Lightroom's New Starting Point
Lightroom Classic's August update brings Render to DNG, refined masking controls, and a vectorscope to Camera Raw — tools aimed at photographers who want more precision at each stage of the editing workflow.
Week of 16 August 2026
Adobe's August release for Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw landed in the first week of the month. It continued to generate discussion through the week, with two features in particular drawing attention: Render to DNG, which offers a new way to commit edits and continue working, and improved Feather and Edge controls in AI masking. Topaz Labs, meanwhile, released two new upscaling models — Wonder 3.5 and Bloom 2 — to its web and mobile tools, with desktop availability for Wonder 3.5 still on the way.
The Digital Darkroom
Lightroom Classic 15.5 and Camera Raw 18.5 — August 2026
The August 2026 update to Lightroom Classic (version 15.5) and Camera Raw (18.5) was released on 4 August. Several of the headline additions were covered in last week's roundup — Generative Expand arriving in Lightroom Desktop and Mobile, preliminary Sony RX10 V RAW support — but two features warrant more attention on their own terms.
Render to DNG is a new right-click option that creates a non-raw DNG file with all current edits permanently applied. It is worth being precise about what this means: the result is not a raw file in any meaningful sense. It is a rendered TIFF wrapped in a DNG container, with every adjustment, mask, lens profile, and Generative Expand operation baked in. Once rendered, the original raw data is no longer accessible from that file. The Lightroom Queen describes the clearest use case succinctly: if you have used Generative Expand to extend a composition and then want to do a Denoise pass followed by Super Resolution, Render to DNG provides the clean starting point that would otherwise require an awkward export-and-reimport workaround.
Thomas Fitzgerald's blog notes a less obvious benefit: applying a film preset on top of an existing complex edit, adjusting its opacity against the baked result rather than fighting the existing adjustment stack. The file-size cost is real — roughly 128 MB for a rendered DNG versus 50 MB for an equivalent raw file — but for specific workflows, the convenience gain is significant.
The Feather and Edge sliders added to AI masking in this update give finer control over the boundaries of Subject, Sky, Background, and Object masks. Feather softens the mask transition; Edge shifts the boundary inward or outward. These kinds of refinement controls have been possible through manual work for some time, but their direct presence in the mask panel — alongside the AI-generated selection — reduces round-tripping between masking and adjustment layers. PhotoshopCAFE provides a detailed walkthrough of both the masking and DNG workflow changes.
Camera Raw 18.5 also introduces a vectorscope, accessed by right-clicking the histogram. The vectorscope displays hue and saturation relationships as a scatter of points within a circle: hue is represented by position around the edge, saturation by distance from the centre. It is a tool familiar in video post-production but less common in still-photography applications.
Adobe has added a Skin Tone Indicator line to the vectorscope to help evaluate whether skin tones are within the correct hue range — useful when adjusting portraits. A further option now allows Camera Raw's scope to show red at the 3 o'clock position rather than the default 9 o'clock, aligning it with the layout convention used in broadcast video monitoring software. The update also adds automatic blemish removal and a bidirectional Linear Gradient, both in Camera Raw. A security patch — APSB26-94 — followed on 11 August for Lightroom Classic.
AI upscaling before and after: the generative approach used by Wonder 3.5 reconstructs fine detail from degraded or low-resolution source images rather than interpolating between existing pixels.
Topaz Labs — Wonder 3.5 and Bloom 2
On 4 August, Topaz Labs announced two new image upscaling models. Wonder 3.5 is an incremental improvement over Wonder 3 — the same generative upscaling approach, but with finer detail reconstruction, fewer repetitive patterns, and better handling of compressed images and structured graphics such as text and charts. The biggest improvement is said to be on heavily degraded source material: low-resolution images and heavily compressed files that were already close to the limit of what Wonder 3 could recover now see more transformative enhancement.
Wonder 3.5 is currently available in Topaz Image Web and the Topaz mobile app. The desktop release is described as coming later, after further refinement based on web user feedback, with no date stated.
