in for Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and Capture One. If you own PhotoLab 10, the ViewPoint tools are integrated directly into PhotoLab's Geometry palette.

Availability and Pricing

ViewPoint 6 is available now from the DXO website for macOS and Windows. Pricing is as follows:

New Licence: $129.99 | €119.99 | £109.99

Upgrade (from ViewPoint 5): $84.99 | €74.99 | £69.99

There's a 30-day free trial available from the DXO website.

You can use my code: ThomasFitzgerald15 to get 15% off (new customers only, I'm afraid).

This isn't a sponsored post; however, I'm on DXO's affiliate programme, so if you use my code, I get a small commission, but DXO has no input into what I write.

A new browser-based version of Luminar has been released, bringing RAW processing and several of Skylum’s familiar editing tools to the web. There are also a couple of smaller releases worth knowing about: fixes to Exposure’s rendering on Apple Silicon Macs and a revised preview system in Topaz Gigapixel.

Luminar brings RAW editing to the browser

Skylum launched Luminar on Web on 15 October, offering browser-based RAW editing alongside tools including GenErase, photo restoration, sky replacement and Light Depth lighting adjustments. Its launch announcement also states that there will be cross-device synchronisation, with basic functionality available free and full access advertised at US$69.

For photographers who move between different computers or devices, it’s easy to understand why this might be useful: being able to access your editing software without having to install an application. Whether it becomes useful for more demanding work will depend on how well it works, and things like camera support, export quality, responsiveness and how reliably edits move between devices.

I had a quick try of it, and it does work, but the Free trial requires you to sign up with a credit card, so - not doing that - and the basic edits are a bit slow (but still usable), to be honest. Still, in a pinch, if you’re a Luminar user, I can see this being quite useful. I haven’t really been keeping up with Luminar recently, but I must have another look at it. If you use it regularly, please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Exposure X7 addresses incorrect rendering on Apple Silicon

Exposure X7 version 7.3.1, released on 14 October, fixes a problem with Shadow and Highlight adjustments not rendering correctly when using GPU acceleration on Apple Silicon Macs. The update also addresses scattered white pixels in the shadows of monochrome RAW files, including those from the Leica Q2 Monochrom. Both changes appear in the official release notes. Exposure Software. The release also fixes preset-related error messages when Exposure is used as a Photoshop or Lightroom plug-in, addresses several crashes and adds Canon EOS R3 support.

I actually thought that they stopped making this application. I used to use it ages ago, and it showed promise, but then for a while they hadn’t updated it. I miss the old alien skin plug-ins that Exposure evolved from, but I must give the application itself another try. They seem to be a bit slow at adding camera support, mind you. My Canon R6II was only added this year, and that’s a three-year-old camera that has already been superseded. And incidentally, I tried the trial version, and despite supposedly being supported, it still doesn’t see RAW files from my Canon.

Gigapixel moves previews to the GPU

Topaz released Gigapixel 1.4.0 on 12 October, with changes aimed at making large-image previews faster. The updated preview system uses the GPU, while a preference allows users to return to the previous behaviour. The release also fixes Autopilot stalling when reloading an image and updates Topaz’s processing backend for Mac support. Topaz’s announcement describes this as a performance and reliability release. Topaz Community

For photographers preparing large prints, preview speed can have a considerable effect on the editing process. Comparing settings becomes tedious when every adjustment requires a lengthy wait, so a faster preview could be useful even without a new enhancement model.

There are still limitations to bear in mind. Topaz lists known colour issues involving images with Apple’s wide-colour sharing profile and CMYK export-queue thumbnails. Those make colour consistency worth checking when evaluating the update, alongside the speed improvements.

Bonus Gear News!! Fujifilm updates its square-format Instax camera

Fujifilm announced the instax SQUARE 2 on 14 October, with availability scheduled from 28 October. It is joined by SOFT HAZE square-format film, which Fujifilm says uses a newly developed emulsion to produce softer light effects and warmer colour tones. The official announcement covers both products. Funnily enough, I never actually dipped my toe in the Instax pool, being more of a Polaroid man myself!

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There have been a few interesting developments in photography software over the past week, with Adobe introducing another way to edit photographs using generative AI, ON1 releasing a new version of its noise reduction software, and some practical improvements arriving for Lightroom and Photoshop users.

Some of these features are available now, while others are still in early access or beta. Here is a closer look at what has changed and what is new in the world of photo software.

Lightroom introduces Prompt to Edit

The September update to Lightroom desktop, version 9.6, introduces an early-access feature called Prompt to Edit. This lets you describe changes you want to make to a photograph, or choose from example prompts for tasks such as restoring colours, fixing dust and scratches, and reducing blur.

This brings generative editing directly into Lightroom, without having to send it to Firefly. It should also be noted that this doesn’t work like an AI agent controlling Lightroom. This uses generative AI to edit your image, and so it can change things you may not want changed.

However, there are some details worth understanding before treating it as another everyday adjustment tool. Adobe currently lists Nano Banana 2 output options at 2K and 4K, and the generated result is saved as a DNG alongside the original photograph. The interface also lets you know how many AI credits this will use.

While this saves as a DNG, it’s not a raw-type DNG, but rather flat pixel information, so any raw data from your camera will be lost using this.

To be honest, this isn’t something I would ever use, especially for client or public work. Because it uses generative AI models, it completely regenerates your image, and while some people may be ok with that, others definitely won’t. I would use this with extreme caution, especially if you’re using this on client work. In the example below, I asked it to brighten the image and add sunset colours to the sky, and while it did this, it also changed things liek the railings, added people where there were none and so on. It’s now a different image totally, and not the one I shot. This is the major issue with this and all generative AI editing. I get that some people won’t care, but I have major issues with this kind of thing, and I wish they would leave it out of Lightroom.

It should be noted that these tools were recently added to Photoshop too, and the same caveats apply. This shouldn’t be confused with the “chat to edit” feature in the Photoshop Beta, which works by letting AI control the Photoshop interface, but more on that in a future post (I tried it and it’s not very good)

Anyway, “Prompt to Edit” is currently an early-access feature in Lightroom desktop.

ON1 releases NoNoise AI 2027

ON1 released NoNoise AI 2027 on 1 October, bringing updated noise reduction and sharpening tools to its standalone application and plugins for Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.

According to ON1, the release includes rebuilt noise reduction and TackSharp AI models, along with a selector offering six models matched to different types of subjects. The idea is that different photographs need different treatment when removing noise and preserving detail. Fine feathers, skin texture and stars can all suffer when noise reduction is applied too aggressively.

