Adobe apologises to all of its users of Lightroom following a wave of complaints after their update to version 6.2 in October.

The update has resulted in millions of users (including me) experiencing a severe slow down of the Import function. Not only was the new Import function causing a slow down of the user’s computer but many millions of users had complained about the “dumbing down” of the Import facility.

On 7 October, Adobe acknowledged that there are bugs in the new update to Lightroom, resulting in many users experiencing slow performance and constant crashing of the program. Several days later, they published a post on their blog apologising for the problem and providing advice on how to roll back to a previous version of Lightroom.

Additionally, photographers who have been using Lightroom for many years, are also complaining about the “dumbing down” of the Import feature. Many of the facilities that had been present in the Import dialogue for many years have been removed with this latest update. Features that many photographer found invaluable. Features which have been removed or “dumbed down” include:-

  • Eject After Import removed;
  • Duplicate photos can’t be imported;
  • The ability to see how new filenames will look prior to being imported;
  • You can’t see destination folders;
  • The Move facility is gone;
  • Filename is hidden under a tooltip;

Adobe received a huge backlash from its customers around the globe and has promised to restore the Import dialogue screen to its original interface in the next update.

There is no doubt that Adobe made a mess of this update and they are getting a massive amount of abuse and frustration thrown at them, but to be fair to Adobe, they were quick to apologise and agree to fix the problem. Tom Hogarty, Product Manager for Lightroom, stated:-

The simplification of the import experience was also handled poorly.  Our customers, educators and research team have been clear on this topic: The import experience in Lightroom is daunting.  It’s a step that every customer must successfully take in order to use the product and overwhelming customers with every option in a single screen was not a tenable path forward.  We made decisions on sensible defaults and placed many of the controls behind a settings panel.  At the same time we removed some of our very low usage features to further reduce complexity and improve quality.  These changes were not communicated properly or openly before launch.  Lightroom was created in 2006 via a 14 month public beta in a dialog with the photography community.  In making these changes without a broader dialog I’ve failed the original core values of the product and the team.

So in my opinion, well done Tom for taking the responsibility and apologising so quickly and clearly. However, I have had to roll back to a previous version of Lightroom and I am looking forward to that next update.

Have you upgraded to the new version of Lightroom? How is it running? Please comment below as we’d love to hear from you.