Is Lightroom Classic end-of-life?

[Victoria Bampton]

Lots of people are expressing concerns about Lightroom being "on the way out". I've been mulling it over, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this logic (and to be clear, I don't have inside information in this)

Is Lightroom dying?

Since Wednesday's announcements, one of the main questions on everyone's minds is whether Lightroom (as we know it) is dying.

Adobe says it's not, but they also said they had no plans to remove perpetual licenses too, so can we believe them? I don't know what Adobe is planning, and none of us can foresee the future, but we can consider a little logic...

Firstly, what's causing the concerns?


Adobe released Lightroom CC

Yes, Lightroom now has a little baby brother. But Photoshop's had a baby brother for years without getting killed off, so that doesn't mean much.


They gave away Lightroom's name

That's more telling. They clearly see the new app as the future of Lightroom. But like any newborn baby, its current state gives few clues about how it will turn out when it grows up.


They called 'the old one' Classic

Some say that sounds like it's old and in its way out. Others think it's the dictionary definition of "of recognized and established value" or "traditional". The obvious solution would be to call it Pro, but that would suggest the new baby Lightroom wouldn't be suitable for Pros when it grows up. The fact they avoided that suggests they plan on making the new Lightroom CC suitable for pro workflows in future too. That's reassuring.


Classic didn't get many new features

It's true, it didn't get a long list of features. On the other hand, Lightroom users have been begging for performance improvements and bug fixes for years. They start working on these issues and now we're complaining? And why bother to work on these issues if they're planning to kill it off soon?


Learn from history

I can't foresee the future, although it would be a handy skill. We can, however, learn from what they've done in the past. Let's take Photoshop as an example. They announced that future versions would only be available on subscription, but they kept selling the perpetual license. Once the vast majority of users had moved to subscription, they then killed off perpetual. They've just done the same with Lightroom.


What can we learn from this? Adobe makes some weird decisions at times, but they are good at making money. They don't kill off a profitable part of their business until most customers have moved over to a new offering.


How does that help? Ok, let's assume that they're eventually going to kill off Lightroom Classic. History would suggest they wouldn't do that until they have a viable alternative for the majority of their customers. Not all, but most.


Now let's imagine that alternative-in-waiting is the new baby Lightroom CC app, all grown up. There are currently some major limitations that make it impossible for most users to migrate:

• It's lacking important features. That'll take time to develop, and they're looking to the community to learn which features are most important.
• It requires fast internet. Either the majority of the world needs superfast internet, which would take a long time, or they need some kind of selective sync, or local network sync, or...?
• You don't want some or any of your photos stored in the cloud, either for privacy or space reasons. Ok, selective sync again? Some kind of local storage only switch?

Once they've addressed those issues - and no doubt a few more besides - then potentially Lightroom CC could have tempted most of Lightroom's users, and they could be in a position to kill of Lightroom Classic.


But that couldn't happen overnight, so how long would it take? I don't know, but that same time span also gives other companies time to develop other applications.


My point? Even if we assume that Lightroom is on death row, there's no rush to make a decision about what's next. So many things can change in that time. Lightroom CC may grow up to be even better than Lightroom Classic (they must have learned a few lessons along the way!!) or another company may bring out a new superduper competitor.


I'm not saying that is or isn't going to happen - I don't know the future any more than you do - but even if we look at a worst case scenario of our beloved Lightroom being killed off someday, logically there's no reason to panic anytime soon.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

What exactly would have to happen for you to believe that LR Classic is not in End of Life support mode and restore your faith in Adobe?

I don't think Adobe can do much in the short run, apart from changing their website so that the photography plan isn't promoted as "The 'future of photography' and our wonderful Lightroom CC is that future and by the way, I almost forgot that we have something called Lightroom Classic as well". Apart from that, they'll have to live with the consequences of this bad PR-job. In my native language we have an expression that fits here well. It translates as follows: "If you burn your buttocks, you will have to sit on the blisters". Adobe clearly burned their behind, so now it hurts to sit down and watch the reactions.

Actions speak louder than words however. In the longer run the answer is simple. Prove that Lightroom Classic is not just in EOL support mode, but is actively developed further.

