Which Lightroom version for me?

[clee01l]

Operating System: MacOS 10.13.x

Lightroom Version: LR Classic 7.0
(Please go to Help menu > System Info to double check the exact version number)

Question or Description of Problem: I've got about 1.5TB of images in my LR catalog. I could probably delete half of the image inventory But that means having to revisit 36000 images to decide which to keep and which to toss.
I want to be able to work MY workflow from either my iMac at home or my MBP on the road. I want to be able to import images from either machine. It is not clear to me if Lightroom Creative Cloud Photography plan with 1TB ‎ will let me do this If I go for the 1TB plan, what happens to my catalog? How would my MBP access the images in my Master catalog? Can I keep the files I don't want to move to the cloud locally in a LR catalog on my iMac. I could care less about iPhones/Android/iPad Lightroom mobile. These will never fit into my workflow.
So who can tell me if I can seamlessly work my image from either the iMac or the MBP?
Who can tell me how to migrate my LR Classic to LRCC? Can I selectively decide which images are cloud based if I make the commitment?

Adobe continues to mis-manage users expectations. A change of this magnitude should really come with more preparation of the user base for the change. Dropping a surprise release is only good if ALL of the user base benefits from the change. My subscription gets renewed in November, There will need to be a lot of benefit in LR for me to continue. So far, I'm not seeing it. I already have a license for On1 PhotoRAW and Affinity, but none of these offer the power for image management like the LR database. But I can always go back to managing images by folders.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

So why would you not worry if they are in the Cloud?

I think he missed the first 'N' and meant to say 'None of my RAW files are in the cloud'.

 

[PhilBurton]

There's no reason they could not make them inter-operate from the beginning. They CHOSE not to. To me that sends quite a message.

... But there's a real message embedded in not making them work and play fully together.

I agree that the separate catalog situation is very frustrating. And it's possible that it was lack of resources to write the necessary code so enable interoperability.

It's also possible that Adobe will use the Lightroom CC and its catalog design as the eventual home for Classic functionality. Either explanation could have the same result.

Real issue: Adobe needs to issue a statement about future directions with enough detail to address our concerns.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Real issue: Adobe needs to issue a statement about future directions with enough detail to address our concerns.

Real issue: They did, but nobody believes them anyway.

 

[PhilBurton]

Real issue: They did, but nobody believes them anyway.

Johan,

Then Adobe needs a "get well" plan to rebuild trust. What actions by Adobe would be necessary, in your opinion?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Johan,

Then Adobe needs a "get well" plan to rebuild trust. What actions by Adobe would be necessary, in your opinion?

I think that's a tough question, and I don't have all the answers. But one thing they must clearly do is take Lightroom Classic out of that footnote on the Adobe website, and give it the attention it deserves if they don't plan to abandon it anytime soon. Right now, I can't blame anyone for thinking that after seeing how Lr Classic is (not at all) promoted on the Adobe site. It’s all about ‘the future of photography’ and how that is this wonderful new Lightroom CC.

The second thing I would do is introduce a ‘Photographers Basic’ plan, especially for Lightroom 6 users. That plan would be just Lightroom Classic, nothing else. No Photoshop (Lightroom 6 users didn’t have Photoshop so they either don’t need it or found something else that suited them), and definitely no Lightroom CC or cloud storage. Just bare bones Lightroom Classic, to show that Adobe cares about those photographers too and cares about Lightroom Classic too.

An finally, actions speak louder than words. Lightroom Classic 7.1 must not take many months to materialize, and must contain real new features, not just bugfixes and new camera/lens support. And preferably it should be available before Lightroom CC 1.1 comes out.

That may restore some trust.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

The second thing I would do is introduce a ‘Photographers Basic’ plan, especially for Lightroom 6 users. That plan would be just Lightroom Classic, nothing else. No Photoshop (Lightroom 6 users didn’t have Photoshop so they either don’t need it or found something else that suited them), and definitely no Lightroom CC or cloud storage. Just bare bones Lightroom Classic, to show that Adobe cares about those photographers too and cares about Lightroom Classic too.