I haven’t actually tried it yet, but it would be interesting to compare it with Lightroom’s denoising and DxO’s RAW processing tools, such as PureRAW (my current favourite denoising tool)

NoNoise AI 2027 is available for Mac and Windows, and ON1 continues to offer an outright purchase option and a trial version. It should not be confused with Photo RAW 2027, which remains forthcoming, with a release targeted for late October or early November.

DxO PhotoLab 10.1 adds native Affinity integration

Another recent update worth mentioning is DxO PhotoLab 10.1, released on 22 September as a free update for PhotoLab 10 owners. This introduces direct export to Affinity’s native .af format, making it easier to move from RAW development into more detailed editing. Once you have finished your adjustments in PhotoLab, including optical corrections and DeepPRIME noise reduction, choosing Export to Affinity creates a document with those corrections applied and opens it directly in Affinity. There is also an option to include the uncorrected image as a second layer, allowing you to compare the two versions or selectively blend them using a mask.

By the way - if you’re buying anything from DXO, you can use my affiliate code: ThomasFitzgerald15 to get 15% off (new customers only, I’m afraid. This is a paid affiliate code and I get a small commission if you use this.)

Better Reflection Removal in Lightroom

Lightroom Classic 15.6 and Lightroom desktop 9.6 also bring improvements to Reflection Removal. Adobe says the updated processing produces fewer smudges and ghosting artefacts when dealing with reflections on windows, glass and water.

This is particularly relevant to travel and city photography, and I recently used this extensively (the old version, not the new version) when I was shooting from the observation deck of the Shard in London. It will be interesting to see if the changes actually make any difference.

These improvements are included in the September updates. (Yes, I know, I’m late getting to it!)

Camera Raw improvements for Photoshop users

There are also some interesting developments in Camera Raw.

Camera Raw 18.7, announced on 29 September, adds a thumbnail-based Grid view for browsing, comparing and rating groups of photographs. This is interesting, as traditionally, Camera RAW was paired with Bridge for this kind of thing, so make of that what you will. It also introduces automatic Match Exposure, including an advanced option designed to compensate for changing light conditions across a sequence.

Separately, the Photoshop beta build released on 1 October introduces multithreaded saving for PSD and PSB files. This allows qualifying documents to be written using parallel processing, potentially reducing the time spent waiting for large layered files to save.

The benefit depends on the document size and your hardware, so there is no single speed improvement that will apply to everyone. Nevertheless, for anyone working with complex retouching files or large composites, saving performance can make a noticeable difference over the course of a working day.

This feature remains in beta. Adobe recommends using Save As or Save a Copy when testing it, so any experiments should be carried out on duplicate files.

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]]>Random Acts of Photography - Wales EditionSite NewsThomas FitzgeraldTue, 08 Sep 2026 15:56:27 +0000https://blog.thomasfitzgeraldphotography.com/blog/2026/9/the-website-situation-for-photographers-is-getting-ridiculous53c631e4e4b0c4d68989cbef:540c893ee4b04215b3085eaf:6aa0302c5ee77f5a64d1a863

I thought I was done with website woes when I recently upgraded to the latest version of Squarespace, but alas, the AI-dominated world we live in now has other plans. I could go into the ramifications of Google switching to its AI summaries as its primary search result and the result that is having, but I’m saving that for a bigger post. The TL;DR version is I’m becoming increasingly reluctant to write articles here, when they’re only going to be stolen and repurposed by Google, while it simultaneously kills any search traffic to the site. But there’s another problem that I’m sure most other photographers and other website owners have had to contend with, and that’s the problem of bots.

You know this is affecting many websites due to the huge rise in Cloudflare “are you a human” authentication boxes. I even saw some twit on X the other day complaining because his personal Claude bot couldn’t get past one of these dialogs. It’s actually becoming a serious problem, and unfortunately, at the moment, there’s no easy way to prevent them on Squarespace.

Just this past week, I had a traffic spike of 25,000 page views that were entirely bots. This totally messes with analytics, and more importantly, they’re almost certainly up to no good, either scanning the site for malicious reasons, attempting to hack it, or just stealing my content. And the most frustrating thing is that there is a whole cohort of people out there who don’t see a problem with this, and that we should just roll over and accept our fate to the AI overlords. It’s incredibly depressing.

I actually have no idea any more if the content I write is successful or not. The analytics in Squarespace are basically useless now because they don’t have any bot prevention, so half the traffic is basically meaningless. Google Analytics is also not much use because, in its case, the bot filtering is perhaps too aggressive. On top of that, the cookie law means that at least 20% of people turn cookies off, blocking Google Analytics. (the Squarespace one captures more because some of it is cookie-agnostic.) On top of that, traffic continues to decline as Google is slowly choking off search traffic.

Anyway, this is the reason I’ve been posting less on here. I’m basically just writing content for Google and other AI companies to steal now, and until I come up with a solution, I’ll be dialling back my writing on this website. If anyone has any ideas on how to address this situation, I would be grateful. There is an option on Squarespace to ask AI not to scrape, but it basically does nothing because most of these companies or third parties aren’t exactly ethical.

I will still write here, just a little less often until I can find a way to stop this. There’s also my other photography blog, which doesn’t seem to suffer from the same problem yet, and you can also find my writing over on my Medium blog, designtography.

DxO has released PhotoLab 10, the latest version of its RAW photo editing software for macOS and Windows. The update adds new ways to make selective adjustments, expands the software’s AI-assisted masking capabilities and introduces a new colour grading tool.

The release also adds a direct connection to Affinity for pixel-level editing, along with several changes aimed at improving photo library management and everyday editing workflows.

Depth Masks for distance-based adjustments

One of the main additions in PhotoLab 10 is Depth Masks. The feature uses AI to analyse an image and create a depth map, allowing adjustments to be targeted according to an element’s distance from the camera.

This means photographers can make adjustments to foreground, midground or background areas without needing embedded depth information in the image. Once an adjustment has been applied, sliders and feathering controls can be used to refine where the effect appears.

The approach provides another option for selective editing alongside PhotoLab’s existing masking tools.

A new Colour Grading tool

PhotoLab 10 also introduces a new Colour Grading tool built around a single colour wheel. It allows shadows, midtones, highlights and overall colour balance to be adjusted independently on a single colour wheel.

More AI-assisted masking options

AI Masks have been expanded in several areas.

The software can now identify individual people in a scene. Photographers can create one mask covering everyone, combine selected people into a single mask, or create separate masks for individual people. Individual facial features can also be selected when more targeted adjustments are needed.

PhotoLab 10 adds further face segmentation categories, including eyebrows, eyes, irises, pupils, sclera, teeth, facial hair, face skin and lips. These sit alongside existing AI selection categories such as sky, subject, background, people, animals, flowers and vehicles.