 

[Jim Wilde]

I don't think Adobe can do much in the short run, apart from changing their website so that the photography plan isn't promoted as "The 'future of photography' and our wonderful Lightroom CC is that future and by the way, I almost forgot that we have something called Lightroom Classic as well". Apart from that, they'll have to live with the consequences of this bad PR-job. In my native language we have an expression that fits here well. It translates as follows: "If you burn your buttocks, you will have to sit on the blisters". Adobe clearly burned their behind, so now it hurts to sit down and watch the reactions.

Actions speak louder than words however. In the longer run the answer is simple. Prove that Lightroom Classic is not just in EOL support mode, but is actively developed further.

I was thinking about this, and from an existing Lightroom user I'd agree 100%. Problem is, if you're marketing to capture new users (especially those that the 6.2 import dialog was aimed at and some of those gazillions of potential users with a smartphone in their pocket) then what's up there now probably makes a lot more sense. Not palatable to us, for sure, but understandable (to me at least) nevertheless.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I was thinking about this, and from an existing Lightroom user I'd agree 100%. Problem is, if you're marketing to capture new users (especially those that the 6.2 import dialog was aimed at and some of those gazillions of potential users with a smartphone in their pocket) then what's up there now probably makes a lot more sense. Not palatable to us, for sure, but understandable (to me at least) nevertheless.

I understand that this may be the explanation, but I still think it's wrong. There are basically two plans. The first plan is the new Lightroom CC and 1 TB of storage to use it. Fine by me. A good plan at a fair price. And that's the plan for all those iPhone shooters that Adobe wants to attract. No criticism from me about it.

The second plan is Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, the original photography plan. Now we get Lightroom CC as well and a small amount of storage space (20 GB) to play with it. Isn't that what Tom almost literally said? But the website suggests otherwise. It suggests that this plan is also all about Lightroom CC, but if you are really so old fashioned that you want to use Lightroom Classic instead, then by the grace of Adobe you still can. That doesn't give people a lot of confidence in the future of Lightroom Classic and I can't blame them.

 

[CloudedGenie]

@Victoria Bampton

I have owned every version of Lightroom and Photoshop since it came out (and saw my original CS3 disk just the other day). I dutifully upgraded to CS4, CS5 and CS6 over the years... After buying The DAM Book, I followed PK’s workflow for many years, using idImager and BreezeBrowser and later iView Media Pro. As a Nikon shooter, NX and NX2 used to be miles ahead in terms of raw conversion.

Although I owned copies of the earlier versions, I only started using Lightroom as my primary DAM with Lightroom 4. NX2 still did a better job on my D200 files, but was dead, so I had to bite the bullet. Somewhere along the way, Photoshop became far too complicated for me to use for anything but the simplest tasks

It is a pity that it appears that Adobe finds the needs of the new “mobile phone” generation of photographer (and I have thousands of mobile phone photos) more important than those of the long time loyal customers who understand the difference between folders and catalogs and collections and want more functionality, rather than “simplification” or dumbing down of the interface.

At present, there is nowhere to migrate to. The competition’s offerings are not mature enough yet. If Adobe is indeed planning on letting “Classic” die a slow death, assuming we will all accept the inevitable by then, I guess we will have 2-3 years. By then, a lot can change in the market.

I will focus on making sure my metadata resides in my files (or sidecars) in standard fields. I have conquered my fear of the command line and config files and embraced exiftool... I hope it won’t be necessary, but I will migrate, rather than move my library to the cloud.

As to rebuilding my trust that “Classic” is not EOL?

1. I guess it’s too late to rename “Classic” to something that at least sounds as if it has a future (whether it has or not). How about giving it equal exposure to the baby cloud app? Just so people actually know it exists? Or at least as much exposure as is being given to Photoshop on the “Lightroom CC” page?

2. Fix the metadata issues surrounding video files. I’m not asking for LR to become a video editor, but there are 5 year old requests hanging around to just recognise the camera (which is in the metadata).

3. Access to EXIF fields. There are numerous EXIF fields (e.g. subsecondtime) that is accessible by addins, but not by Lightroom. This is another piece of functionality that have been requested for years.

4. Some new functionality that is probably not that important for the “selfie” generation... Metadata fields to handle scanned photos from film, slides or negatives. Something like this, that is new, innovative (and not hard to do), would show we are not just in bug-fix and wait-for-baby-to-grow-up mode.

