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Adobe Lightroom Classic

 & Michael Muchmore Contributor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

Our Expert
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Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom remains the gold standard in pro photo workflow software. It's a complete package, with top-notch organization tools, state of-the-art adjustments, and all the output and printing options you'd want.

Adobe Lightroom Classic Interface

The Adobe Lightroom Classic Interface features modes for Library, Develop, Map, and Print functions, among others. You can collapse the side panels or use a full-screen view.

Profiles in Lightroom Classic

Lightroom's new Profile options create a better initial image from raw camera files. There are also creative Profiles for adding effect filters.

Enhance Details

This new tool uses AI code in Windows and macOS to extract more details from raw camera files. The enhancement (right side) is subtle, to say the least.

Tone Curve in Lightroom

The Tone Curve tool in Lightroom has been updated with more granular control.

Range Mask

You can create a range mask by selecting with the Adjustment Brushes or Radial Filter/Graduated Filters and then choosing Color or Luminance from the Range Mask section.

Luminance Mask

I was able to brighten the bird without brightening the sky by using the luminance mask selection.

Panorama Boundary Warp

A new panorama option can recover pixels lost to cropping.

Panorama Options

On top, you see the original panorama stich, then the cropped version, and on the bottom the Boundary Warp version. The last recovers all the pixels lost in the second, but produces unnatural angles.

Guided Upright

The Guided Upright tool let you straighten out perspective distortion using up to four guidelines.

Sync Menu

You can pause syncing from this menu, as well as enable face recognition and geotagging.

People

Lightroom's face recognition lets you organize your people photos with name tags.

HDR Tool

Lightroom lets you combine under- and overexposed versions of the same photo for a balanced result.

Gradient Brush

You can now fine-tune gradients with a brush in both Radial and Graduated filters.

Lightroom on the Web

If you sync your Lightroom photos to Creative Cloud, you get this web view, which resembles the lightweight Lightroom CC app.

Slideshow

You can apply pan-and-zoom and sync slide transitions to music.

Healing Brush

Since Lightroom is sort of a subset of Photoshop, it gets features from its big brother occasionally. The Healing Brush, which lets you actually remove objects from your image, is available in the workflow app. Note you can select an irregular shape, rather than just a circle, for removal.

Noise Reduction

Lightroom's noise reduction tool does a fantastic job removing those light and color spots that appear in high-ISO and low-light shots.

Chromatic Aberration Removal

Lightroom's chromatic aberration correction has gotten much better at removing purple fringing.

Books

Lightroom's Book module lets you create book layouts for printing by the Blurb.com service or outputs a PDF file. Now you can save your custom page layouts.

Print

Lightroom offers a wealth of printing layouts and options, and a soft-proofing feature lets you see which color shades your printer will be able to output. The lightweight Lightroom CC offers no printing capability.

Texture Slider

This new adjustment as of May 2019 lets you more subtly smooth or sharpen photos.

Video

You can import, trim, and even apply basic lighting and color adjustments to video as well as still images.

Maps

You can place your pictures on a map using either embedded GPS data, that from a mobile app, or simply by dragging the photo thumbnails onto a map.

Books

Lightroom's Book module lets you create book layouts for printing by the Blurb.com service or outputs a PDF file. Now you can save your custom page layouts.

Print

Lightroom offers a wealth of printing layouts and options, and a soft-proofing feature lets you see which color shades your printer will be able to output.

About Our Expert

Michael Muchmore

Michael Muchmore

Contributor

My Experience

I've been testing PC and mobile software for more than 20 years, focusing on photo and video editing, operating systems, and web browsers. Prior to my current role, I covered software and apps for ExtremeTech and headed up PCMag’s enterprise software team. I’ve attended trade shows for Microsoft, Google, and Apple and written about all of them and their products.

I still get a kick out of seeing what's new in video and photo editing software, and how operating systems change over time. I was privileged to byline the cover story of the last print issue of PC Magazine, the Windows 7 review, and I’ve witnessed every Microsoft misstep and win, up to the latest Windows 11.

I’m an avid bird photographer and traveler—I’ve been to 40 countries, many with great birds! Because I’m also a classical music fan and former performer, I’ve reviewed streaming services that emphasize classical music.

Technology I Use

For everyday work, I use a good-old Dell tower with 16GB of RAM, a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 processor, and an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti GPU that runs on Windows 11. I pair it with a 4K Lenovo ThinkVision P27u-10 monitor and a Logitech MX Vertical mouse. For offsite work, I use a 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Camera-wise, I moved to mirrorless from a Canon EOS 80D with a Canon 70-300mm IS USM lens. I now have a Canon EOS R7 with a 100-400mm lens, but I miss my DSLR for several reasons.

In order of usage, the software I turn to most frequently is the Edge web browser, Slack, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365, Firefox, Brave, and WhatsApp. I use the Windows Phone link app to see everything on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone, which has excellent telephoto capability.

For fitness monitoring, I have a Fitbit Charge 6 and use an Anker Smart Scale P1. I’m also a streaming fan, so I subscribe to both Amazon Music Unlimited (especially for its Dolby Atmos content) and Qobuz (for its high-res sound quality and classical catalog). I recently added a Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE, which sounds surprisingly good given its low price. To holler commands instead of using a remote control, I have the Amazon Fire TV Cube in the living room, which lets me verbally tell the TV what I want to watch. It hooks up to an LG B4 OLED TV. I have a Sonos One speaker in my kitchen that also ties in with Alexa, as does the Echo Dot 2 With Clock in my bedroom. For serious listening, I have B&W 601 speakers plugged into a Conrad-Johnson Sonographe amp and preamp, with a Cambridge Audio AXN10 streamer as source. For reading, I also have a Nook GlowLight 3.

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