Well, that's nice thought, but honestly the perpetual license guys seemed far more focused on it philosophically as a subscription, than on the cost. Yes, some talked about the cost, but the overall sense I got was "subscription" vs "perpetual". I find it hard to believe a $5/mo plan goes very far to solving that problem. But maybe.

An finally, actions speak louder than words. Lightroom Classic 7.1 must not take many months to materialize, and must contain real new features, not just bugfixes and new camera/lens support. And preferably it should be available before Lightroom CC 1.1 comes out.

So that presents an interesting question -- was the "performance" aspect of 7 a major feature?

is another significant improvement in performance "real new feature"?

I'd love to see them pick up some of the performance they left behind by being rushed to market to make Max, and would consider significant improvements adeqate as "real new features" for 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and quite a while (emphasis on "significant" here).

Thoughts?

 

[clee01l]

There's no reason they could not make them inter-operate from the beginning. They CHOSE not to. To me that sends quite a message.

In a prior life I was a program developer. There are lots of valid reasons that these do not interoperate from yesterday.
First the program focus was to address performance in the new product called Lightroom Classic. All indications are that they have succeeded here. Trying to nail a Web centric product onto a mature system such as Lightroom would have been at cross purposes to the goals to improve LR performance.
Second the cloud based product has been built upon the foundation of Lightroom Mobile (on a different platform). It should have efficiency in new development that are not obtainable immediately. To that extent, they have chosen to release a product that has some glaring functionality missing. LR7 did not burst forth with all of the functionality when LR1.0 first came out. So It is reasonable to expect "big things" for Lightroom CC (cloud) in the future.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

In a prior life I was a program developer. There are lots of valid reasons that these do not interoperate from yesterday.
First the program focus was to address performance in the new product called Lightroom Classic. ...

I think you need to go back further. This is supposition not something I know, but...

I think Lightroom CC has been on the drawing boards a long time, and Lightroom Mobile was the beginning. The architectural decisions, like how keywords would work, were made a long time ago, and (again, supposition) are baked into how the "cloud" is designed, as there are smarts in the cloud.

They decided (I think) to break with the Classic model a long time ago, when they first built LR Mobile, smart previews, etc. The first rounds of that could certainly have supported the same metadata model as then-Lightroom, but they chose otherwise.

Companies like this do not just work on one version in isolation. They have a roadmap. The question is not "should they have made the Classic compatible with the Cloud" but "why did they design the Cloud to be incompatible with Lightroom?"

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Well, that's nice thought, but honestly the perpetual license guys seemed far more focused on it philosophically as a subscription, than on the cost. Yes, some talked about the cost, but the overall sense I got was "subscription" vs "perpetual". I find it hard to believe a $5/mo plan goes very far to solving that problem. But maybe.

Perpetual has ceased to exist. That ship has sailed. A bare bones Lightroom Classic plan for $5 a month ($60 per year, so comparable with a two year upgrade perpetual license cycle) may not be acceptable for people who think subscription is unacceptable at any cost, but at least it shows that Adobe cares and that Adobe doesn’t try to force people into subscription and cloud storage. See the conspiracy theories elsewhere in this forum.

So that presents an interesting question -- was the "performance" aspect of 7 a major feature?

is another significant improvement in performance "real new feature"?

I'd love to see them pick up some of the performance they left behind by being rushed to market to make Max, and would consider significant improvements adeqate as "real new features" for 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and quite a while (emphasis on "significant" here).

Thoughts?

Better performance is definitely a feature if you ask me. Lightroom has already become bloatware, so we don’t need new features just for the sake of having new features. There are a lot of features right now that are pretty useless, because they were implemented in a half-baked way. I certainly don’t want to see more of that, just to show that at least something is new.

Take the ‘Ken Burns effect’ in the Slide show module, for example. Added in Lr 6. That is a nice effect to spice up a slide show, but you have to be able to control it. In Lightroom, all you can do is turn it on, but the effects are completely random. That makes it utterly useless for anything but the most basic holiday snaps show, and something I would gladly trade in for things that do matter. And speed is one of those things.

