Are you a Windows PC user and are you finding Adobe Lightroom Classic for your Windows PC? I think you’re in the right place!
Adobe’s Lightroom is the leading professional photography workflow software. But which Lightroom should you use? The photography software is available in two versions: Lightroom for consumers and Lightroom Classic for professionals. Lightroom Classic offers professional photographers powerful ways to import, organize, and edit everything they capture. Its unique features and design earned it a rare five-star rating and was awarded Editors’ Choice for photo workflow software.
Overview of Adobe Lightroom Classic
With the release of the revamped Lightroom (not named Classic), the software that photography professionals know and love has a younger, simpler sibling. Lightroom offers a cleaner interface than Lightroom Classic, but lacks some of the tools that professionals have come to expect, such as support for additional connections, tethered shooting, and the ability to print locally. Professionals will want to continue with Lightroom Classic, the subject of this review, the successor to Lightroom’s throne that offers all the features of the franchise.
However, the new Lightroom is not without its audience. It uploads all images to the cloud by default, so it’s more suitable for users and hobbyists who want to use everything in the cloud. Recently, Adobe Lightroom has been able to import images not only to cloud storage, but also to internal storage (non-classical).
Features of Adobe Lightroom Classic
Library Mode and Presets
In Library mode, a double-tap toggles between thumbnail and screen-fit view, and another tap zooms to 100%. Zooming isn’t as convenient as in other image editors, but you can now zoom in to any percentage using the sliders if you enable the Zoom controls in the toolbar below the main image. You can also use the touch screen to pinch and zoom to the desired level. I was very excited to try it out on the Acer T232HL touchscreen. There’s even a touch interface with large controls that can be activated by pressing the finger icon.
Face recognition
Lightroom Classic offers the same face detection and recognition capabilities as the amateur-level Photoshop Elements. You can access the People view by clicking the software title bar in the upper left corner and selecting Face Detection from the drop-down menu, or by clicking the face icon on the toolbar in Library mode. It’s a little more hidden than I’d like. There are no entries on the left side of Collections and Catalogs, and Faces mode is a pleasure to use with Maps mode.
Create and destroy
This Firefly AI feature is used in other Adobe software such as Photoshop and Express. Before using this tool, you must acknowledge that it is Early Access and may contain bugs. Check the Generative AI checkbox to enable the tool; Note that you can use traditional Object Aware removal tools from the pre-AI days. This poor little deer had to be sacrificed by your Humananthine reviewer to demonstrate how the new tool works. First, you need to roughly select an object that can be added to or deleted from the regular item.
HDR
Over the years, Lightroom has been able to combine several images of the same scene to create an image with dark and light areas. This is one use of the term HDR, or high dynamic range, but is separate from editing the HDR file format and displaying images on HDR-capable displays. Lightroom’s new HDR option shows a wider range of colors and brighter colors, but you’ll benefit even more from HDR image files and HDR displays. Lightroom now lets you edit and export native HDR image formats with a simple button in the Basics group of the Develop panel.
Final Words
Lightroom Classic may be long in the tooth, but there’s still life in this old dog! It has all the tools you need to detect color overlays, and tonalities, and remove artifacts like color bursts, flare noise, and lens distortion. It’s a powerful asset manager that can gather files spread across multiple external drives into a single, easily accessible repository (without making space-consuming copies of them). Classic boasts the AI-assisted tools found in Lightroom CC, so you can make mask-based adjustments to RAW file features.
System Requirements
- 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows 10 / 11 (version 22H2 or later) ; 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows 10 / 11
- Intel or AMD processor with a clock speed of at least 2 GHz with support for 64-bit OS and SSE 4.2
- 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended)
- 4 GB available hard drive space; Additional free space required during installation
- Graphics card with 2 GB VRAM and DirectX 12 support (4 GB recommended for 4K or higher displays)
- 1024×768 resolution (1920×1080 or higher recommended)