Lightroom Updates (Patreon)

Lightroom Classic has just been updated to Version 13.0 and Lightroom to Version 7.0

These updates support the following

• Raw Support for the A7CII and A7CR cameras
• Lens Profile Support for the FE 16-35 F2.8 GM II Lens
• A brand new Post-Production Lens Blur feature
• Point Color Adjustments

Note > The Previous Lightroom update also brought in support for Sony's HEIF or .HIF file format (an alternative file format to JPEG). Not to be confused with Apple's HEIC file format (High Efficiency Image Container) which Lightroom has supported for some time.

Raw support

You can now import your Raw files from the two new cameras into your Lightroom Catalog. My CAMSET files for the A7CII and A7CR camera are set up to record Raw and JPEG. At this time you may want to remove the JPEG file format from your camera setup if you never send JPEGs from the camera to your smartphone for sharing. If you switch to Raw + HEIF the camera will send a JPEG to your smartphone.

If you choose to remove JPEG or change to HIF You will have to repeat the process with all three memory recalls and re-register the modified settings if you choose to do this (the choice of file format is part of each registered memory). This video tutorial will help you with the process.

Register Recall and Modify a Memory Setting on a Sony Alpha Camera

https://youtu.be/G0uS9kBZNGY

Lens Profile Support

This only affects Raw shooters as JPEGs can be corrected in camera, so long as you had all the Lens Compensations in the camera set to Auto.

HIF (High Efficiency Image Format)

The main advantage of the .HIF file format is the HEIF (4:2:2) is 10bit color, compared to JPEGs 8-bit color, and the file size of a HEIF (4:2:2) file is approximately half that of an Extra Fine JPEG Quality file. The disadvantage of the .HIF file format is that it is not currently supported by most other applications and most Internet browsers. This means that the .HIF files have to be exported as JPEGs when you want to share the images. Some are claiming improved dynamic range when using the .HIF file format but I am not currently seeing this. If, however, you are using to editing JPEGs quite aggressively you may notice smoother transitions of color hold up better with HIF files compared to JPEG files

Lens Blur

We have never been able to significantly blur areas of our image in Lightroom previously. Adjusting sharpness to -100 created only small amounts of blur compared to what is possible when using Photoshop's Gaussian Blur and Lens Blur features.

Lightroom's Lens Blur feature will attempt to guess what is the background and what is your subject, but offer a number of controls to adjust distance or manually paint in increased focus or more blur when it makes a mistake.

Note > Mistakes will be frequent because our Alpha cameras (unlike the modern smartphones) do not write a depth map into the EXIF data of the file to help Adobe understand the distance of various objects within the image.

I asked Sony in Japan, back in 2019, to consider working on depth maps for future Alpha cameras.

Point Color Adjustments

This now makes it easier to adjust a smaller range of colours or target a precise colour rather than just having to choose one of eight color sliders (covering all colour within the image).