Christelle

 

[CloudedGenie]

"If you burn your buttocks, you will have to sit on the blisters"

I love Dutch...

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

To Victoria's question, I think it might be best thought of as two parts:

1) Can Adobe convince us CLassic is not EOL?

2) Can Adobe convince us that regardless of eventual status, Classic will be well supported indefinitely

Honestly I think (1) is a done deal, there is literally nothing they can do, the message was sent clearly not by this release, but viewed in retrospect by having "the Could" design be inconsistent with Lightroom of the time. This started years ago as LR Mobile was being designed, apparently. We talk today as though "why didn't they take some time to make Classic fully compatible". I think that's too recent -- the more fundamental question is "Why was their cloud designed to be incompatible in the first place with their existing product". Why were they not developed in parallel not for V7, but way back for V6 when The Cloud was in its infancy.

Because they had already decided on a long term vision, and a new LR was to take the place of the old. That's not changing IMO.

But... that phase out could be many, many years. So Can Adobe convince us who like and use it that it will have a rich, innovative and supported decline?

Sure. But actions will have to do the speaking (I used the word "indefinitely" in (2) on purpose).

One last thought: Everyone is rightly focused on the Cloud Only restriction in LR CC and that being the prime distinction with Classic. Here's how you might also view it: it's a trial balloon, a first negotiating position. If enough people get over their "cloud" fears and sign on to proprietary storage they win. If enough people are prevented from moving due to that, they negotiate down and offer some partial-local-archive feature in the future, or cheaper archiving (a la Glacier from Google), or more Cloud features for backup/recovery... This is just their first offer in a long experiment. They want to separate out how many people are willing to spend money on their cloud. If the number who say "heck no, we won't go" is huge, they will back off. If enough majority go along... the rest of us are in trouble.

Follow the money if you want truth; words from marketing people are just alcohol tainted dreams given form.

 

[tspear]

I probably disagree with most of the posters on here. What seems to me is the direction Adobe is going is obvious.
Cloud focused, default to a simple flow UI, more consumer focused, and Lr Classic will be EOL at some point. The judgement call by Adobe is when does it make financial sense.
The business case for this direction is rather obvious, so Adobe could gain a lot of respect and trust by doing a few simple things.
1. State the long term goals, with a few metrics on how this will happen. E.g. we plan to continue to develop Lr Classic until Lr CC has the following functionality (plans may change due to market conditions).... Then update this every six months to a year until everything is done.
2. Publish a simplified roadmap for Lr CC which covers what features from Classic are the focus of the next release or two. Do not show your hand for anything but what will be ported...
3. Fix the marketing, as others have said.
4. Split the dev team. Have a group focused on customer driven items which are lower risk. Perform minimal testing, release a public beta. Fix newly caused bugs, then release it. Have a second team working on larger, more longer term items which follow your traditional flow. The first team should be able to do a release every month. The second should be at least once a quarter.
5. Answer Cletus's question
6. Be honest if the response blind sided you or if you expected push back.

Tim

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk

 

[CloudedGenie]

Just like I paid for three versions of Lightroom, watching it mature and grow, before I started using it (with my license fees supporting that development), I am not averse to doing the same with other promising product(s) that doesn’t bully me into “getting over my fear of the cloud”.

I have a 2TB Dropbox and 1TB OneDrive and some iDrive space. I have a lot of photos and other files on these drives. I am not afraid of the cloud, but I do not want my primary photo library in the cloud.

 

[OogieM]

As a farmer mad as hell is usually the first sign of a way to get to the constructive options. Not a venting but a specific signal to get out your shovel and fix it. Phrasing may be a bit at issue but the sentiment is both angry but how to fix.

