or why I now rent Lightroom
The Sony A7III was released in the spring of 2018 and soon after I upgraded from my A7R to the A7III. Lightroom 6 was no longer being updated and I tried to continue using it by using a third-party raw (I shoot exclusively in raw format because of the development flexibility) converter. It was clunky so I started using the rental model software. Not my preference but I now realize I should have made the switch sooner. So I switched because it was easier to import photos into the Lightroom catalogue natively rather than using a third-party tool. and now, in 2022, the enhancements to the product (see below) eliminate almost all processing in Photoshop. The only remaining function that I use in photoshop is focus stacking.
Some of the new features:
- October 2018 – version 8.0 – Single process for HDR panoramas.
- February 2019 – version 8.2 – Enhance details upsizes photos
- May 2019 – version 8.3 – Add texture slider
- August 2019 – version 8.4 – Accelerate image editing with GPU support
- November 2019 – version 9.0 – Fill uneven edges in stitched panorama
- June 2021 – version 10.3 – Supper resolution
- October 2021 – version 11.0 – Masking improvements, Auto selection person or sky