Earlier today, Adobe launched a major update to Camera Profiles (now known as just “Profiles”) in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), Lightroom Classic CC, Lightroom CC, and both versions of Lightroom Mobile. The update brings six new Adobe RAW profiles, over 40 new Creative profiles, a new profile browser, and a bunch of new features and feature enhancements across both mobile and desktop.
The most significant update here is obviously Profiles.
Camera Profiles has now been renamed “Profiles”, and the whole panel has been moved so it’s easier to find. In Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic CC, Profiles have been moved from the Camera Calibration panel into the Basics panel; in Lightroom CC, they’ve been added to the top of the edit panel.
But this update isn’t just about adding Profiles to Lightroom CC and moving them around a bit. There are now six new Adobe RAW profiles to work with.
Six New Adobe RAW Profiles
Previously, the only Adobe RAW profile you had at your disposal was Adobe Standard. Now, you’ve got six more to choose from:
- Adobe Color: designed to improve the look and rendering of warm tones, improve the transition between certain color ranges, and slightly increase the starting contrast of your photos. As the new default, it was designed to work with the widest range of photos.
- Adobe Monochrome: Tuned to be “a great starting point” for any black & white photo. Results in better tonal separation and contrast than Adobe Standard converted to B&W.
- Adobe Landscape: Produces more vibrant skies and foliage tones.
- Adobe Neutral: Provides a starting point with very low contrast. Adobe claims this one is most useful “for photos where you want the most control, or that have very difficult tonal ranges.”
- Adobe Portrait: Provides “more control and better reproduction of skin tones.” This means less contrast and saturation applied to skin tones throughout the photo, so you have more control over how those tones turn out.
- Adobe Vivid: A “punchy, saturated starting point.”
The point of each of these profiles (and Adobe Standard) is to give your images a unified “look and feel” regardless of the camera you’re using. But now, rather than a single profile, you’ve got six “starting points” to choose from depending on your genre and photo editing style.
Adobe Color replaces 10-year-old Adobe Standard as the default profile for newly imported photos, but you’ll still have access to all of them in the new Profiles section of the Basics panel.
New Creative Profiles
You now have 40+ Creative profiles to choose from, split up into four groups: Artistic, Modern, Vintage, and Black & White. These profiles can be applied to both Raw and non-Raw photos, and come with a 3D Lookup Table (LUT) for a level of control that was previously reserved for Photoshop.
Creative profiles also come with an Amount slider, so you can increase or decrease the effect.
Additionally, Adobe has also been working with some popular Lightroom preset creators to create a range of 3rd Party Profiles, some of which are already available today. These include profiles by photographers Brian Matiash and Matt Kloskowski, and companies like RNI Films and Contrastly.
You can find links to all of the 3rd Party Profiles on the Adobe blog post about this update.
Updates to Lightroom CC on Android and iOS
In addition to the Profiles update described above, Lightroom CC for iOS, Android and ChromeOS all got some feature updates and upgrades as well.
On the Android/ChromeOS front, a new Details tab provides Sharpening and Noise Reduction options, Grain options have been added for “realistic film grain,” and some additional control for sharing images over Lightroom CC Web have been added as well.
For iOS users, the new Geometry tab will help you straighten crooked and skewed photos using new Upright, Guided Upright, and Geometry sliders; the same Grain options mentioned above have been added, and Adobe has introduced a Left-Handed Editing Mode on the iPad. The company has also done some iPhone X layout optimizations to take advantage of the dreaded notch.
A Few More Things
Finally, in addition to everything mentioned above, a few minor improvements have been made to Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC on the Desktop.
In Lightroom Classic CC, the Dehaze tool has been made more accessible by moving it to the Basics panel, the Tone Curve panel has been expanded for better/more precise control, and the face-tagging algorithm has been improved.
In Lightroom CC, support has been added for Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, and a new filter option has been added that allows you to sort your images by “sync status.”