AI Masks can also now be refined with U Point™ technology. After creating an AI-based selection, the U Point eyedropper can be used to expand or contract the selected area based on colour and luminosity.

Another AI-assisted addition is automatic sensor dust removal. PhotoLab 10 can detect and remove sensor dust and small imperfections at the RAW level before they become part of the editing workflow.

More flexibility with U Point adjustments

PhotoLab’s local adjustment tools have also been expanded. A new Control Brush combines conventional brush-based painting with U Point’s colour- and luminosity-based selection.

Control Points can now be switched from circular to elliptical shapes, which can be useful when an elliptical selection better matches the subject being adjusted.

Together with AI Masks and Depth Masks, these options give photographers several different ways to create and refine local adjustments depending on the image and the area they want to edit.

Direct editing in Affinity

PhotoLab 10 adds a new button alongside the existing export options that sends a photograph directly to Affinity for pixel-level editing.

This provides a route from PhotoLab’s RAW processing environment into Affinity for tasks such as retouching, compositing and detailed pixel manipulation. DxO describes this as the first stage of an ongoing integration between the two applications, with further developments planned for future releases.

The one thing I will say about this that might be a little confusing is that PhotoLab 10 does not support the Affinity file format, despite Canva making it open. So you’ll have to use TIFF. I would have suspected that they would have added this given how this is a big part of the announcement, but anyway. Given the note about further collaboration, perhaps this will be added in the future.

Other workflow changes

There are also several smaller workflow improvements in PhotoLab 10. These include support for as-shot crop ratios, histogram adjustments directly within PhotoLibrary, improved database backup and restoration, and simplified folder relocation management.

These changes are aimed at making it easier to organise and work with larger photo libraries alongside the new editing features.

Pricing and availability

DxO PhotoLab 10 is available now for macOS and Windows,

New license $249.99 / 249,99 € / £229.99

Upgrade from DxO PhotoLab 8 or 9: $129.99 / 129,99 € / £114.99

The release is available from DxO’s Online Store, and a 30-day trial is also available from the DXO website.

You can also use my code: ThomasFitzgerald15 to get 15% off (new customers only, I’m afraid).

Note that this post contains a paid affiliate code. We get a small commission for purchases made using this code, which helps run this site.

I missed this when the recent round of Adobe Photography updates dropped for August 2026, but they added a much-requested and long-missing feature for Lightroom on the iPad. There’s not much point in me teasing it, as it’s in the title, but yes, Lightroom on iPad finally gets Denoise. And it actually works pretty well.

How to use Denoise in Lightroom on iPad

To use Denoise on the iPad, you’ll need to be using Lightroom version 11.5 or later, and I suspect it’s only available on certain iPads. I’m using an older iPad Air with an M1 processor, and it works fine for me. I can’t find any proper support notes which list system requirements, so let me know if you have an iPad that’s not supported. If not, I’ll assume anyone capable of running this version will work.

To use the new Denoise feature, just go to the detail panel in the edit section and tap on the Denoise button to turn it on. Lightroom will first download the full-resolution image if it’s only using a smart preview or proxy. Then it needs to download the AI model for it to work. So the first time you use Denoise on the iPad, it will take a little longer. Once it’s done this, it will then apply Denoise itself. On my older M1 iPad Air, it took about 30 seconds, although I didn’t time it exactly. I suspect if you have an iPad Pro or an iPad Air with a newer processor, this would be much faster.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Other than having to download the model the first time, it pretty much works the same as the desktop version. There’s no sign of super resolution yet, and the iPhone version of Lightroom gets generative expand, but the iPad version does not for whatever reason.

I had taken some photos over the weekend, and I was processing them in Lightroom when I noticed that the software was acting unusually. When I applied a preset, the preview worked perfectly, but it took a few seconds to actually apply. At first I thought that maybe this was an issue with the new version of Lightroom, so I quit and restarted. It was then that I noticed another weird issue: the software was still trying to write the metadata to disk. So I thought that maybe my disk was running out of space. I checked, and there was still lots of room. Curiouser and curiouser I thought. While it turned out not to be a disk space issue, I was actually close to the source of the problem, thinking it was disk-related. But let me back up a minute.

Were SSD issues slowing down Lightroom?

My main workstation is a Mac Studio with an M1 Max processor and a 1 TB internal drive. As this isn’t much space, I keep my Lightroom catalogue on an external drive, a Samsung T7 SSD. I basically use this as an overflow for stuff that I would normally keep on my system drive. My actual photos are stored on a different SSD. I’m always having an issue with space, especially on my system disk. It’s recommended that you keep at least 10-15% of an SSD free for optimal performance and to avoid issues, and I normally do that, so that’s why I checked to see if I had been running out of space.

I don’t know what made me think of it, but just to be doubly sure something wasn’t gumming up the works somewhere, I opened Blackmagic Speed Disk to test the speed of the SSD. I was thinking it was a possible problem with too many things connected to my Mac Studio, but anyway, the result quickly found the cause of the problem. My Samsung T7 was running slowly. Ridiculously slowly.

The drive normally has a transfer speed of around 800 MB/s, but the write speed had slowed to just 60 MB/s.

“Well, there’s your problem”!

Now, there are lots of things that can slow down an SSD to this extent. I also had my Parallels disk images on this for when I need to run Windows, and I had been running it, so I thought maybe this had used all the disk space temporarily and the drive was still clearing its cache. But it wasn’t that. I tried clearing some more space and leaving it for an hour to see if it would improve, and it did, but only by a few MB/s. At this point I was beginning to think the drive might be dying, which was the last thing I needed, but a quick Google search revealed that this is a common problem with the Samsung T7. The solutions weren’t exactly forthcoming, though. Eventually, I just copied everything off, reformatted it and put everything back. That solved the issue. For now, anyway. If it happens again, I will definitely replace the drive. One thing I did do was change the format. It had been “Mac OS Extended Journaled”, but I took the opportunity to change the partition to the newer APFS. Samsung does have software to manage their drives, but its Mac version is terrible and requires you to mess around with the boot settings and security settings on your Mac, and I wasn’t in the mood for that.

So what does this mean for Lightroom speed?

Once I had everything back on the newly formatted drive, I checked the speed again, and everything was back to normal. The drive was performing at its standard speed, and so I hoped this had solved the issue. I waited another while just to be sure and checked again, and it was still fine, so I fired up Lightroom, and sure enough, it was back to its old self.

So what’s the moral of the story?

