Adobe Lightroom 6 will only be available for 64-bit operating systems
posted Friday, January 23, 2015 at 12:24 PM EDT
Adobe has announced that Lightroom 6 and future iterations of their photo management program will only be compatible with 64-bit operating systems.
A vast improvement over 32-bit systems, going 64-bit only will allow Adobe to more robustly ‘leverage the latest operating system features and technologies.’ For some, this may seem like an abandonment of legacy users. But, in a creative field where changes are made on a weekly basis, Adobe would rather be on the bleeding edge adding support for better performance and advanced editing capabilities than spending vital resources supporting a comparatively small amount of legacy users.
Specifically, Lightroom 6 Mac users will need at least OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion; Windows users will need a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or later. Those who can’t or prefer not to update to these 64-bit capable operating systems will be able to use Lightroom 5, but until you update, that’s where they’ll stay.
If all of this 64-bit/32-bit talk is confusing you, Lifehacker has a wonderful guide to the differences between the two and the advantages 64-bit systems provide over their less-capable 32-bit counterparts.
In addition to the announcement, Adobe throws a tease our way, saying, ‘[they’re] hard at work on the next major release of Lightroom.’ It’ll be interesting to see what new features and capabilities will be added in the impending update.