The latest version of Lightroom has been out for a week or so, and I'm sure this is not news for anyone even remotely interested in photography. Lightroom is a big deal because it makes photographers' lives a lot easier and let's face it, a lot of photographers love it a lot more than Photoshop.

The Lightroom CC is a natural step in the evolution of this software and like most photographers who use it on a regular basis, I was very curious to find out about the new stuff it brings to the table. So I started digging and I found these 5 awesome new features that every photographer will love. Here they are.

1. Panoramas

Believe it or not, Lightroom CC now gives you the ability to create professional level panoramas without using any other software. The standard procedure before this would be to edit each photo individually and stitch them together, or to edit one photo and synchronize it with the rest. The downside to that would often be uneven white balance and color toning.

Lightroom CC lets you merge two or more photos together with a simple click and it also gives you a variety of different perspectives to choose from. The best part about the new panorama mode is that you can save the final image as a RAW file. That means that all the editing can be done accurately for the entire image. Pretty cool.

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2. HDR RAW Files

This works kind of in the same way as the panorama mode because it blends in three separate RAW files into one super file that is saved in the same format. With other software for creating HDR photos, including Photoshop, the final output would be a TIFF file. While that format has some advantages, the white balance is baked in and you can't really change it. The fact that you can now blend and save as RAW is a real game changer because it gives you a lot more to work with.

3. Selective Gradient and Radial filtering

Another awesome feature that will make a lot of difference for landscape photographers has to do with using gradient and radial filters. I'm sure you're familiar with one major flaw of using a gradient filter. One of the classic examples is when you want to tone down the exposure on the sky. Using a gradient is the most convenient and effective way of doing it, but the problem is that it also affects other objects overlapped with the sky. You can now use a brush to selectively erase the effect of a radial or gradient filter, ultimately making it more effective.