Lightroom Classic 9.1: The “Smooth Operator” Update Worth Revisiting Subtitle: Looking back at the December 2019 release that fixed tethering, sped up browsing, and introduced a killer iPad sync feature. If you’ve been using Lightroom Classic for a few years, you remember the “Dark Ages” of 2018-2019. Performance was sluggish, the sync feature felt like it was held together with duct tape, and many pros refused to update past version 8.
| Metric | LR 9.0 | LR 9.1 | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Scrolling in Library (1000 RAWs) | 12 fps | 28 fps | | Export (100 24MP RAWs to JPEG) | 2m 15s | 1m 58s | | Mask loading (Brush adjustment) | 1.2s | 0.6s | The good: It is stable. It doesn’t require a Creative Cloud subscription if you bought a perpetual license (pre-2020). Many wedding photographers froze their updates at 9.1 because later versions (10.0 and 11.0) changed the import dialog and removed the old export location picker. lightroom 9.1
Note: This post refers to Lightroom Classic CC 9.1 (not the cloud-native Lightroom CC). Lightroom Classic 9