Lightroom 11.4 Release
Speed up your workflow with these new features: Batch Update Select Sky/Subject Masks, Invert Composite Mask, Preset Amount Slider and Export Using GPU acceleration.
On June 14, 2022, Adobe announced its new updates to Lightroom, Photoshop and Camera Raw. My article below is solely focusing the new features included in Lightroom Classic.
Batch Update Select Sky/Subject Masks
Lightroom has been updated with the Batch Update Select Sky/Subject Masks function. This feature enables pasting or syncing masks or applying Develop presets that include AI masks. These masks are now automatically recomputed, so no more manual updates needs to be completed.
There’s also a new Develop module > Settings menu > Update AI Masks command to recompute all AI masks on groups of photos that still need manually updating, such as when applying a preset during import.
Invert Composite Mask
With the new Invert Composite Mask feature, just right-click on a mask itself or use either the Invert Mask, which inverts the whole mask or the Duplicate and Invert Mask to create a new inverted mask , with all the sliders on the original mask cleared.
Preset Amount Slider
Lightroom 11.4 has now the ability to fade Develop presets and make it possible to amplify the effect of a preset, similar to Skylium’s Luminar AI Template slider.
The default 100 setting applies the preset as it was originally created. At 200 it doubles the effect and 0 completely removes all of its effects.
Export Using GPU acceleration
Export is now able to utilize the GPU and improve export performance with the caveat that the GPU must be powerful enough. The Auto setting automatically utilizes the GPU. Alternatively it can be enabled with the Use GPU for Export in the Custom settings.
The minimum requirement for computers with shared memory is at least 12GB of RAM to however 16GB or more is recommended.
Other Improvements
Automatic Preview Purging: to reduce disk space requirements, a new automatic background process clears previews that are no longer needed.
New Presets: The Adaptive sets use Select Sky and Select Subject for image-specific adjustments, and Video presets are designed for video editing.
Masking: The invert, subtract and intersect badges/icons on the mask components have been improved and moved to the left for better visibility.
Masking: The Amount slider in the Masking panel now shows all the time, and fades/amplifies the effect of the mask.
Crop tool: New Rule of Fifths crop overlay.
Info Overlays: Using View menu > View Options, you can now set different Info overlays for the Library or Develop views.
New languages: Norwegian and Polish.
New tether support for Canon EOS R3
New Camera and Lens support
To update, go to Lightroom’s Help Menu / Updates. Alternatively just use the Updates menu within the Adobe Creative Cloud App and click on the Check for Updates button to force the update process.
Conclusions
In own my workflow, I can already see that these new improvements are making a significant difference when it comes to efficiency and time savings working with Lightroom.
Happy editing ;-)
Tamas Haasz