In the past, I have criticized Adobe Lightroom. It felt that while Photoshop was moving forward quickly, Lightroom was still cumbersome, awkward, and lagging behind on innovation. There is still a lot I don't like about Lightroom, despite using it for 15 years, but it has come along leaps and bounds. Some of these new features are admittedly impressive.
Serge Ramelli offers a nice, succinct breakdown of the new 2024 features in this video, and there's a trend that I could see coming. One of the most impressive features is the addition of blurring the background in post. We have seen a strange cycle with this sort of function. Originally, mobile phones added it to mimic dedicated cameras, but it became such a useful and effective tool after a few years of iterating on it, that now we have Lightroom adding it for photography with dedicated cameras. It might seem useless, but there have been a few times where I have used a narrower aperture than I would have liked, just to ensure I get the shot; it'd be useful there!
What do you think of these new additions? Is Lightroom going the right way?
