Rainbow over Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View – after applying the Dehaze control
Last week Adobe added an update to Lightroom CC, designated the 2015.1 release. It includes a couple of new features. The main one is a Dehaze slider, designed to reduce the appearance of atmospheric haze. It’s found in the Effects Panel of the Develop Module.
I’m usually skeptical of things like this. Is it really different than adding Contrast or Clarity? Well, yes, actually. Adobe says, “The Dehaze technology is based on a physical model of how light is transmitted, and it tries to estimate light that is lost due to absorption and scattering through the atmosphere.” I’m not sure how they do that exactly, but it seems to work more effectively than just adding Contrast or Clarity.
This rainbow image from Tunnel View has considerable atmospheric haze, created by falling rain. In the photograph at the top of this post I’ve applied a modest amount of the Dehaze control (+20). The image below shows how it looked before applying the Dehaze adjustment. Just a small application of this tool added some extra definition to the upper two-thirds of the image.
Rainbow over Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View – before applying the Dehaze control
Using the Dehaze tool tends to make an image darker, so you may need to compensate by lightening the photograph a bit with Exposure, the Tone Curve, or maybe the Shadows slider. And, like every digital-darkroom tool, Dehaze is best used in moderation. Add too much and things start to look weird and fake pretty quickly.
This latest Lightroom update also adds another feature: Blacks and Whites sliders to local adjustments (the Graduated Filter, Radial Filter, and Adjustment Brush). I’ve long wanted the ability to use a point curve on just part of an image in Lightroom. Adding the Whites and Blacks sliders to the local-adjustment tools isn’t the same, but it helps to give more precise control over the range of tones being altered with these local adjustments.
These latest additions are helpful, though not huge. Looking at the big picture, perhaps the most significant part of this update is that it’s available to Creative Cloud subscribers, but not to people who own a standalone license to Lightroom 6. When Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC were announced, Adobe said that owners of a Lightroom 6 license would get updates for new cameras, but wouldn’t get other new features until the release of Lightroom 7. It seems that they’re following through on this.
In the past, some significant new features were introduced in between the major releases, and these updates were given free to everyone who owned a license for the latest version. Now, people who own a standalone license to Lightroom 6 will be left out of these updates. It seems that Adobe is really pushing people toward getting a subscription. My guess is that they’ll be rolling out more new features that are only available to subscribers, just to make a subscription seem more attractive. I’ve become more used to the idea of the subscription model, but this move by Adobe feels like they’re treating people with a standalone license as second-class citizens.
The problem is that Adobe makes really good software. No other program offers anything comparable to Lightroom’s amazing Highlights and Shadows tools (except Adobe Camera Raw of course). No competitor (as far as I know) allows you to choose from a variety of camera profiles, or offers as sophisticated lens correction tools and local adjustments. Nor does anyone else offer completely non-destructive and flexible editing for panoramas and HDR images, introduced in Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC. And all this is coupled with robust file-management tools. So for me, for now, Lightroom will continue to be my main image-processing software.
For those of you with a Lightroom 6 standalone license, there is a workaround that will allow you to use the Dehaze tool – sort of. It turns out that Presets created in the CC version will work in Lightroom 6.1. Several people are already offering free presets that do just that – just do a search for “Lightroom dehaze presets”. I also saw a rumor that Adobe will offer these updates to Lightroom 6 users for a fee. I hope they do offer this, and for a nominal charge, as these additions aren’t significant enough to warrant a large price tag.
— Michael Frye
Related Post: Lightroom 6: First Impressions
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Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author or principal photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, Yosemite Meditations for Women, Yosemite Meditations for Adventurers, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters. He has also written three eBooks: Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, Exposure for Outdoor Photography, and Landscapes in Lightroom 5: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide. Michael has written numerous magazine articles on the art and technique of photography, and his images have been published in over thirty countries around the world. Michael has lived either in or near Yosemite National Park since 1983, currently residing just outside the park in Mariposa, California.
As one of Adobe’s second class citizens this does not surprise me. The timing also makes me think these updates were already done when 6.0 was released. They were just held out of 6.0 so they could say, “see, there’s a benefit to subscribing”.
I’m still not interested in a model where I don’t own a perpetual license. Let’s see how all this plays out over the next year or two.
Agreed…
John, you might be right about Adobe deliberately withholding these updates, but then again, they’ve added features between major releases before, so this isn’t really new. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next year or two. It would not surprise me if Lightroom 6 is the last standalone version they offer.
You may well be right Michael, that 6 is the last stand alone version. That wouldn’t surprise me. You’ll have to pardon my cynicism in the timing of the updates. With the continued push to the subscription model and the hype that only CC will get future updates, I have to believe they made sure there would be some “future” updates soon after.
I like LR very much. For now it meets my needs as is. I have too many other things I need to improve without worrying about a small new software feature or two. 🙂
> I have too many other things I need to improve without worrying about a small new software feature or two.
Don’t we all? 🙂
I need to more than you do. LoL! 🙂
I like LR too, but should they not offer any longer a stand-alone version, I’d start evaluating alternatives.
I don’t blame you Fabrizio.
Re your comments that no other program offers highlights/shadows adjustment than Lightroom, ACDSee Pro 8, which I use, offers highlights/shadows adjustments in the Raw converter, had it before Lightroom, that feature is better than Lightroom’s, in my opinion, and adjustable to 3, 5, or 7 sliders. It doesn’t have everything Lighroom has, but its very fast for editing large numbers of images.
Thanks Henry, though I never said that no other program offers highlights and shadows adjustments. In fact practically every image-editing program offers some version of this, but I’ve never seen any application that does it as well as Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. In fairness, however, I haven’t tried ACDSee, since it’s Windows only.
I also have standalone LR. But I mostly use Nik software & am glad I do, particularly since Adobe no longer provides updates to perpetual licensees.