Almost every day I see someone on social media complaining about Lightroom that it suddenly slowed down and assuming it was all Adobe’s fault. This is especially the case after an update. The thing is, though, it’s rarely the software itself causing an issue directly. Now, you could argue that it should be more robust, and it should be better able to handle things, and that could be a fair point. But I have been testing Lightroom thoroughly for years, including running beta versions, and it’s almost always something wrong on your system or configuration if the software suddenly slows down. Well, in Lightroom Classic anyway. Unfortunately, you have less control over things in Lightroom Desktop. Occasionally there are issues with new versions, but these are usually well reported and are usually fixed pretty quickly, at least in recent years.

Note that this post contains paid affiliate links. We get a small commission for purchases made through these links, which helps run this site.

Adobe has released the latest round of Lightroom and Camera RAW updates, and in this article we’re going to concentrate on Lightroom Classic. Aside from the usual under-the-hood tweaks and bug fixes, Lightroom Classic 15.5 adds three new key features, one of which I’ve been asking for for a long time!

Speaking of Lightroom, don’t forget to check out my Lightroom presets over on my Gumroad store! Shameless plug!!!

Mask Feathering and Adjustments in Lightroom Classic 15.5

Ever since Adobe introduced AI-generated masks, I’ve been asking them to add the ability to modify those masks. In fact, I’ve been wanting these features since before AI masks. Capture One has always had the ability to blur a mask, and so it’s good to see Lightroom finally gain this ability. Well, sort of.

If you use any of the AI masks, you will now get two new sliders. One to feather the mask and one to control the edges. The feather slider basically blurs the edge of the mask, and the Edge slider expands or contracts the mask. If you’re familiar with green screen keying in video, these are the equivalent of a matte choker tool (yes, that is the actual term!)

The only thing about this that I find a little disappointing is that you can only apply it to AI-generated masks. You can apply it to brushed-on masks, for example, which is something that you can do in Capture One. Also, if you combine multiple masks, the mask adjustment sliders are on the individual masks, and not the overall combined mask.

Adjust the opacity of Lightroom’s Crop Tool in Lightroom Classic 15.5

The second new feature allows you to adjust the opacity of the outside of the crop tool when cropping in Lightroom Classic. What this means, basically, is that when you crop, outside the crop tool is normally pretty dark to indicate which areas are being cropped out. Well, in the new version, you can now adjust the opacity of this area, so if you are trying to get a really precise crop and the cropped area was too dark, you can adjust the opacity of this now.

To adjust this, when the crop tool is activated, right-click on the image and from the contextual menu that pops up, you should get a list of opacity options, ranging from 100% to Off. Simply select whichever one works for you!

Render to DNG

Adobe has added the ability to render an image to DNG. This will flatten your image and bake in all the edits, giving you a DNG of the image, and it will reimport it into Lightroom. This is not a RAW file but a flattened file containing all your edits baked into the raw file. It’s as if you had exported it as a TIFF and reimported it. Interestingly though, while it doesn’t create a RAW file, the resulting DNG does retain some exposure latitude. If you look at the DNG using the HDR option in the Develop module, you will see that it does retain some information over 100% brightness. This is an interesting one, because, on the one hand, people have been asking me about a similar feature for years, but on the other hand, I suspect some people won’t be happy that this doesn’t do something like the old Enhance tool did, and create a linearised RAW file. But there are some good uses of this.

One of the big advantages of this Render to DNG feature is that this will allow you to do denoising and super-resolution on the same image. Now, you could do this in the past, but it involved considerable hoop jumping, as just exporting to DNG and re-importing didn’t work. Now, all you have to do is apply Denoise, render to DNG and then do Super Resolution on the final image.

It’s also useful if you do a lot of edits to an image, and then want to do an overall look on top of changes you might already have made. In this case, you can render to DNG and then apply a film preset to the DNG, adjusting the opacity of the preset to get the right look.

The biggest downside of this Render to DNG feature will be the file size. On an image taken with my Canon R6II, this was 128 MB compared to roughly 50 MB for a RAW file. Now, if you’re not doing a lot of these, it’s not that big a deal, but if you’re very tight on space, it may be an issue.

Conclusion

I wrote a while ago that Camera RAW seemed to be getting all the new features, and that Lightroom Classic was starting to get left behind. This update takes a small step in the right direction by adding at least one of those features to Lightroom Classic. However, the disparity continues with new features added to this round of Camera RAW too. What’s more, there is starting to be a divergence between Lightroom Desktop (Lightroom Mac & PC to use the official name) and Lightroom Classic, as the version of Lightroom Desktop just released adds generative fill to the crop tool, which isn’t in this version of Classic.

On a recent trip to London, I took quite a few photos and some video at the top of the Shard, one of London’s most famous buildings. I have already posted a few of these, and there are a lot more to come. However, in this post, I wanted to talk about the challenges I faced editing a subset of the images I took and how I addressed them. I ended up using both Lightroom and DaVinci Resolve’s new photo editing mode for these. The latter is something I particularly want to talk about, as it has some interesting abilities, as well as some quirks that those not familiar with the software should be aware of.

Pre-Processing in Lightroom

I started with these images in Lightroom. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, Resolve’s actual RAW conversion is still not great, to be honest. It lacks lens corrections and proper colour profiles. The second reason is that I wanted to remove the reflections. I was shooting through glass, and so it was difficult to avoid reflections because I didn’t have a polariser when I was shooting these. I also didn’t want to get right up to the edge to try and block the reflections (it’s very high!)

Luckily, Lightroom’s “Remove Reflections” works a treat on photos like this and totally removed the reflections. I actually batch processed the entire set of photos I took from the shard with the reflection removal tool. It took some time to process, but luckily it happens in the background now in newer versions of Lightroom.

Once I had done this, I made sure that there was no image information clipped and then exported them as TIFF files for import into Resolve.

Editing in Resolve

So you may be wondering, why bother editing in DaVinci Resolve at all? Why not just do it all in Lightroom? Well, the issue I was having was one of consistency. Because the light was constantly changing and I was shooting through glass, at different angles, and in different surroundings, I was having trouble getting consistent results. This is where Resolve’s much greater control over colour comes in. In Resolve, it’s much easier to do targeted and finer adjustments than you can in Lightroom.

The colour wheels offer much finer control in Resolve, not to mention that there are various modes for the colour correctors. They just work much better than the ones in Lightroom, which are sort of a blunt instrument. You can also specifically target colours and areas of the image more easily than you can in Lightroom, plus you get a visual reference for your corrections in the form of the node tree. Now, you absolutely could make these adjustments in Lightroom; it’s just much easier and quicker to get the results you want in Resolve. That is, of course, if you know how this kind of colour correction works. And this kind of node-based editing is something I’ve been doing for years, so it’s second nature to me.

