In my Friday Image post I mentioned I may head out to Saddleworth Moor on Saturday morning. I did walk up there but it didn’t look promising for photography. Storm Brian was on the way and it was already raining hard. But, by the time I had walked from home to the edge of the moors, the sky had broken (it was damn windy though) and I decided to take a few shots.
The image you see here is two images stitched in Lightroom. These were taken handheld using the Fuji X-T2. I chose the Fuji due to its weather resistant properties. I also used a new 0.6 hard grad filter on the sky; I will have more to tell you about my new filters in the near future.
Back home, I opened Lightroom to downloaded my images and got the message I hate; there were Adobe updates. With so many companies moving to the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, I’m now constantly updating software and getting less done.
This release was though a little different. I was interested because I had heard Lightroom now had Luminosity Masking and I was curious. I couldn’t understand why they had chosen to include this a s a feature in Lightroom when you already had great tone controls.
Photoshop Upgrade
As Photoshop is a new major release, I fully expected to reinstall may various plug-ins after the upgrade. I was quite surprised this time though to find that most plug-ins were still present after the upgrade. The only exception was the Nik Collection which was now missing.
Each time this happens, you see lots of rumours spread on the internet that Nik is not compatible with the latest Photoshop release. I can report this isn’t the case. Although the Nik Collection is removed in the upgrade, you can download and install it again. I have tested it with both my Mac and Windows PC and the Nik filters work fine.
The image you see above was converted to black and white using Nik Silver Efex Pro from within Photoshop 2018.
Lightroom Upgrade
The Lightroom upgrade was also very smooth. It was though a little confusing initially; for some reason Adobe has chosen to rename it to Lightroom Classic. I’m sure the reason for this will become apparent in the future.
A few things have struck me already about the new release:
- Be prepared to upgrade your Lightroom Catalogue. Most people have just one catalogue which isn’t a problem. If you have multiple catalogues it becomes a bit of a faff.
- There is a new processing engine buried in the update. If you look in the Develop module at the Camera Calibration tab, you see the Process version listed at the top. The old one is “Version 3 (2012)” but now we have “Version 4”. If you have images imported under the previous version you will need to switch them manually if you want to use the new process. You can do this individually or you can make a bulk change. Bulk processing can be applied by clicking the small icon to the bottom right of the histogram. It looks like a lightning bolt and appears when you have an image selected which was imported under an older processing version. I have yet to understand the full benefits of the new process.
- The selection tools (Gradient, brush etc.) now feature a Range Mask. This is something I didn’t know I needed until I tried it. Having made a selection, the Range Mask allows you to further refine that selection based on either colour or brightness (luminance). This means you can select a large area of your image but then refine the selection to avoid adjusting say the shadows or the highlights. I actually did some dodging and burning on the above image using the Range Mask to prevent anything becoming a pure black mass and its brilliant.
I’m quite impressed with the new Lightroom tools and will look to post something on my You Tube channel soon to demonstrate.
Update: I have now posted a video to You Tube.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Robin,
This posting comes at a very good time; I had already decided I wasn’t going to install the LR & PS updates in my photographer’s cloud subscription until I had a better idea of how it might impact, or be impacted by, my Mac OS & the Affinity Photo & NIK plug ins that I use routinely. So I am pleased to read what you have experienced & will probably now go ahead with the upgrade. But like you, it seems like every time I turn around there is a new Apple or Adobe upgrade to contend with on my iMac computer, iPad or iPhone.
Also very interested in your take on this new range mask feature in LR that gives color & luminance masking adjustment possibilities. The results of it in your photo are quite impressive. Thanks for this as well. I look forward to your planned YouTube video tutorial of it. Cheers,
Jed
Hi Jed. This sounds like it was well timed. The you tube video is now live. I added a link on the blog page. Hope it helps.
I just happened upon your post and I’m glad I did. Gorgeous image and information. I shoot with an X-T2 and us LR/PS. Thanks for all the info.
Hi Jane, thank you very much for the positive feedback. In case you haven’t seen it, there’s also posted a video about this on YouTube (https://youtu.be/Ks2-1i9YVR4). The X-T2 is an excellent camera and great to use.
I am loving the results with the X-T2 and don’t miss lugging my D800 although I do love Nikon. It’s been interesting to learn the Fuji system.
You will need to shoot a new avatar holding the Fuji. If you look at mine, I’m holding a film camera. I did a presentation last night at a Photographic Society in the UK and so many members seem to be switching to Fuji.
Haha! You are right. Never occurred to me. 🙂