Photorumours website is reporting details of the long awaited Lightroom Version 6.  I am not normally one for spreading rumours and re-posting them but this one does look quite plausible.  And if it is true then there are some new and exciting tools coming to Lightroom in the next couple of months.

You can read their article here: http://photorumors.com/2015/02/18/adobe-lightroom-6-leaked-online/

Adobe-Lightroom-61

The main new features appear to be:

  • Face Recognition.   This has been seen as something of a gimick in other image management software packages, however I can see some real uses of it in a professional environment such as my own.  I do a lot of theatre photography and it is a huge task to try to tag individuals in those images.  Occasionally I want to find images of a particular actor and can’t remember all the plays I have photographed them in.  For me the ability to use face recognition would really help in that sort of task.  Similarly working with models the ability to quickly and easily pull together all the shoots done with a particular person… ok… ok… I should be tagging them as I do them but there’s always some shoots that get missed!
  • Merging HDR images.  Would be nice to be able to do this in LR instead of having to export the images and re-import them.
  • Fusion Panoramas. The ability to merge images in to highly detailed panoramas.  Again it would be nice to see this become part of LR rather than having to export and re-import.
  • Enhanced Slideshows.  The current LR slide shows are pretty lame by current standards.  You basically have the option of cutting between images or fading.  A major update to this is well overdue.  Will it be enough to make me drop Proshow Producer?  Time will tell.
  • Performance Gains.  Yeah, well they always say that don’t they!!??

I must emphasise that these are only rumours at this stage… and so is the March 9th release date.  But certainly well worth keeping an eye on both.