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Lightroom 6 isn't that much different than version 5, so I'm not going to rehash explaining what the program does and why it is so great. There are four new features that are intended to convince version 5 users to upgrade: -Better performance -Facial recognition -Panorama merge -HDR merge I suspect what people care most about are Panorama and HDR. (I've never had performances issues with LR5, and I doubt LR users are taking tons of pictures of friends and family over and over again that they need facial recognition). Here's the good news about these features: The output file for both the HDR and Panorama merge is Adobe DNG (RAW) so you can continue to modify the photo as a RAW film in Lightroom. This is pretty cool. Every program I've used for HDR and Panorama can only output a JPEG or TIFF even when they can accept a RAW files as an input (and of course, it's a major pain to have to convert your RAW files to TIFF or JPEG for programs that cannot accept RAW). (If I'm wrong on these please let me know and I'll change my review). The process has also been designed to run in the background so that you can continue using Lightroom while it's running -- it doesn't eat up all of the resources forcing you to take a break while it runs. Here's the bad news: You have almost no ability to fine-tune the HDR and Panoramic merge process. It's pretty much all automatic. Now both process work pretty well despite this. And programs that give you a tons of options can encourage endless unnecessary fine tuning that will ultimately get you to the same place as what Lightroom provides. But it's still strange we're given so little control over these processes, especially given how Lightroom is all about giving you the ability to manipulate ever aspect of a photograph to help you achieve your artistic vision. More about the HDR process: It doesn't produce the surreal look that's characteristic of HDR images where light glows. Take a look at the two photos I've attached. The one with more orange in the sky was done with HDR Darkroom, the other Lightroom. I didn't do any editing after the merge. I imagine most people will prefer the HDR Darkroom output, but the Lightroom version more accurately captures what the Hong Kong skyline looked like when I took the pictures. And I probably could get the Lightroom version to look more like HDR Darkroom through modifying the image more. One other complaint about how Lightroom does HDR and Panorama: there's no option to queue up a lot of images and let it rip at a scheduled time. So is it worth upgrading? Probably. Despite the lack of controls for HDR and Panoramic merge, there's a huge plus to having these features built into Lightroom and having the output file kept in RAW. For me that's worth the tradeoff of not having much control over the processes. I don't regret the upgrade and I'll abandon the third party programs I had been using. And when I consider what these third party programs cost vs the upgrade cost, it's about even. But if you want the ability to control the process than the upgrade may not be worth it for you at this time (especially if you want that surreal look to your HDR images).