To fix this Adobe needs to:

Fix the marketing faux pas Like NOW

change the name of classic to something more appropriate like professional
provide a clear indication of how they will merge the 2 CC versions eventually
provide clear and obvious links and feature comparison lists of the 2 version on the top level of the LR page in Adobe's Web site​

Provide a no-cloud or selective cloud option

I'd prefer a selective cloud only as a way to give access to a small device for some tasks​

Provide a way to have at least access to what you finished even once you stop paying for a subscription

It's ok to require monthly payments for frequent updates and support but not ok to hold your data hostage by doing so
You don't need to be able to do more things in the develop module but you should NEVER lose your work just because you stop paying a monthly fee​

Implement keywords in LR Mobile that will sync with Classic
Implement support for smart collections
Reverse the naming, we know and understand the terms collections changing it to albums doesn't provide any features and is confusing

That's my quick take, got to run, have an event I need to be at in an hour and still have sheep and guard dogs to feed, I'll post more later

​

 

[Duncanh]

Firstly thank you so much Victoria, your explanation of the changes/products has been superb as always.
I agree with comments about Adobe could do better managing expections by being more open with a long term product road map.
It’s all about expections, I come from a software developer background in business software and have no expections that any software can last forever in its present form (technology, new requirements, old spaghetti code) therefore I’m ok with the announcements.
As I see it LR Classic will of course eventually be replaced with the new LR CC but the way it needs to be done is that it’s timely and the replacement meets most users requirements otherwise it would not financially benefit Adobe.
To meet my requirements to move to LR CC I need:-
1. The same functionality as Classic (including folder structure and being able to rename file names which my understanding CC doesn’t do at the moment)
2. I do not have to keep any images on line (yes to have option to decide what you do hold online is great) I’m just in the processes of scanning years, years and even more years of old film, why the hell do I want to keep 100s and 100s of thousands of images in the cloud that go back 40 years that I would access once in a blue moon, I don’t often access many images from a year ago.
3. The new desktop CC software with all features works totally off line with only checking the licence the same as Classic does now.

If above is met then great I can move to nice new latest technology software that is an evolution compared to revolution.
To me the transition has to be handled “timely” meaning whilst I’m using Classic I can see where I’m going with Lightroom, if the path is not clear and/or I have doubts where I’m going with LR in the future or I feel I’m getting locked in I’ll change to a alternative solution sooner rather than later but I don’t want to as I love LR.

 

[CloudedGenie]

I was trying to make my test installation of baby "Lightroom CC" work... There seems to be a few things that are not so smooth if you are on the Creative Cloud subscription, rather than one of the Photography Plans...

However...

From the Photography page (with the video of the bright leaf on the dark background), I followed the link to "Learn & Support" that takes you to "Photography Tutorials". Everything is about the "All-in-one photo solution" using Lightroom CC with Photoshop CC. Not one single mention about the legacy old "Classic" version... Not even one...

I do not think Adobe could have made it any clearer that Classic has no future.

 

[PhilBurton]

But when I see talk of a "Mad as Hell" forum being setup, then frankly I shudder. If we turn ourselves into another U2U then no doubt I for one won't be around much longer, but I'm hoping that won't happen. But that's not my call, it's Victoria's. Call it something more constructive, less negative, perhaps.

Jim (and Victoria),

With the recent themes in postings, there is no long a reason or justification for the "Mad as hell" theme I suggested. My idea, had I done this thread, would have been to collect a list of issues and feature requests, in the same approach that I did earlier with the list I provided to Rikk Flohr.

Victoria's post above can be an excellent vehicle for bringing out both product-related issues and market-related issues around LR. The latter is important. Words do matter, as in calling a product "Classic." So I hope that everyone posts their answer to Victoria's question and that Tom compiles those responses. Ideally, ideally, Tom would post a summary of those responses after a week or two, suitably organized. Really ideally, Tom would even post a answer to selected responses.

This forum is an invaluable resource for Tom. I only hope he utilizes it well so this forum can engage with Adobe in a two-way conversation. Or his management gives him the authority to utilize it well. Words matter.

Phil

 

[clee01l]

What exactly would have to happen for you to believe that LR Classic is not in End of Life support mode and restore your faith in Adobe?

I think I stated many of those when I addressed my response to Tom Hogarty.

1. The first thing that needs to happen is for Adobe to step up and admit that their Marketing Group completely missed the target with their emphasis on an incomplete product that is Lightroom CC. This marketing failure follows on the fiasco that was the release of LR6. It is clear that Adobe did not learn anything from the mistake that was the premature introduction of LR6 with a poorly supported GPU function and a disaster that presented itself as a new and improved Import function. Failing to own up to the shortcomings of Adobe Marketing, there is not much point to consider my points that follow.
   
