An official blog post by Adobe explained that in order to increase functionality and speed, Lightroom 6 will only run on OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) or higher, or the 64-bit versions of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1. You can still officially use Lightroom 5 and Lightroom Mobile, but you will not be able to install Lightroom 6 in any capacity without a 64-bit OS.
Adobe’s statement explained the decision, saying “focusing our work on more modern operating systems and architectures allows us to spend more time adding functionality requested by users, including additional advanced imaging features and improving general application performance.” This shouldn’t be a shock to anyone, as more and more applications will take advantage of 64-bit computing.
Chances are, if you’ve recently purchased a new computer, you’re probably set. If you are wondering what the difference is between 32- and 64-bit computers, you can check out our explanation. One advantage 64-bit processors have over 32-bit is a memory issue; while 32-bit computers can only access 4GB of RAM, 64-bit can access exponentially more than that.
Before you run out to get a new computer, however, there is no concrete release date as of yet for Lightroom 6.
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