Lightroom CC 2015.6 Guided Upright Feature

On June 8^th, Lightroom CC 2015.6 and Lightroom 6.6 became available as updates. The main talking point of this update is the Guided Upright feature that is added to the Creative Cloud version only. Therefore, it is not available for those who own the standalone version of Lightroom (version 6.6). Again, Adobe is showing that they want everyone to move over to the subscription version of their software by not providing significant updates for the standalone versions. I have my doubts as to whether there will ever be a Lightroom version 7 but we will wait and see.

Other than the Guided Upright feature, which I’ll discuss below, this update also included a camera raw update, support for additional cameras and lenses as well as fixing some bugs. The additional cameras supported are:-

• Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II
  
• Leica M-D (Typ 262)
  
• Nikon COOLPIX B700
  
• Panasonic DMC-GX85 (DMC-GX80, DMC-GX7MK2
  

The new lens profiles supported by this update are:-

The Guided Upright Feature

There has been an Upright tool in Lightroom for a couple of versions now, but this feature would attempt to straighten images automatically by analysing prominent vertical and horizontal lines. Sometimes it struggled if the image did not contain any such prominent lines. Now, with the new Guided Upright feature, the photographer has the ability to manually select vertical and horizontal lines to show Lightroom how to straighten the image. In addition to simply straightening images or fixing horizon lines, the Guided Upright feature can also be used to correct distortion in architecture shots. This is a feature that has been brought over from Photoshop.

The Guided Upright feature works by you drawing vertical and horizontal guides on the image and letting Lightroom calculate the required adjustment. I have tried it on a few images and I have to say, it works a treat.

In the image below, you can see an effect known as keystone distortion. Keystone distortion occurs when an object is photographed from an angle rather than from a straight on view. For example, if you take a picture of a tall building from ground level, the edges of the building appear closer to each other at the top than they do at the bottom. I’m going to demonstrate this new Guided Upright feature using this image.

Step 1:

Ensure you are in the Develop Module by clicking on Develop or by pressing the D key. To achieve the best results from the Guided Upright feature, Adobe advises that you should always enable Lens Profile Corrections under the Lens Corrections panel.

Step 2:

Under the new Transform Panel, click on the “Guided” button. This will now bring up a loupe that will assist you to draw between 2 & 4 lines to show Lightroom where the vertical and horizontal lines are in the image.

Draw your guide lines on the image, using the loupe to assist you. In this example, I drew guide lines around three sides of the window frame.

The Guided Upright feature will not make any adjustments until you have added at least two guide lines and often it is not necessary to add all four but it does no harm if you do.

Step 3:

Admire the final result!

Conclusion

Although this has been a feature in Photoshop for a long time, I always appreciate any feature that negates the need for me to take an image into Photoshop for editing. I wouldn’t want Lightroom to ever become as feature rich as Photoshop, and I doubt it ever will, but I do welcome this simple and highly effective addition.