I’m glad you’re happy with the Nik tools Monika. I don’t use Nik (or the Topaz and OnOne suites) because I find it awkward and clunky to use a separate program for each different effect – one for sharpening, one for converting to black and white, etc. I’d like to do it all in one program for speed and convenience, for the ability to adjust one effect in conjunction with and comparison with another, and to keep a flexible and non-destructive workflow.
DxO OpticsPro has done shadow/highlight control for sometime and offered dehaze (as ClearView) last year. Comparison tests I’ve seen show DxO’s version of dehaze works better than Adobe’s.
Thanks Rich. I’ve tried DxO OpticsPro, and there are things I like about it, but it’s not nearly as complete a program as Lightroom. And while it has highlights and shadows controls, I haven’t found them to work as well as Lightroom’s, which are tremendous at darkening highlights and lightening shadows in a natural-looking way, while retaining good local contrast and snap.
I agree about the overall use of LR as both a cataloging and modification tool Michael. I wish Apple had improved Aperture rather than abandoning it; it could have been a great alternative to Adobe’s subscription model. OpticsPro is missing the finer-grained control that LR has (brushes, masks) and they have positioned it as a tool to use in addition to a LR rather than as a replacement for it. When LR goes subscription-only I’ll continue to use my licensed version and change my workflow to make use of other tools (CaptureOne? On1, DxO), even though it won’t be as well integrated and may need more steps everything should work out OK.
Another second class Adobe citizen. I heard that they are interpreting some law or regulation that says they cannot offer new features w/o some sort of payment. Sounds like a good legal sounding excuse to me. I do have to say that some of my fellow LUG members have posted dehazed shots and I was not impressed. Yours is the first example that I would say makes me wish I had that tool.
I will continue to resist the rented software model as long as possible. I want to be able to use the software as long as it is on my computer w/o having to pay a ransom. They should say when you stop payment, the software will continue to function in the way it did when you stop, but will not get any more updates. This, of course, after you have already paid the equivalent of the free standing price. The way it is, if for some reason in the future I could not pay, I am dead in the water and cannot work on any of my photos. At least that is my understanding.
Aram, I hadn’t heard that part about the legal excuse. Not sure if there’s any validity to that. I would also like Adobe (or any other company that licenses software by subscription) allow you to keep using a fully-functioning version of a program that you’ve essentially paid for – sort of a rent-to-own plan.
Here is a link to a blog that has a lot to say about this:
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2015/06/june-updates-to-cc-photography.html
About 1/3 of the way through the comments people start referring to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Here is one quote:
“Claimed, by Adobe, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act prevents new functionality from being added to goods for which the revenues have already been recognized. Because of this we have previously been able to do bug updates with fixes for advertised features, but not add new functionality when we have already recorded the sale. Subscriptions change what may be done in updates because the revenue is recurring in the same time period as the update.”
Lots to read if you have some spare time. A lot is just mad, but there are some interesting things there. Only 10AM and already close to 100 on our way to 111F today, so I avoided going outside, stayed in the AC and took the time to read most of it.
That act was passed in 2002. It hasn’t applied until now?
Just sayin’
Doug
When I visit Yosemite and the conditions turn out to be particularly photogenic, I always look forward to seeing your blog a few days later to find out where I really should have been that day. The day you were getting this shot (March 30 of last year, right?), I spent the afternoon on Turtleback Dome, and though the mist made for memorable and ever-changing views from there, I was knocked out when I saw this photo turn up on your blog the next day. I hope I’ll be lucky enough to see a full rainbow like this over the valley someday, and maybe even have the camera set up when it happens. This is a beautiful shot.
An auspicious day for posting a pretty rainbow photo, by the way. Well done.
Russ, yes, this photo was made on March 30, 2014. Sorry you missed it! And I had planned this post before the Supreme Court ruling, but it’s a nice coincidence. 🙂
A friend just emailed me that he read on a nature photographers forum that someone has used the dehaze tool to help visualize sensor and lens dust. He said he just cranks it up to 100 and the dust stands out much better than LR’s visualize spots tool. You might want to try this. Since my LR6 update did not give me the dehaze, I cannot give it a try.
Here is the link:
http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/bbs.cgi?a=vm&mr=78210&CGISESSID=d1d50cb2bfa48cf1f18117a654759c0b&u=25120
or http://tinyurl.com/opttxro
Hi Michael,
I’m another one of those second class citizens :-o. Adobe made all sorts of promises as to how Lightroom would remain stand alone when CC first came out. And now, they can say, “See? It’s still available stand alone” while they continue their unsubtle manipulation to force people to the cloud. A little honesty would have been preferable, but I guess an honest, we are going to try and force everyone into CC because it locks them into our model forever and gives us a continuing revenue stream type statement might not go over so well. But, the cynical manipulation and marketing spin are worse imo.
My experience mirrors yours. Lightroom is the most complete package for me, and I will regret being forced to a different application. I have already gone that route with Photoshop.
In the meantime, I have LR6. And there are lots of things I can do to improve my photography over the next few years that new features or lack of new features in LR will not affect. Plenty of time for me to watch how this evolves.
Doug
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Doug, and yes, it will be interesting to see how this evolves. It would be nice if someone created a program that equaled Lightroom all around. Capture One comes close to equaling Lightroom’s Develop Module, but is not in the same league when you count all of Lightroom’s other features. Aperture was really the closest competitor, but of course was never available for Windows, and is now being discontinued. I never used Aperture, but I wish it was still around to provide more competition for Adobe. I think Apple missed an opportunity to capture a big piece of the photo-editing software market by not making a Windows version of Aperture available early on. But then that’s obviously not Apple’s main focus, and they’ve been doing pretty well. 🙂