What are the benefits of upgrading from Lightroom v.5.7 to 6???

Philmar · Dec 17, 2017

I currently use Lightroom 5.7 with a Canon 5D3. I am not a gearhead so I don't have plans to buy a new camera though I realize my 5 year old camera could use a refresh. For me, photography is a passion. While I earn a few thousand dollars a year on Getty Images, my decisions about photography are based on it as a hobby, not a critical source of income. I have just returned from a trip to Myanmar and am only now reading about Adobe's decision to stop supporting the stand alone version of LR. I have zero interest in the subscription version as I fully expect Adobe to dramatically increase the monthly rate once they've enticed enough people to subscribe and load their raw files on to their servers.
LR 5.7 seems to suit my needs but I see Adobe has one final upgrade available to me: LR 6. At the time of its release it didn't seem too tempting of an upgrade for me...I was thinking of waiting for LR 7 (which will never be). So i am wondering if I should do this last upgrade from LR 5.7 to LR 6 before Adobe takes that option away.
Are there any benefits to upgrading from 5.7 to 6.0? I've heard performance speeds up for some, slows down for others.
So here is what my PC runs:
Windows 10 64 bit, Lightroom v. 5.7, CPU: i7-3770K with 32 GB of RAM and graphics card Radeon RX 460 with OpenGL® Version 6.14.10.13497 and OpenCL™ Version 23
Are there any upgrade benefits and cons for me going from LR 5.7 to 6 ??? Are there any upgrade pitfalls? Does LR 6 still use the Process 2012 engine conversion? Any new or improved tools that aren't in v.5.7? I've read some people have been able to unlock the Dehaze tool in LR 6 using presets. Any other big picture things I need to consider like LR 6 not working on a future Windows version (like W 11)?

TCampbell · Dec 18, 2017

I've been keeping my eye on a product called "Luminar 2018". It's meant to be a replacement for Lightroom... except it's not subscription software... it's traditional "buy it once" software. I *think* it's $69 and it probably has a trial version.

They're talking about their new digital asset management feature ... which isn't in the currently-shipping version but they claim it will be there in 2018.

Once they have that, they'll basically be in the same category as Lightroom or Apple's (now discontinued) Aperture software.

I have Lightroom so I'll probably do the "wait & see" approach to see what their DAM looks like when it's finally available... but I might jump ship because I also don't think it's worthwhile to keep feeding Adobe for very little in the way of functional improvements.

Also... Affinity Photo (by Serif) is really impressive. That's basically a Photoshop competitor... whereas Luminar is a Lightroom competitor (at least that's what they seem to be going after once they have their DAM capability.)

bratkinson · Dec 19, 2017

I recently upgraded my EF 24-105 f4L mark i to a refurb mark ii as the mark i had been to Canon twice for the dreaded 'communication error.' The IQ improvement was well worth the price!

To my not-so surprise, my LR 5.7 didn't have a matching lens description for the mark ii in its tables and even after forcing LR to look for updates, it came back empty handed. I could have simply settled for the correction settings for the mark i, but I suspect I'd be losing some of the benefit of the mark ii. I'm halfway thinking it is a 'trick' by Adobe to force customers to upgrade. When I upgraded from my 60D to a 5Diii, LR forced an upgrade out of me too...and again when moving from Windows XP to Windows 7, that I will drop dead before upgrading to Windows 10! I, too, will never 'subscribe' to a monthly fee that keeps on going, and going, and going... At least the credit card would expire 3 years from now, though.

So, to make my life easier, and since I had a significant event to shoot (middle& high-school Christmas concert) in less than a week, I decided to bite the bullet and did the upgrade to recognize the mark ii lens.

I'm still 'torn' whether making the upgrade was necessary, especially since I had absolute nightmares doing it!

To make room on my SSD operating system + most software drive, I decided to install the new version on a 'regular' slower HD that is my D: drive, along with a number of other not-too-often used programs. What a mistake!!!!! First, after it was mostly installed, it asked for the serial number of the new version. The confirmation email that Adobe sent did NOT have the serial number on it! I didn't know this at the time, but Adobe sent a 2nd email that did have the serial number, but it automatically went into my junk folder! So, I prowled around the Adobe website and could not find how to get the serial number (not knowing I already received it). Even 'search' failed completely, which I later learned was due to my using Firefox rather than Internet Explorer. However, by using the 'help' option on the serial number requesting screen, it took me to the Adobe page that DID have the number! Thank God! THEN it said it could not find the previous version and wanted THAT serial number, too! Obviously, Adobe software is too STUPID to look in the REGISTRY and only looks in the current program folder! So, as 5.7 was still fully functional, I tried to find the serial number there! HA!!! It was completely, illogically, hidden in very fine print one one of the screens, but only showed the first 20 positions, not all 24! Off to the web site again, and it almost got me to the point of pulling a gun and shooting my computer before I decided to go to bed. The next morning, I wanted to do an online chat with them as I am hard of hearing. By noon Pacific time, their chat was STILL not open, so I called. Of course, I got someone with a very thick accent claiming to have a name like George, or Bill, or whatever. Yea, right! I explained my problem and he managed to walk me through a couple of strange steps including one that comes up with a number emailed to me, that I had to verbally provide him, and he gave me another number to enter in the previous version screen. And it worked! Thankfully, he was OK with my asking him some things multiple times due to my hearing issues. So, I then removed the 5.7 version from my SSD computer via normal methods without a hitch. As I've done the upgrade thing over and over starting with v3 and never had a problem, I expected going to v6 would be trouble free. Obviously, moving to a different drive is the problem of my own making.

As far as v6 being slower, I have to concur. Having an over clocked to 4.7ghz 8 processor AMD FX-8370, I'm quite accustomed to almost zero wait for every action in LR. However, as with 5.7, as I worked through over 200 images in LR, it got slower and slower. Not to boor the non-techies out there, but the problem is they 'single file' all the updates made in the entire directory added each successive one at the 'end' of the file, after reading front to back to get to that position. However, I DID notice that version 6 took about 1/4-1/2 second for EVERY adjustment I made, even with the first images! And later on, even clicking the white balance dropper, I'd wait for about a second for it to pop up in the image for me to click with. Thinking it was the slower HD versus SSD, I watched the HD activity light light a hawk...never a blink. Not even one while editing, other than normal Windows 'heartbeat' checking. I've considered putting it back on the C: drive, but reinstalling again would likely end up being more of a nightmare than the first time! I guess I'll have to wait until I have a NEED for version 7 and put it on the C: drive. However...I will say that the export process, using all 8 processors to the max (I have monitoring software) does go faster! Interestingly, it only runs them at 100% the first few seconds, then 80-90% each after that. 5.7 used all 8 processors to the max as well, so perhaps the software has been improved.