Breaking down the node tree

One of the advantages of working with a node-based editor, is that it’s easy to break down the colour corrections, making it easier to see what you’re editing and easier to go back to it later. This also makes it easier when you apply those edits to another image.

If we look at the node tree I used for the image above, I’ll talk you through what I did. There are no hard-and-fast rules for this kind of thing, and you can work however you want, but this is how I approached it.

Node1: The first node is for overall brightness and tonal fixes. I haven’t done much here, except reduce the highlights slightly. Think of it as more of a technical fix before passing it to the second node.

Node2: This is where I did the bulk of the colour correction, using the standard and the HDR colour correction tools. The HDR three-way colour corrector lets you select finer areas of brightness to work on. It’s hard to explain in a short post. To be honest, I’m not even sure I fully get it myself; I just know how to use it!!!

Nodes 3 and 4: I used these two parallel nodes with the gradient mask to tweak the sky and ground values separately. There’s no direct “clarity” tool that I’m aware of in the colour editor, although there may be in the effects, but that’s one of the limitations that I’ll get to later. I did manage to add some details to the foreground, though, using a reverse blur modifier. (I’m not entirely sure how this works either)

Node 6: is an overall contrast addition using the curves tool. This was just because I thought it was a little flat and needed some more oomph

Node 7: This node adds some off-screen lens flare. I used the Red Giant “Real Lens Flares” plug-in for this. The reason I added this was that the reflections were gone, it lacked some interest in the sky, and there were still a few mismatched colours and artifacts where the reflection removal didn’t do the job properly.

Node 8: This node adds some subtle grain to the image

Node 9: I didn’t use this node in the end, so it’s turned off. It was a colour space transform to convert the colour space to RGB, but I ended up doing this a different way. More on this below.

Limitations and Issues

There are two things you need to be aware of if you plan on editing photos in Resolve. Actually, there are three. The first I’ve already covered: the RAW conversion for stills is still lacking, so you’re best off using something else for that.

Secondly, if you’re using the free version of Resolve, you are limited in the output resolution. You can also only use certain effects and are limited in the number of effects. For example, I was using the free version here, and I could only output at about half the resolution that the image actually was.

Thirdly, you need to be aware of the colour space you are using. This isn’t something that you have to really deal with too much when working with Lightroom, but it’s an issue with Resolve. Because it’s set up for working with video, you’ll have issues if you try to open the resulting images in Photoshop. So the best thing to do is set the output colour space in the project preferences. You can also just put a colour space transform node at the end of the node tree, but this will alter how it looks in Resolve. I would do this if you were working on a mixed project, but otherwise, it’s best to set the output to sRGB in the project settings.

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]]>London in MiniatureCanonGearThomas FitzgeraldWed, 15 Jul 2026 07:50:11 +0000https://blog.thomasfitzgeraldphotography.com/blog/2026/7/an-update-on-my-canon-24-105mm-f4l-problem53c631e4e4b0c4d68989cbef:540c893ee4b04215b3085eaf:6a573bb6df917e761370e4b6

I wrote a while ago about the issues I was having with my Canon RF24-105mm F4L. I noted that for some bizarre reason, the lens got softer at 24mm as you stopped down from f4. This is the opposite of what normally happens with a lens. I went through significant testing to make sure I wasn’t doing something stupid and to try to identify the problem. I also contacted Canon, and they said this was not normal behaviour and that I should send it in for service, as it was still under warranty. So I did that, and last week, after it took a month, I got the lens back. The results, unfortunately, were disappointing.

Before I get to that, a few other odd things showed up during my testing. First of all, it seems to be related to autofocus, as the issue doesn’t occur when you shoot manually. Also, you can prevent it by moving the focus point to the edge of the frame. So clearly, something weird is going on. Also, the reported focus distance changes when you stop the lens down, although this apparently is normal. The other problem is that at 105mm at f/4, focus tends to be a few mm in front of the object you’re focusing on. None of these problems occurs with my other 24-105mm lens, the STM version, but that’s a much poorer-quality lens.

So anyway, I sent the lens to Canon, which is kind of a ridiculous procedure. Because they have consolidated all their European warranty repairs under one roof, it has to go to Germany for service. This is all done through a web app on their site, but I had issues with it, as it’s a bit buggy. They pay for shipping, so that’s good, but it took a week to get there, and then it spent another week in the warehouse waiting for someone to look at it. In fairness, you could track this the whole time, so there’s that. Eventually, it moved to their workshop, where it was for less than 30 minutes before the tracking showed it on the way back to me. So, at this point, I wasn’t optimistic.

After another week, I got it back, and the service note said that they couldn’t find a fault with it. The thing is, I’m not sure they even checked properly. I had supplied detailed notes, and part of that was that the issue is not a manual focus issue, but the lens was set to manual focus. I had also sent sample files that were never opened (I used Dropbox to send them). I suspect they used some automated test rig and did a quick check based on the summary without actually reading the notes. I’m extremely disappointed in Canon's service because there’s clearly an issue here, and Canon’s own technical support person agreed with me.

Anyway, I’m left with a conundrum now. It’s such a weird, specific problem. I can work around it, but it’s not ideal. I could sell the lens and get another one, but there’s no way to know if that will be the same. The other thing that occurred to me is that it could be the camera. There was a video a while ago from Peta Pixel where they were reviewing a Canon lens and noticed excessive edge softness, and in the end, it turned out to be a misaligned sensor mount. So it could well be that.

So I’m going to try to either rent or borrow a different body to see if the lens performs the same on it. If it does, then I know it’s the lens and can just get a new one. If it’s not, then I’m going to have to look at either trying to get my body repaired or just replace it. I don’t have much confidence in Canon’s service centre now, so we’ll see what happens.

The thing that annoys me the most is that this would be a great lens if it worked. It’s super sharp apart from these issues, and the micro-contrast and colour are fantastic on it. At about 35mm to around 90 mm, it’s perfect. I downloaded samples online and can’t see any evidence of this issue, so it’s either mine or there is a problem with the camera. And it takes so long to get sorted. I bought this lens before Christmas. It’s partially my own fault as I didn’t get to test it straight away. But I also regret buying it from Amazon, as it would be easier if I could just bring it back to the dealer.

To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed with the whole affair, and I’m considering just getting rid of it and moving back to Nikon, or even Sony or Panasonic at this stage. But that’s a whole lot of pain, and I’m not really in the position to do it right now, so for the moment it’s a matter of trying to solve it or work around it until I can.

As before, if anyone has any insight or has ever come across anything similar, please let me know.