Bloom 2 is a different kind of tool aimed at a different kind of input: AI-generated images, digital illustrations, and CG renders rather than photographs. The original Bloom was built for the specific artefacts that generative AI image models tend to produce — anatomical errors, inconsistent textures, plasticky skin — and Bloom 2 extends that capability with a Creativity control offering five levels from Subtle through to Max, which determines how strongly the model transforms the source. At lower settings it refines without altering; at higher settings it can substantially reimagine the detail. The community thread on the Topaz forum has examples of both models in use. Desktop availability was not mentioned for Bloom 2 either.
These two announcements arrive in the context of an active model release cycle at Topaz: the Topaz Photo v1.6.1 desktop update released in June added NeuroServer speed improvements that reduced processing times by 2x on Mac and up to 4x on Windows GPUs with 8–12 GB of VRAM; Topaz Video 1.7.0 was released in the second week of August, extending the video enhancement product line.
Vectorscope tools — familiar from broadcast and video post-production — now appear in Adobe Camera Raw, giving still photographers a new way to visualise hue and saturation relationships in their images.
Capture One — Toronto Event, No New Desktop Version
Capture One has not released a new desktop version this week. The current stable release remains 16.8.0, which arrived in late May and introduced AI-powered denoise, improved wireless tethering for Canon R6 V and Phase One IXM-RS250, and native RAW support for Hasselblad X2D II 100C / X2D 100C / CFV 100C (with Hasselblad support arriving via version 16.8.3 in July).
A Capture One event is listed for Toronto on 19 August, which continues the company's series of local workshops and user events. No product announcement is associated with it. Capture One's most recent What's New page confirms that the July 2026 update is the last release, focused on second-generation wireless tethering for mobile devices and retouching protection controls.
Adobe Photoshop — Workflow Update
Photoshop's most recent release, 27.9.1 (referred to as the July 2026 release on the official changelog), is a workflow and stability update: the AI Remove tool is now accessible from the contextual task bar, multiple layers can be sent simultaneously to Firefly Boards, and cloud file search by keyword has been added. A critical bug introduced with 27.9 was also fixed. No major Photoshop feature release arrived in the first half of August; the Camera Raw improvements described above cover the Photoshop-linked raw processing changes.
Also This Week
On the gear front, attention remains on Fujifilm ahead of Fujikina Paris (4–6 September). The X Summit, which was expected to announce the X-T6, was cancelled earlier this month. However, FujiRumors now suggests the camera may still appear at Fujikina in some form — possibly as a touch-and-try item rather than a formal launch announcement. B&H Photo has listed a demo event for the latest Fujifilm gear on 8 September. Circulating specifications — 40MP X-Trans 6 sensor, X-Processor 6, 8K video, new NP-W255 battery — remain unconfirmed by Fujifilm. A new lens, provisionally known as the XF 400mm f/4.5, has also been reported to accompany the X-T6 launch window, alongside a second-generation XF 50-140mm f/2.8.
In the arts, the exhibition of the Berlin Photo Awards 2026 winners opened on 14 August at ERSTERERSTER Gallery in Berlin and runs through 16 August. The RPS International Photography Exhibition 167 continues at the Saatchi Gallery, London, through 11 September.
On the film front, little new has arrived: Lucky C400 is now shipping to international pre-orders and first user impressions are expected soon; the Fujifilm QuickSnap Black and White and Active remain on track for a September arrival.
Looking Ahead
The first week of September is now the key date on the calendar, even in its revised, uncertain form. Fujikina Paris (4–6 September) will be Fujifilm's largest public photography event of the year, and whatever the status of the X-T6 announcement, it will draw significant attention. Wonder 3.5's desktop release for Topaz Photo has no confirmed date; the company's pattern is to refine from web testing first, so it could follow within weeks or take longer.
The Lightroom and Camera Raw features from this cycle — Render to DNG in particular — will take time to work into established workflows, and the practical limits of the rendered DNG file size will likely produce discussion as more photographers try them in real editing contexts.
