This morning, Adobe announced the latest updates to Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, as a part of its annual Adobe MAX Conference — which is being held virtually this year. A new Advanced Color Grading tool takes center stage, along with a few other workflow and community updates across apps.

See the updates for: Lightroom | Lightroom Classic

Advanced Color Grading

Available across the Lightroom ecosystem, the new Color Grading tool is the big update this year for Adobe. The new tool allows for color control for midtones, highlights and shadows, and replaces the Split Toning tool.

The Color Grading tool lets you apply a color tint to your image, which is based on the brightness of your image’s pixels. Lighter pixels can be tinted differently from darker pixels.

The tool features a row of icons that let you set the view. The first view is 3-Way, which shows the shadows, midtones and highlights in smaller color wheels. The 3-Way view is only available for desktop apps. The next three icons take you into a larger, more detailed view for each range.

To read more about the new Color Grading tool, visit Adobe’s blog.

Lightroom updates

Graphical Watermark

After introducing text-based watermarking to Lightroom earlier this year, graphical watermarking is now available. With a graphical watermark, you can place your logo stamp on your photo.

Your logo stamp and values are synced across your devices as well, so you can set the watermark settings once and go back to it on any device. However, it does not allow for you to save multiple presets, which is currently available in Lightroom Classic.

The graphical watermark settings are available under the “Custom” share options on Mac and Windows, and “Expoert as” share options on iOS, iPadOS, Android and Chrome OS.

This new feature is available for Lightroom for Windows, Mac, iOS, iPadOS, Android and Chrome OS.

Auto Versions

Lightroom can now automatically save versions of your edits across devices as you tweak your image. At any time, you can visit the Versions tab to revert to a previous version as needed.

This new feature is available for Lightroom for Windows, Mac, Web, iOS, iPadOS, Android and Chrome OS.

Following photographers in Discover

First released for desktop earlier this year, you can now follow your favorite Lightroom photographer through the Discover tab. Simply tap the “Follow” button next to your favorite photographer and stay up-to-date on their most recent creations and edits.

This new feature is available for Lightroom for iOS, iPadOS, Android and Chrome OS.

Explore Learn and Discover content based on what you like

Under the Learn and Discover sections, your content feed will now intelligently prioritize content based on your activity in Lightroom. Tutorials are available to enhance your skills, and you can see edits from the community to get inspired.

This new feature is available for Lightroom for Web, iOS, iPadOS, Android and Chrome OS.

Best Photos

The days of going through hundreds of images and selecting your best are gone. Thanks to Best Photos, you can have Lightroom suggest a curated subset of images in an album based on photographic principles.

Best Photos works by first identifying and grouping similar photos within your selection. From each group of similar photos, the best photo is based on dimensions like focus, exposure, subject matter and general aesthetics. You can decide what percentage of photos make the cut by toggling the Quality Threshold slider, and photos not selected can be added to your Best Photos group and further organized using Lightroom’s built-in tools.

This new feature is available for Lightroom for Web, iOS, iPadOS, Android and Chrome OS.

Lightroom Classic updates

Improved performance

With the latest GPU acceleration for Linear Gradient, Radial Gradient and the Adjustment Brush tool, you can experience smoother and 2x faster rendering when painting with the Brush tool, applying gradients and adjusting the edit sliders for all local corrections. GPU acceleration must be enabled to see the effects.

Tethered Live View for Canon

Canon photographers now have the ability to see a real-time feed to help with composition, focus and exposure. Tethered Live View is currently available for several Canon cameras, with support for additional cameras coming soon.