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]]>A Moody Day on an Incredible Beach: Newcastle, Co. DownLightroomPhotoshopThomas FitzgeraldFri, 03 Jul 2026 08:27:02 +0000https://blog.thomasfitzgeraldphotography.com/blog/2026/7/how-to-edit-your-photos-in-camera-raw-from-lightroom-non-destructively53c631e4e4b0c4d68989cbef:540c893ee4b04215b3085eaf:6a477029d7667757e159a2a1

With Adobe recently adding lots of new features to Camera RAW that so far aren’t in Lightroom, users of Lightroom may be wondering how to get access to some of those new tools. Well, it’s actually very straightforward, and you can use Camera RAW from Lightroom entirely non-destructively. You just need to follow the simple workflow below.

Send to Camera RAW (via Photoshop) the first time

The first step is to send your photo to Photoshop. The important part here is not to use the normal “Edit in Photoshop” command. Instead, you need to use the option:

Photo > Edit In > Open As Smart Object in Photoshop …

This will send your raw file to Photoshop without flattening it to a TIFF or PSD first. It will send the file to Photoshop as either a Tiff or a PSD depending on how you have it configured (it doesn’t matter which, really), and open in Photoshop as a smart layer. Once in Photoshop, all you have to do is double-click on the layer icon in the Layers palette, and the image will open in Camera RAW. Make sure to double-click the icon, not the layer name.

Now that you’re in Camera RAW, you can make all the edits you want and take advantage of some of the features not present in Lightroom. You will notice that any edits that you made in Lightroom before sending to Photoshop should be maintained here. In other words, any sliders you have changed in Lightroom will be changed here in Camera RAW.

Once you have finished editing, simply click ok to apply your changes. This will exit Camera RAW and return to Photoshop. Because it is a smart layer, you can double-click the layer icon again at any time to go back into Camera RAW and your edits will be exactly as you left them.

Once you’re finished in Photoshop, all you have to do is save your image to send it back to Lightroom. Make sure to just “save” and not “save as”, as this may break the connection.

Re-Editing your image in Camera RAW

If you want to re-edit an image in Camera RAW that you have already edited, you need to do it slightly differently. In this case, you’ll be working with a previously edited Photoshop or TIFF file and not an actual RAW file. This time, you do need to use the Edit in Photoshop command; if you use the Open as Smart Object option, you will embed the Photoshop file in another Photoshop file.

So use the command: Photo > Edit In > Edit in Photoshop (Photoshop version number)

When the dialogue box opens asking you what to edit, make sure to choose: Edit Original. This is very important, as otherwise, Lightroom will create a flattened version and send that to Photoshop

Once back in Photoshop, you can edit in Camera RAW by once again double-clicking on the layer icon in the Layers palette.

And when you’re finished, save again to send it back.

Note that while your image is open in Photoshop, you can just keep saving it, and Lightroom will update automatically. You don’t need to keep going back to Lightroom and re-sending it to Photoshop. If you have saved in Photoshop and the image hasn’t updated in Lightroom, just switch back to Photoshop, wait a second and then switch back to Lightroom. This usually fixes it.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much all there is to it. It sounds more complicated here because I’m laying it out step by step, but once you get into the habit of it, it’s fairly straightforward and much easier than trying to use Bridge and re-syncing your finished photos back into Lightroom. Just remember that the first time you send an image, use “Edit as Smart Object”, and when you want to re-edit, use Edit in Photoshop > Edit Original.

The news that Adobe has agreed to acquire Topaz Labs has hit the creative community with a collective “what the f….”. For anyone who relies on tools like Gigapixel, Photo AI, and Video AI, I’m sure this news is a bit of a worrying development, especially if you’re one of those creators who had exited the Adobe ecosystem (”you fool … there is no escape!”).

Some of the more cynical among the critics have pointed out that this is Adobe’s way of getting up to speed with technology it can’t build in-house:

“If in doubt, buy them out!”

My reaction upon reading the news was one of begrudging acceptance: “Yeah, that sounds about right”

Topaz has been around for quite a while and has a very loyal following in both the photography and video spaces. I never really used the photo software myself, but I’m always getting readers telling me to try it out. Their video upscaling and processing software is legendary and has become an indispensable tool across many post-production houses. And I’m not talking about influencers and youtubers either, I’m talking broadcast and film post houses. Many of those are based on Avid and Davinci Resolve, so I’m sure they’ll be wondering what this all means.

when it comes to their photography software, Adobe has been integrating Topaz AI models into its apps and firefly for some time now. Some are available as third-party model options inside the various AI tools in Photoshop or online in the Firefly web app. They recently added Topaz processing directly inside of Lightroom desktop, too. So in one respect, maybe we should have seen this coming.

While it might mean that, down the line if you use Lightroom or Photoshop you will get even more access to Topaz’s AI software, or maybe even fewer AI credits should you use Topaz models, it raises questions about what happens for users of non-adobe software, given Adobe’s history when it comes to acquiring companies. I know some people who are still bitter about Macromedia Freehand and that was years ago. While they have said that they will still be available as stand alone tools for now, this is Adobe we’re talking about.

Topaz’s Video Tools are indispensable for some

While photographers know Topaz for upscaling and sharpening, the professional video community considers Topaz Video AI an industry essential. Walk into a post-production house and somebody will probably have a copy of Topaz Video AI installed. If you need to up-res HD to 4k it’s one of the best software solutions, outside of dedicated hardware. I even know several 3D artists who use it to render at a lower resolution and then upscale the results to 4K for delivery when turnaround time is tight. It’s that good.

Crucially, a large portion of video pros who rely on it do not use Adobe products as their primary creative tools. They are colour grading in DaVinci Resolve or editing in Avid. They use Topaz as a dedicated, standalone utility because its local hardware rendering engine works locally, without having to upload to the cloud or use a credit system. This is very important when working on client work under an NDA.

If your workflow is built around DaVinci Resolve or even Final Cut Pro, and you rely on Topaz, this news naturally brings some trepidation. As I mentioned already, Adobe doesn’t have the best of track records when it comes to buying developers of popular software.

According to the official Adobe Press Release, the company plans to maintain the Topaz apps as standalone offerings on its website, and CEO Eric Yang is staying on to lead the team. Of course, just because they say that now doesn’t mean that will remain the case forever.

If you use non-Adobe software, you can likely keep using your current Topaz apps for the foreseeable future. The real concern is what happens in the long term.

If Adobe builds native, Topaz Video AI straight into Premiere or After Effects for example, will they eventually kill the standalone software? Hopefully not, but it wouldn’t be unprecedented. The standard practice when companies buy others for technology like this is to just leave the applications alone for several years without substantial updates, and then kill them, saying no one was using them anyway.

