There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from painting a local adjustment brush across a high-resolution RAW file and watching Lightroom chug along like it’s thinking really hard about your life choices. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. It’s the kind of lag that makes you question your hardware, your file format, your entire career path. So when Adobe dropped Lightroom CC with a serious architecture overhaul under the hood, I paid attention immediately.

In this KelbyOne tutorial, Scott Kelby and RC Concepcion walk through the biggest changes in Lightroom CC, and the one that matters most to working photographers is not a flashy new panel or a redesigned interface. It’s speed. Specifically, it’s about offloading the heavy mathematical lifting from your CPU to your GPU, and the difference in responsiveness, especially with local adjustments, is the kind of thing that makes you feel like you upgraded your computer without spending a dollar. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube

The episode also gets into something a lot of photographers were wrestling with at the time: whether to buy Lightroom 6 outright or move to the Creative Cloud subscription model. That conversation is still worth understanding, because the reasoning behind it applies every time Adobe draws a line in the sand between a perpetual license and a subscription feature set. Here’s how to work through everything they cover, step by step.

Step 1: Understand What Changed Under the Hood

RC explaining GPU acceleration replacing CPU-based math RC explaining GPU acceleration replacing CPU-based math The core of the Lightroom CC speed story is GPU acceleration. Adobe didn’t just add features and ship it. They went back into the architecture of the Develop module and rerouted some of the most demanding calculations to the graphics processing unit instead of the CPU. If you’ve ever used the Adjustment Brush on a 45-megapixel file and felt like you were dragging a brush through wet concrete, this is the fix. The GPU handles visual math far more efficiently than a general-purpose processor, and the result is a snappier, more responsive editing experience across the board.

The size of the improvement varies depending on your system. A dedicated GPU with a healthy amount of VRAM is going to show you dramatic gains. Even a modest integrated graphics chip will still push things in the right direction. The key is making sure Lightroom is actually using it, because the feature does not enable itself automatically on every system.

Step 2: Enable GPU Acceleration in Preferences

Lightroom Preferences window open on the Performance tab Lightroom Preferences window open on the Performance tab Open Lightroom and go to the menu at the top. On Mac, that’s the Lightroom menu. On Windows, it’s under Edit. From there, select Preferences, and when the window opens, click on the Performance tab. You’ll see a checkbox labeled “Use Graphics Processor.” Make sure that box is checked. Directly below it, Lightroom will display the name of the graphics card it has detected on your machine. If you see your card’s name there, you’re in good shape.

If the checkbox is greyed out or no card name appears, it usually means your GPU drivers need an update, or you’re running a card that doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for Lightroom’s acceleration features. In that case, updating your drivers through your GPU manufacturer’s website is the first step before anything else.

Step 3: Test the Difference with a Local Adjustment

Adjustment Brush being used in Develop module Adjustment Brush being used in Develop module Once GPU acceleration is enabled, the best place to feel the difference immediately is in the Develop module with the Adjustment Brush or the Graduated Filter. Open a large RAW file, grab the Adjustment Brush from the toolbar, and start painting across a portion of the image. With GPU acceleration active, the brush should track your movements with noticeably less delay. The mask overlay updates in real time rather than catching up to where your cursor already moved.

This is the practical test that matters. Sliders in the Basic panel already felt reasonably fast before this update. The local adjustment tools were where things got painful, and that’s exactly where the GPU offloading makes the most visible impact on your day-to-day editing rhythm.

Step 4: Understand the Lightroom 6 vs. CC Fork

Scott discussing the Lightroom 6 perpetual license option Scott discussing the Lightroom 6 perpetual license option This is the part of the tutorial that gets into strategy rather than settings. Adobe released two versions simultaneously: Lightroom 6, a one-time purchase you own outright, and Lightroom CC, the subscription version. Scott and RC are honest about what that distinction actually means in practice. Lightroom 6 gets you the software, but future updates, specifically new features, go exclusively to the CC version. Six might receive bug fixes, but the feature roadmap belongs to the subscription.

If you were on the fence about subscribing at the time this video was made, the answer has essentially been decided by history. The perpetual license model for Lightroom stopped receiving meaningful updates, and the CC version continued to evolve. The lesson for any future similar decision from Adobe is the same: follow the roadmap, not the price tag.

Step 5: Know Where Learning Resources Live

KelbyOne course library showing 14 new Lightroom classes KelbyOne course library showing 14 new Lightroom classes Scott mentions that KelbyOne released 14 full-length Lightroom CC classes alongside the software launch. This is worth noting not just as a promotional beat but as a model for how to approach a major software update. When something as foundational as your editing application gets an architecture overhaul, the documentation and tutorials that were accurate last week may now be incomplete or slightly misleading.

Finding courses tied directly to the new version, whether through KelbyOne, Adobe’s own learning resources, or independent educators, saves you the time of discovering through trial and error what changed. Prioritize material that was created after the version you’re actually running.

What I’d Add From My Own Experience

GPU acceleration was genuinely the thing that kept me from switching to a competitor when Lightroom was at its slowest. I shoot a lot of live music, which means high-ISO files with grain and noise, and doing detailed masking work on those was brutal before this update. One thing I’d layer on top of everything Scott and RC cover: after enabling the graphics processor in Preferences, also check that you’re not running any other GPU-intensive applications in the background while you edit. Video players, games left open, even certain browser tabs with hardware acceleration enabled will compete for your GPU’s attention. Close what you don’t need, and Lightroom gets the full benefit of what the card can do.

I also name every preset I build after a song, which has nothing to do with GPU settings, but the preset I built the week Lightroom CC launched is still called “Architecture” after that old Anberlin track. Some updates feel like infrastructure. This one did.

The single most important thing to take away from this tutorial is that GPU acceleration is an opt-in feature that does nothing if you don’t manually enable it. Go to Preferences, open the Performance tab, check the box, and confirm your graphics card is recognized. That one checkbox could be the biggest performance improvement you make to Lightroom without touching your hardware budget.

Watch the full tutorial on YouTube and hear Scott and RC break it all down in their own words. They cover additional context around the CC launch that rounds out the picture considerably.