June 22, 2022

First AI masks and now Adjustable presets. They’re the best new Lightroom updates I’ve seen in years!

Lightroom and Capture One are competing head to head these days. Plus with others like DXO and OnOne Raw working hard. It’s good to see Adobe having to step up its game and deliver real features that reward subscribers.

I’ll be quick today as I show you the game-changing feature you’ll find in Lightroom 11.4 and its companion versions of Lightroom Cloud and even Lightroom mobile.

Still using Lightroom 6? Obviously, this feature is only for cloud subscribers. But a subscriber put me on to a plugin called Opal that gives you this function. I never knew about it until now. Don’t expect it to be as integrated and fluid as this new 2022 feature, but it looks cool.

Grab some presets (there are free versions) like FIlmist, Natural HDR or Silver and try this yourself like I did in the video. It’s pretty amazing.

Finally, adjustable presets in Lightroom!

It’s something people have asked me about for a long time. While it was something you could add to a point with extensions, it’s now a simple tool that just works in Lightroom. It even works inside mask mode to increase or decrease the intensity of effects like in Elegance 4 Speed Masks.

I think this is better than what we can do with layer opacity in Capture One, because it’s not simple and works on every setting we can apply. it changes settings dynamic to alter the effects, rather than creating a lower opacity like a layer.

This is so easy to use. Just watch the video and tell me in the comments what you think.

What I love here is that this feature is tightly integrated with how RAW develops and the presets module works. It dynamically updates all settings related to the current LIghtroom preset, which means you can then go on to add another preset to mod it, manually adjust settings, etc. Everything remains fluid and non-destructive/.

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