Lightroom Classic CC 7.2 Brings Speed Boost and New Features

Feb 13, 2018

Adobe has just announced the launch of Lightroom Classic CC v7.2, an update that brings the performance improvements promised teased and promised earlier this year.

The Performance Improvements

The performance improvements in this update have to do with batch processing rather than interaction. Lightroom will be faster at completing batch tasks, but you won’t see more responsiveness to individual tools and actions.

As long as your desktop has a multi-core CPU and at least 12GB of RAM, you should see improved speed for these things:

Import grid loading
Import and preview generation
Walking through images in the Loupe View
Rendering of adjustments in Develop
Merge operations of HDR/Panos
Export

Another issue that’s addressed is the program slowing down over time. If you’ve felt like Lightroom has gotten more and more sluggish, this update may bring back some of the former speed you enjoyed.

Lightroom’s performance also scales better now as you invest more in high-end computer specs. We previously shared how a photographer built himself an ultimate $6,000 Lightroom workstation but found that things still weren’t as speedy as he had hoped.

“One key attribute of the enhancements is that they scale appropriately with a customer’s investment in hardware,” Adobe writes. “A common complaint in the past was that a large investment in a new system did not provide equivalent improvements in Lightroom performance. Lightroom 7.2 is an important step forward in addressing that issue, particularly for computers with at least 12 GB of memory.”

New Lightroom Classic Features

Folder Search

Filter Favorites within Folders

Mark folders as favorites by right-clicking them and then filter for your Favorite Folders.

Instantly Create Collections from Folders

Right-click a folder and “Create Collection Set” will turn your Folder hierarchy into a Collection and Collection Set hierarchy so that you can sync them with Lightroom mobile.

Create Collections from a Pin in the Map Module

Right-click a pin or group of pins on the Map and select “Create Collection” to easily add all the photos from that location to a Collection.

New Library Filter for Edited or Unedited Images

Selecting “Edit” in the Library Filters Metadata browser lets you quickly look for photos that are edited or unedited.

Create a Smart Collection with Edited or Unedited Images

Create smart collections based on whether or not photos have edits (adjustments and/or cropping). The Smart Collection creation process now has a “Has Edits” option in the Develop filter.

You can find the complete list of improvements, fixes, and updates in Lightroom Classic 7.2 here.