Adobe releases Lightroom update for GPU acceleration during photo editing

Adobe has released updates that allow Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera Raw users to take advantage of GPU acceleration while editing photos. This support should improve performance with these two desktop apps.

According to Adobe, Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw will be able to use more powerful GPUs when editing footage after the update. Users would get a smoother and more responsive experience, according to the software maker. The GPU acceleration will especially make a difference for users with powerful GPUs and monitors with relatively high resolutions, such as 4k monitors. That means that users with a 1080p screen and, for example, a relatively slow or integrated GPU will probably not experience a big difference.

Some new features are added, such as the possibility to export photos as PNG files. Until now, both programs only allowed opening and importing PNG files. Lightroom Classic should run faster due to improvements in the Library module and users can assign color labels to collections in the program. Finally, in Lightroom Classic it has been possible for some time to merge different images to create HDR photos, panoramas or HDR panoramas, but now you can also do this with groups of HDR or panorama photos. Instead of merging each group of images one by one, a batch of grouped images can now be merged directly.

There’s also an update across the entire Lightroom ecosystem, giving users of Lightroom for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, ChromeOS, and lightroom.adobe.com the ability to recover previously deleted photos. To this end, a special folder is available in all Lightroom apps that allows photos to be recovered for up to 60 days after deletion. Free users can only do this on the device where the photos were deleted, but Creative Cloud members and users with a Premium subscription can recover deleted photos on any device associated with the account.