But more speed is not enough. People tend to get used to that quite quickly. A new computer is blazingly fast the first few days. Less so in two weeks, and after two months you hardly notice it anymore. If really useful new features aren’t added in 7.1 and 7.2, then Tom can write as many blogs and forum messages as he likes and Julienne Kost can record as many videos she likes, but nobody will believe a word they say.

 

[PhilBurton]

Well said, Johan.

Phil

 

[tspear]

Perpetual has ceased to exist. That ship has sailed. A bare bones Lightroom Classic plan for $5 a month ($60 per year, so comparable with a two year upgrade perpetual license cycle) may not be acceptable for people who think subscription is unacceptable at any cost, but at least it shows that Adobe cares and that Adobe doesn’t try to force people into subscription and cloud storage. See the conspiracy theories elsewhere in this forum.



Better performance is definitely a feature if you ask me. Lightroom has already become bloatware, so we don’t need new features just for the sake of having new features. There are a lot of features right now that are pretty useless, because they were implemented in a half-baked way. I certainly don’t want to see more of that, just to show that at least something is new.

Take the ‘Ken Burns effect’ in the Slide show module, for example. Added in Lr 6. That is a nice effect to spice up a slide show, but you have to be able to control it. In Lightroom, all you can do is turn it on, but the effects are completely random. That makes it utterly useless for anything but the most basic holiday snaps show, and something I would gladly trade in for things that do matter. And speed is one of those things.

But more speed is not enough. People tend to get used to that quite quickly. A new computer is blazingly fast the first few days. Less so in two weeks, and after two months you hardly notice it anymore. If really useful new features aren’t added in 7.1 and 7.2, then Tom can write as many blogs and forum messages as he likes and Julienne Kost can record as many videos she likes, but nobody will believe a word they say.

A lot of small cosmetic issues, combined with a dedicated focus on completing features or fixing bugs would help.
Even switching to an open beta platform would help. Go to a monthly open beta release and let willing users test the changes fixes, not under NDA. Then release the version every two months.
Not hard to manage or do.
At the same time, start a dedicated group to refactor code into a shared library with Lr CC. On some trailing schedule as features are shared between the products announce it. Same idea as Bridge and the ACR engine.

Tim

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk

 

[PhilBurton]

In a prior life I was a program developer. There are lots of valid reasons that these do not interoperate from yesterday.
First the program focus was to address performance in the new product called Lightroom Classic. All indications are that they have succeeded here. Trying to nail a Web centric product onto a mature system such as Lightroom would have been at cross purposes to the goals to improve LR performance.
Second the cloud based product has been built upon the foundation of Lightroom Mobile (on a different platform). It should have efficiency in new development that are not obtainable immediately. To that extent, they have chosen to release a product that has some glaring functionality missing. LR7 did not burst forth with all of the functionality when LR1.0 first came out. So It is reasonable to expect "big things" for Lightroom CC (cloud) in the future.

Cletus,

I was never a software developer, but as a product manager, I have done my share of "markitectures." I may be a bit naive here, but I use several backup/synchronization products that treat the web as just another storage location, along with local storage and network drives. There is nothing magical about the web. Forty years ago, we called that "time sharing." And then we had "client-server computing" or "network computing." The program logic can be separated from the storage subsystem.

If Adobe is saying the opposite, I think they are trying to divert us from other issues because the CC product was released prematurely.

Also, the marketplace has changed since LR 1.0 was released. What was the competition back then? Nikon Capture NX? And very hard to use DAM software like idimager. it's 2017, and user expectations about the minimum functionality of a photo product have changed, because the competition has changed.

Yes, I am being a bit harsh on Adobe, but they need to face reality.

Phil

 

[tspear]

Cletus,

I was never a software developer, but as a product manager, I have done my share of "markitectures." I may be a bit naive here, but I use several backup/synchronization products that treat the web as just another storage location, along with local storage and network drives. There is nothing magical about the web. Forty years ago, we called that "time sharing." And then we had "client-server computing" or "network computing." The program logic can be separated from the storage subsystem.

If Adobe is saying the opposite, I think they are trying to divert us from other issues because the CC product was released prematurely.

It has to be designed from the start to support multiple storage systems. Bolting this on later will almost always cause problems.
In this case, it does not appear as if Adobe planned for other storage systems.

Tim

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk