Petapixel:
Adobe today announced its latest version of Lightroom, called Lightroom CC. The update brings faster performance, some revamped tools, and a set of powerful new creation features.
Here’s a look at the major new things found in Lightroom CC, which will also be sold as a standalone program called Lightroom 6.
Now that Aperture has all but disappeared, Lightroom will be the only choice for most professional photographers. Luckily, it’s a very good app on its own and these new features add a lot to its abilities.
No. Lightroom is not the only choice for professional photographers. Aperture was never a true feature-for-feature competitor to Lightroom (although I think Aperture motivated Adobe to develop Lr), but it was the most popular alternative amongst amateurs and semi-pros.
When I started using a program to organize my photos, I carefully looked at Aperture and Lightroom, and I chose Aperture because I could write scripts to customize it. I write my own programs to geotag, keyword tag, and import and organize my photos. I would love to use Lightroom, but I don’t want to give this up. The new Photos app seems to have the same scripting capabilities as Aperture, so I might switch to that at some point in the future, although I am fine waiting it out with Aperture as well for now.
I wish I could script Lightroom, but organizational capabilities are more important to me than editing, so Photos might be what I end up with. I use Photoshop whenever I want to do some serious editing on photos anyway.
Capture One is another alternative.
Many old school pros use Photo Mechanic to manage their photos. As mentioned, Capture One is another all-in-one Aperture/Lightroom competitor.