Adobe enhances Lightroom’s video capabilities by giving it the ability to apply presets as well as in/out points for easy editing.
The Lightroom photo development software, Adobe’s “clear room”, is now receiving a series of updates, including a very surprising one that affects… videos. Announced today and available later this week for all subscribers to an Adobe CC offer, these updates include a feature that highlights the evolution of the photographer’s profession.
If video playback is already present in Lightroom, photographers can now perform two key actions for a simplified workflow: put in/out points in a clip to limit it to the interesting part. And especially to configure the colors or the exposure, the contrast, etc. of a video file in the same way that they develop their photos. Even better: the video settings can, like the photo development settings, be copied and then pasted onto a second sequence.
A photographer, who makes a few additional clips for his site or his client, can now give the same look to his video clips without having to change software. Adobe being a giant in video editing, the American publisher did not have to look far for the technological bricks, and Lightroom is not ready to overshadow at first. The tools here are very basic, and stick with the rapid development needs of photographers. It remains to be seen, however, if this feature will “digest” well all the videos that we give it to grind (no details as to the encapsulations and codecs supported). Furthermore, will this new video “engine” not weigh down the software too much, which is not well known for its lightness?
More adaptive and smarter set parameters
From the start, one of the strengths of Lightroom’s workflow has been to offer, in addition to developer tools, presets for quickly developing photos. Enough to effortlessly give your images a true “developed” photo look, as the development of a raw RAW camera shot can sometimes take several minutes. Two very important improvements are coming with this update: the possibility to play with the intensity of the parameter, and the addition of an AI to apply it.
Like the intensity of a filter, we can now manage the intensity of the predefined parameters in the software. In the past, you had to juggle for a long time with the different sliders to reduce this intensity. Better: Adobe’s background work is starting to trickle down to these filters. Its algorithms are thus able to apply these filters either to a subject or to the sky. It remains to be seen how this AI mill will act on complex photos, whether they are special skies (aurora borealis, sunsets, etc.) or on scenes with several subjects (and heterogeneous skin tones). Bonus gift for portraits: another AI takes care of automatically detecting red eyes (ahhh, that good flash that burns the back of the eye!) without having to select them.
Built-in parameters that pull the rug out from under preset vendors
For years now, lazy photographers – and not only are there many of them, but they’re not wrong! – can buy parameters (“presets”) often concocted by other photographers. Proof that there is a demand on the one hand, and that the basic parameters did not cover (far from it) all user needs, on the other hand.
This Lightroom update gets five presets packs:
Developed by photographers paid by Adobe, these presets are integrated at no additional cost to users, but their presence could perhaps damage Adobe’s image a little within the ecosystem that revolves around the company.
A horde of other updates are on board – batch copy/paste masks, added next/previous buttons for mouse navigation, etc.
All subscribers who have Lightroom in their monthly plan will get it by the end of the week, depending on when the update is rolled out.