I’m being very cynical here, and I really don’t mean to be. I mean, it’s not all potentially bad news. If you are an Adobe subscriber, you may have access to more of Topaz’s tools with your subscription (unless they charge more - which let’s face it, they probably will). If you can get access to Topaz Video AI’s upscaling and denoising for the current Creative Cloud subscription, I will be happy. If you have to go through Premiere or After Effects, it’s not ideal, but not the end of the world. Having said that, the current Photoshop/Lightroom integration of Topaz’s tools doesn’t offer nearly the level of control that you get on the standalone software. If this means that you get more of the actual Topaz apps included with Creative Cloud, then that’s a good thing, right?

What Happens to Existing Topaz Owners?

If you already own perpetual licences or active subscriptions to Topaz products, nothing changes immediately. The transaction is not expected to close until the second half of 2026, pending regulatory approval, so this isn’t finalised yet. Both companies have stated that Topaz apps will remain available separately, although that doesn’t mean that they will continue that way forever. It’s not hard to see that this deal is primarily about the underlying technology and intellectual property including the AI models. The applications are undoubtedly secondary in Adobe’s mind.

As for how Adobe will integrate the software into its existing offerings, I guess time will tell. As I mentioned earlier, they are already offering the Topaz models as part of their AI tools in Photoshop, so that will likely continue with even more integration. Perhaps future versions of Photoshop will include Topaz’s local AI processing. Will they include the current Topaz tools as part of the Creative Cloud subscription, or keep them separate as they do with Substance Painter and Designer? What happens to current Topaz subscribers once the deal goes through? What happens to tech support? Adobe’s tech support is kind of infamous, so I’m sure that’s not going to sit well with current customers.

For now, not much will change initially. But unfortunately, it’s yet another chapter in the unending consolidation of technology, where big tech companies that take a great independent developer and suck it into the void of a huge corporation.

But the AI zealots would have you believe that your job will be gone soon to our AI robot overlords anyway, so in the end, it’s all a moot point.

Right? Right?

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]]>The Colours and Textures of SummerPhotoshopSoftwareLightroomThomas FitzgeraldTue, 23 Jun 2026 08:07:00 +0000https://blog.thomasfitzgeraldphotography.com/blog/2026/6/lots-of-new-features-in-camera-raw-that-arent-in-lightroom53c631e4e4b0c4d68989cbef:540c893ee4b04215b3085eaf:6a3a3cf432fe10648f4ea027

With the last few Photoshop releases, Adobe has kept adding new features to Camera RAW. Usually, these would be added to Lightroom either at the same time or with the following release, but so recently, this hasn’t been the case. And these haven’t been minor features either, we’re talking some big, long-sought-after tools, including the colour corrector in masks, and the ability to adjust the edges and feathering of AI masks. Not only that, but Lightroom (desktop) has been adding features that aren’t in Lightroom Classic, too. Are we seeing a different strategy emerging from Adobe regarding its photography applications?

What’s new in Camera RAW

I have been a bit remiss in following and reporting on this, because I mostly cover Lightroom here. I’m also in the Lightroom developer program, so I get more details about Lightroom before release, and I often miss or don’t pay that much attention to Camera RAW. I’m paying attention now, though! I was also reluctant to cover these as I figured they would be added to Lightroom, but now I don’t know what’s going on. Anyway, here are a few selected features that were added in the past few releases (going back to April)

Camera Raw 18.3 (April 2026)

• Depth range mask: Create a mask based on the depth of an image. Uses AI to create a depth map, similar to the way it creates a depth map for the lens blur feature. this allows you to apply corrections based on the depth of objects in your scene.

• Anamorphic Desqueeze: If you shoot with an anamorphic lens, this allows you to apply the desqueeze correction directly in Camera RAW

• Projection Correction: Allows you to correct for distortions at the edges of the frame when shooting with ultra wide angle lenses. Lets you fix the stretchy people phenomenon that I covered recently.

Camera Raw 18.3.1 (May 2026)

• Refine Mask Controls: Now lets you control the edges and feathering of AI masks. New sliders in the mask panels lets you contract or expand the edge, as well as blur the mask with feathering controls. I’ve been asking for this ever since they added AI masks !

• Colour Grading in masking: Finally, the colour grading tool is now available when using masks. This was the one major feature that was still missing from masks in Camera Raw. I really hope that they hurry up and add this to Lightroom(s)

Camera RAW 18.4 (June 2026)

• Bidirectional Gradient: This allows you to create two sided gradients. This is basically, a gradient which is soft in both directions. This is another one of those things I’ve been asking for forever.

• Vectorscope: They’ve actually added a vectorscope in Camera RAW. For those who are experienced with video editing and colour grading, this is a great way to see how the colour is spread out in your image, and a pretty important tool for colour grading once you learn how to use it, especially for people shots. Now, if only they would add Waveforms also.

Some of the new features in Detail

To give you a quick overview of how to use some of the new features, I have gone into a little more depth below on a few of them. I’ll cover the others in a future post.

Vectorscope

To turn on the vector scope, once in Camera Raw, simply go to the histogram and right-click on it. Then choose “Vectorscope” from the pop-up menu and check the box beside it. This will turn the feature on. If you’re not sure how a vectorscope works, there are lots of tutorials online on how to read one, as it’s been a feature of video production since colour television became a thing.

Bidirectional Gradient

This is quite easy to use, too. All you have to do is go to the mask tool, and add a gradient as normal. In the mask controls, you will see a checkbox for bidirectional gradient. Turn this on to get an additional handle to control feathering on the other side of the gradient. You can control both sides independently, though it would be nice to control how much of the centre section is solid. In other words, an additional control for the non-feathered middle section.

Depth Mask

You can add a depth mask like you can with the other masks. Just go to the mask panel and select “Depth Mask” as an option. There is one other thing you need to do, though. You have to click somewhere on the image to select the focal point to activate it. Once you have created the mask, you can edit it using the same controls as the depth map in the Lens Blur feature. To be honest, I’ve had mixed results playing around with this. Sometimes it’s accurate, and other times it’s very not accurate. It’s a useful feature to have, though, and I just hope they improve the quality over time.

Conclusion

So what’s going on here? I really don’t know. I’m pretty sure this is not a big deal, and I hope that they will add these features to Ligthroom(s) in future versions, but they normally don’t take so long. It’s a bit unusual, to be honest. It used to be that any feature added to Camera Raw was also available in Lightroom Classic, since they shared the same engine. Then, a few years ago, they started releasing “beta” features in camera RAW (or “Tech Demos”), a version or two before they were added to Lightroom. But this has been three versions now, and they keep adding major new features with no sign of these being added to Lightroom any time soon.