2. After publicly admitting that marketing mistake, Adobe needs to correct that impression, first on their website and second in their advertising. There core Lightroom product remains for the foreseeable future to be Lightroom Classic even if that future core product is going to be Lightroom Cloud.
3. Adobe then needs to publish a road map that promises that every feature in Lightroom Classic will be incorporated into Lightroom CC. It doesn't need to include a time table because users are going to remain skeptic of hollow promises and no one believes that Development timetable to be anything other than fiction. Every feature in Lightroom Classic includes the Map module, the Book module, Slideshow and Print modules. If this critical functionality can't be incorporated into Lightroom CC, then acknowledge this and develop additional Adobe apps that will deliver this functionality via the Cloud API.
4. Perhaps the biggest marketing mistake has been the retirement of the Perpetual License concurrent with the announcement that the flagship product is being relegated to subordinate status. As I said in my address to Tom. Adobe has known that the Perpetual license was going away for some time. Hiding this fact from the customer based was another marketing blunder. The perception intended to unintended is that Lightroom Classic is destined to suffer the same fate as Lightroom Perpetual. The question becomes how to address that perception. Some effort to restructure the Lightroom family stressing the importance of Lightroom Classic is necessary. Next, Adobe needs to provide some encouragement to the remaining Perpetual License holders. I suggested to Tom that an Offer to upgrade to 1 year subscription to Lightroom Classic for the perpetual upgrade fee of $79USD would be a token olive branch. If the remaining Perpetual License holder are indeed an insignificant number, the Adobe could well absorb the loss of $40 agains an annual subscription.
   
5. The Pro and Pro-sumer market drives the innovation of LR. Adobe may see an untapped market in the Phone camera/selphie crowd, but recognize that Apple already has that market share and Adobe needs to offer more to claim a share of that market. They won't achieve this by selling Cloud storage at prices that are prohibitive if you have a large inventory as many Pro and pro-supers do. That $10/TB/mo. is on par with Apple, Dropbox, Google and a little higher than Microsoft OneDrive. And if you are a phone photographer, 1 TB may be all that you need. When your camera produces 30-50 megapixels, One TB is inadequate. And cloud storage for those professional cameras is financially out of reach. This cloud storage impracticality needs to be addressed. A roadmap needs to incorporate some combination of cloud and local storage.
6. The biggest shortsighted response for promoting Lightroom CC is the failure to recognize that most of the internet world does not enjoy the GigaBit interned speeds that Adobe sees in their offices. Accommodations need to be made for photographers that don't stay at home and take photos in a studio. If Adobe wants to thoroughly test their cloud concept of Lightroom Everywhere, then they need to send their product testers to remote places like the US mountains and deserts like Big Bend National park, an African Safari or a trip to the Australian Outback. Just because Lightroom CC can work in SanJose CA, doe not mean that it is practical for rural America or elsewhere.

A failure of Adobe to adequately address these concerns will jeopardize my continued financial support. If the future of Lightroom does not include support for the photographic work that I do that caused me to consider LR in the first place, then I truly need to look elsewhere to get those needs met. Ultimately, Adobe does need to demonstrate to me that they value the photographic work that I and others like me rely upon Adobe Lightroom to deliver.

 

[Deleted member 39308]

So let me ask the same of everyone else...

What exactly would have to happen for you to believe that LR Classic is not in End of Life support mode and restore your faith in Adobe?

Let's be relatively realistic - let's assume they're sticking with the decision to end perpetual licenses (I know that's not popular, but it's been heading that way for years) and they're not about to throw away all the work they've done on new baby Lightroom CC app. They can't roll back the clock, but what do you think they should do next to allay your fears? What reassurance do you need?

Firstly many thanks to Victoria for allowing the open discussion and to Tom Hogarty for joining.

I can only describe how it feels to me as an end user:

• It feels like Lightroom has been on life support for sometime now; there was no Lightroom 2017 and nothing much to speak of at last year's Adobe Max for Lightroom users. We were promised regular, small incremental feature updates when Creative Cloud came out, but now it looks like we are back to a two year development cycle. This feels like a broken promise.
• I could be wrong, maybe Tom can comment, but the Develop module and Camera Raw use the same code base, possibly from a single development team. As such the new features in Lightroom Develop module are always welcome but they are not specific to Lightroom Classic. I see the other modules as where I gauge how much effort Adobe are putting into Lightroom.
• I can understand the need for an easy to use solution for mobile users and Adobe obviously want to be part of this. Economics kick in and Adobe does not have unlimited supplies of developers so something has to give if development effort is moved to the new cloud Lightroom CC.
• Not sure how this analogy will work outside the UK&I, but Adobe feels more like Ryan Air than Fuji Cameras in terms of customer service.

