On April 22nd Adobe announced a new update to Lightroom. It is available as a stand alone perpetual license Lighroom 6 or part of Adobe's Creative Cloud Lighroom CC. 

If you are a new to photography and looking for post processing image tool then Lighroom is a "must have". I have been using Lightroom since version 2 and cannot see myself using any other image editing software. The application is designed for photography and getting better and better. This new release is no exception. 

The previous version of Lighroom was pretty complete for any photographer of any level of skill from amateure to professional. The list of new features is not extensive but very powerful. Adobe kept the updates short but sweet! I'm always eager to play with new software so I couldn't wait to download the application to my computer. 

As a licensed version 5 user, I elected to upgrade to the standalone Lightroom 6 for $79. The new user price is about $149 US dollars. The Creative Cloud version is only $9.99 per month and let's you use both Lighroom and Photoshop. That's a pretty attractive offer for someone just starting.

The download process was pretty standard. Once installed, Lightroom took care of updating my catalog. Most publishing services were restored with a few exceptions. 

List of notable features:

• Performance Improvements  - As my catalog got bigger, I noticed significant slowdowns on in performance. The latest version addresses these performance issues. Once installed and running I could see a remarkable difference in performance. The same feeling as you get when you buy a new computer. I always hesitate upgrading software on older hardware as it usually means that something will slow down. Not with Lightroom 6. Just this one feature is worth the upgrade price!

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• Panorama Merge - You no longer need to export your series of photos from Lightroom to Photoshop or any other 3rd party software for stitching into a panorama. That feature is not built in to the application

• HDR Merge - Same as in Panorama this new feature lets us create High Dynamic Range images in Lightroom. ​

• Face Recognition - This is a cool feature for tagging images of family and friends.​

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