Recently I needed to grab some screenshots of Lightroom mobile on the iPad and realized that I’d been running a beta for quite a while. I deleted the beta and re-loaded the release version and was momentarily taken aback: it seemed so basic compared to what I’ve been using!
Now everyone gets to experience the reverse of my awe, with today’s release of new versions of Lightroom mobile for iOS (and Android). Highlights that I particularly like include:
- Selective Brush: When Adobe added gradient masks, Lightroom mobile became much more versatile, especially when editing landscape photos. Now, there’s a brush tool for painting masked areas or removing areas from gradients (like mountains that poke up into a sky you want to darken).
- Details Pane: At last, you can apply Lightroom’s sharpening and noise-reduction tools to an image or a mask, instead of pounding away at it with the Clarity slider.
- Redesigned iPad Interface: The editing tools are now accessible by tapping an Edit button, separating it from the Info interface (and the Rate & Review interface on the iPhone). This does have a drawback, though, in that the editing controls take up an awfully large section of the screen at the expense of the image you’re editing.
Lightroom mobile is free to use, although a Creative Cloud subscription is required to sync photos and collections between devices.
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