It also used to be the case that, even if a feature wasn’t in Lightroom or Camera RAW, because they shared the same engine, changes made in one would show up in the other if you saved the changes to the XMP file. Even if there were no controls for the feature. I checked, and that’s not the case here. So, has Adobe broken the connection between the two? Is Lightroom no longer using the shared Camera RAW engine? (To be fair, this may not have been the case for a while now. I haven’t followed Camera RAW’s development as much as I should have, because it was basically the same)

I’m sure they will be at some point, but this isn’t normally the way they do this. It could be a technical issue, but I honestly don’t know what’s going on. If you have any insight, please let us know in the comments below. For what it’s worth, I’m not the only one who has noticed this and the fact that this isn’t the usual release schedule.

[UPDATE]

I did find this comment on the Adobe forums about this from an Adobe employee, and I guess it makes sense:

“Camera Raw is the Edit/Develop Engine powering the Lightroom clients. New Edit features must be built in Camera Raw before the Lightroom clients can adopt them. Unburdened by the additional cataloguing, syncing, and other workflow functionalities, Camera Raw can move more quickly to get these desired new features into your editing workflow. Our goal is to eventually port these features into the Lightroom clients. “

After a lot of procrastination and an impending sense of dread that I might break it fully, I’ve finally taken the plunge and upgraded this site to Squarespace 7.1. This has also allowed me to create a new layout and experiment with some new features. It’s far from perfect right now, and I still need to make some tweaks, but I already think it looks a lot better than the previous one, which was getting stale. There are a couple of big changes, though, and I’ll go through those below.

No more sidebar

The biggest change is that the sidebar is gone. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible in the current version of Squarespace. This was the thing that put me off upgrading the most, but in the end, I realised that hardly anyone ever clicked on anything in the sidebar anyway, so it didn’t really matter. On the plus side, it does give a nice and clean layout, there’s that!

I can technically add a sidebar of sorts to individual posts, but it’s a lot of work, so I won’t be doing that, I think. The other downside to this, apart from not being able to display links in the sidebar, is that most of my posts were designed for a smaller-width column. Now, this is fine for 95% of blog posts, but a small few might look a bit weird.

Featured Image may be missing

The other issue is that the new version no longer automatically puts a featured image at the top of the post. The old version did this automatically from the thumbnail, but the new one doesn’t. The upshot is that I have to add them manually. I’m not going to go back and do this for thousands of posts going back 10 years, so most will have to do without it. For popular posts, I’m doing my best to include them.

Featured posts on the home page

I’ve used this opportunity to add a “Featured Posts” section to the home page, as I’ve wanted to do this before but couldn’t get it to work properly in the old version. I’m not 100% sold on this design yet, and it may need a few tweaks, but overall I think it looks ok and adds some nice functionality.

The featured posts are key posts I think are more timeless or prominent, and they will be updated regularly. I had marked some as featured years ago, and it’s funny to see what came up when I added the block in. Hopefully, this will make it easier to find key posts in the future.

Other miscellaneous points and future plans

So there are still a few bugs and design things that need fixing, and I’m sure I’ll find more. Some of the font sizes are a bit all over the place (hard to fix), and there are some issues with padding, etc. I had wanted to have fewer columns on the home page for smaller screens, but I can’t get it to work yet.

The menu layout is a bit haphazard, too. I had to change this as it didn’t update properly from the old one, so some things may be missing. However, I do like the fact that it’s a proper menu now. I don’t think people even realised the other one was there! I hardly ever went to it, and it was my own website!

I will be adding some more content back into the footer, too, such as links to my presets and so on, but I’m still working on that. I’m also considering bringing back the newsletter in one form or another, but I’m looking at how to do that. There is a built-in one in Squarespace, but I’m not sure it’s the best solution. But I do want to explore this option, as I think it’s the best way for readers to stay updated now, with social media downgrading links and Google reducing its actual search functions.

Anyway, please let me know what you think of the design. I’m not a web design expert, and there are limits to what can be done with the system, so I’m doing my best. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. Likewise, if you spot any major errors, please let me know.

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DXO is running a special Father’s Day promotion, and my readers can get 20% off with the code THOMAS_FD26. That’s pretty much it, really! The offer runs until June 28th, and it’s only valid for new customers, I’m afraid.

Speaking of DXO, in case you missed it, I have recently been posting some tutorials and reviews on their products, including a nifty hack you can do with Nik 9’s Analogue Efex to turn your images into Red/Blue 3D. I also had a tutorial on how to fix the stretchy-people phenomenon you get with wide-angle lenses, and I did a review of the Nik 9 collection.

Note that this post contains a paid affiliate promotion. We receive a small commission on purchases made using the included code, which helps fund this site.

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A set of June updates to Adobe’s Photography applications will be released later this week. This will include Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Photoshop and so on. For the most part, these will be bug fixes and new camera support, but there are a couple of things worth noting.

Adobe are doing a weird thing here and lifting the embargo before the updates actually ship, so if you don’t see them in the Creative Cloud app immediately (at time of publishing), try again midweek.

Lightroom Classic and Lightroom desktop get new improvements to the AI models and technology. Assisted culling gets some improvements, and there is a new subject detection model, which they claim will improve … well…subject detection, I suppose. The biggest thing here is the new local models for Denoise. If you are on a Mac, Denoise now uses Apple’s ML cores and runs locally, so it should work even without an internet connection.

Lightroom Desktop (Or Just “Lightroom”) now lets you use Topaz AI Sharpening directly in the software, though it will cost credits. You can now also generate a video from an image directly in Lightroom (not Classic), without sending it to Firefly first, and it will use the various partner models. It’s basically the same thing; you just don’t have to send the image to Firefly first. The quality is still pretty bad in my opinion.

(See the video below - it might look ok in a little window on the web, but view it full screen and you’ll see what I mean)

Photoshop also includes updates to its on-device models, and the remove reflections tool is now available in Photoshop without going through Camera Raw. I’ve actually missed some of the recent Photoshop updates, as I don’t pay enough attention to the release notes, but in the May release, they added the local model for the remove tool, too.

Speaking of Camera Raw, there have been a whole bunch of new features added in the last few versions that have yet to make it to Lightroom. This is a bit strange, because it used to be the case that the two engines were kept relatively in sync. But with the past two versions, Camera RAW has added depth mapping in Masks, a new “Projection” tool to fix certain types of distortion, and a tool to feather AI masks (finally). None of these are in Lightroom yet.

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