Lightroom named 2024 Mac App of the Year

I personally have never used it, but I know many, many who swear by it. Now it has received one of the biggest accolades you can get!

Adobe Lightroom has been recognised as a 2024 App Store Award winner for Mac App of the Year.

Every year, Apple honours the best apps and games through the App Store Awards. The awards are a recognition of exceptional user experience, design, and innovation from developers across the world for building apps that fuel creativity and deliver remarkable experiences that inspire their audiences.

The Lightroom team’s mission is to empower everyone to create amazing photos, and this recognition reflects that commitment. Thank you to our community for their passion and creativity, our team for their drive and dedication, and to Apple and the App Store editorial team for their acknowledgement and support.

This award also celebrates the AI-powered editing advancements that make Lightroom stand out. This would not be possible without the ongoing collaboration we have with our community. Our innovations help to optimise creative workflows and give creators more control, so they can spend more time doing what they love. Everything we build is made in partnership with creators and reflects their input and feedback, including some of the exciting new features we’re announcing today.

Keep reading to find out what’s being released before the end of the year. But first, let’s start with a look back at some groundbreaking features that got us to where we are today.

Adobe Lightroom

Your best photos. Made even better.

High-quality photo editing made for everyone

Lightroom empowers all photographers from hobbyists to pros with powerful tools that help everyone achieve amazing photos. Our latest innovations in Lightroom like Generative Remove, Lens Blur, AI-powered Masking and Adaptive Presets have been transformative for photography workflows:

• Generative Remove makes removing distractions easier than ever and produces stunning results even on complex backgrounds. Lightroom will provide a few options of removals to choose from, allowing for full creative control.

• Lens Blur adds an optical blur effect to any photo making your subject pop against the background. That means anyone can achieve a pro-level, background blur effect with ease. It’s great for giving portraits a professional polish or getting a dreamy background from a sparkling city skyline at night.

• AI powered masking allows you to easily select and make precision edits to specific parts of a photo. For example, in just one-click you can select the sky in a landscape photo to make edits without changing the look of the rest of the photo. Our portrait, sky and background Adaptive Presets also leverage AI Masking to deliver even faster results.

Powerful new features coming soon

Later this week Adobe says it is excited to introduce new innovations across Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.

Adobe Camera Raw:

• Reflection Removal is an all-new industry-leading tool for seamlessly removing distracting reflections in photos taken through glass or windows, a previously tedious workflow that seemed virtually impossible.

• A new Adaptive Profile for Monochrome is releasing in public beta in Adobe Camera Raw. Adobe Adaptive profiles create an image-specific rendering and apply adjustments bespoke to your photo. The new monochrome profile creates exceptional quality black and white images across high-contrast photos like landscapes, architecture, and scenes with high dynamic ranges. You can read more about Adobe Adaptive here.

Lightroom:

• We’re also introducing Photoshop Interop Improvements where Lightroom files can be opened as Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop, and multiple files can be opened as layers to make continuing your workflow in Photoshop even easier.

Availability

Generative Remove, Lens Blur, and AI-masking are available now in Lightroom for desktop, mobile, and web. Photoshop interop improvements will be available in Lightroom this week. Reflection Removal and Adaptive Profile for Monochrome are only available in Adobe Camera Raw and will release this week as well.

Explore these latest innovations yourself by visiting adobe.com/lightroom to get started or download to the latest version of Lightroom from the Creative Cloud Desktop app.