Introduction to Adobe Lightroom CC App (Desktop Version)

Adobe released a NEW Lightroom CC app recently. We know that many of you will be using this app and want to give you an introduction to this new product!  Read on or check out the video at the bottom of this post for a more visual walkthrough!

What You'll Notice

One of the big things you will notice about this new app is that EVERYTHING is simplified.  Importing is simplified.  The editing sliders are simplified. Fewer options is good and bad.

Importing Photos

Let's start with importing your photos.  Your photos live on the left-side of the screen.  You'll see a "+" sign as well as a box.  Click on the box to see the photos you have added to Lightroom and click on the "+" to add more photos.

Photo organization is limited to Albums and Folders.  Albums are how you sort and organize your images.  Folders are used to organize your albums.  I would suggest that everytime you import photos you add them to an album!

Everything that you upload to Lightroom CC will live in the Creative Cloud and not on your hard drives.  Every basic Creative Cloud Photography Plan comes with 20 GB of cloud space.  That isn't very much room when you consider that it is pretty easy to fill a 16GB card on a trip or by shooting a wedding.  If you plan to use Lightroom CC as your main editing option, you'll want to upgrade your Creative Cloud Membership to one with more space.

Editing Photos

All the photo editing in the Lightroom CC app will take place on the right side of the app.  The sliders will look similar to Lightroom Classic CC if you are familiar with that. Most of the major editing will take place in the Edit Panel. 

• The Light section of this panel are sliders that will affect the brightness and shadows of the image. 
• The Color section of this Panel will have the Temp and Tint sliders as well as the Vibrance and Saturation sliders.
• The Effects section holds the Clarity, Dehaze and Vignette sliders. 
• The Detail section has the Sharpening, Noise Reduction and Grain sliders.
• The Optics section has boxes to Enable Lens Corrections and Remove Chromatic Aberration.
• The Geometry section will be where you make adjustments to straightening and perspective.

The Crop Panel contains a few tools for cropping photos.  The Healing Brush is where you will remove distractions in your photo and works very much like the Clone and Healing tool in Lightroom Classic CC.

The Brush, Linear Gradient, and Radial Gradient tools all have the same sliders.  All of these tools and will only affect the portion of the image you choose.  The Brush will allow you to brush on changes to certain areas of your image.  The Linear Gradient will allow you to apply changes in a linear fashion by pulling a linear gradient across a portion of your image.  The Radial Gradient will allow you apply changes to all the areas inside or outside of a circle you draw.  

Also at the bottom of these panels is the Presets section.  This is only available in the desktop app of Lightroom CC. You can add your any of the presets you have been using in Lightroom Classic CC as easy as copying and pasting.  We have a full post all about installing your presets in Lightroom CC!

Lightroom CC Apps

You can use Lightroom CC on your desktop (download this through the Creative Cloud Desktop App), on your mobile devices (phones and tablets—check out your app store), and on the web.  To use Lightroom on the web, go to the Adobe Lightroom page.

If you'd like a more visual walkthrough of the Lightroom CC desktop app, check out the video below!