That's a long introduction so to answer Victoria's question it would help if Adobe:

1. Bring back regular feature updates to Lightroom Classic
2. Bring back the Just Do It regular fixes (i.e. not just new camera support updates)
3. Publish a road map of features planned for the next year
4. At a high-level describe how the development effort is split between Lightroom Classic and Cloud Lightroom e.g. is it 50:50 or 20:80?
5. Provide a written confirmation that Lightroom Classic will receive active development and new features at least until 2021.

Hope the above falls within the Forum guidelines.

 

[LouieSherwin]

Interesting discussion and thank you Victoria for your summary.

What I see happening is that Adobe is going after the huge mobil market. This is what I see the new LR CC is all about, trying to get all those millions of mobil users with their devices using Adobe. However the technical problem is that the existing infrastructure (code base) is too old and convoluted to be used going forward. So rather than wait until they can completely rewrite the application from top to bottom they have launched the new application with limited functionality but focused on the mobile only user.

This new application is clearly not useful to the traditional Lightroom user and so they have to keep supporting the old "Classic" version. What I expect is that as the new LR CC incorporates all the functionality of the "Classic" and eventually there will be no need to use or support the "Classic" code base. It is unknown at this time is how long that will take or whether this future version of LR CC will have all the features that I consider important.

I am ambivalent about the automatic inclusion of cloud storage as part to the application. On one hand is a boon for handling storage issues on limited sized mobile devices. On the other hand I am concerned about security and privacy. I want to have a clear explanation from Adobe about their sharing of my private data before I glibly hand them all my photos. In any case I don't see that in the foreseeable future that I will do away with storing the majority of my images on local disk.

Finally I think that one the things that makes this an emotional issue is that by buying into the Camera Raw/Lightroom ecosystem we have placed great faith in Adobe to protect our investment. There are maybe millions of person hours invested in creating our images using these excellent tools. The mere thought of the possibility of loosing that investment is threatening. It is an unfortunate consequence of our dependence on parametric editing that we do not "own" a key part of what we use make our images.

I think that Adobe has been sensitive to this in the past and from Tom Hogarty's comment on this thread seems continue to be aware of this concern.

In the meantime I will be moving on to Classic and continue to watch future developments.

-louie

 

[PhilBurton]

No need to everything that has already been written, so I'll add a few items.

1. Formalize a dialog between the members of this forum and Adobe. Dialog, with meaningful responses from Adobe. As on suggestion, set a date/time for a monthly or biweekly response from Adobe to issues.
2. Allow members of this forum to submit feature requests as part of the dialog.
3. Adobe to publish lists of feature requests and allow forum members to comment and vote. That said, we all have to recognize that features selected for implementation have to be based on a product strategy. If a feature won't be implemented for strategy reasons, say so.
4. Absolutely commit to a local storage option for Classic, or its eventual replacement, for the long-term.
5. Absolutely commit that Classic will receive the same updates as the CC version, for LIBRARY, DEVELOP, and PUBLISH, except when technically infeasible. How that is accomplished is Adobe's decision of course.
6. Ask forum members how they would like to see a "hybrid" desktop/cloud system function for their workflow, so they can easily and seamlessly integrate phones, tablets, and a "travel laptop" with the home-based main Lightroom system for Lightroom ubiqity. Use those responses as one driver of the product roadmap.
7. Emulate the Microsoft approach with open betas for Windows.

 

[clee01l]

I understand that this may be the explanation, but I still think it's wrong. There are basically two plans. The first plan is the new Lightroom CC and 1 TB of storage to use it. Fine by me. A good plan at a fair price. And that's the plan for all those iPhone shooters that Adobe wants to attract. No criticism from me about it.

I can agree with most of that statement. What I did was upgrade my plan to 1TB. This gives me The Photography Plan that includes Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC and Photoshop. This makes Lightroom Mobile/LightroomCC useful as a Web Based interface to my laptop. Also all of that 1TB can now be sync'd back to Lightroom Classic.
If you have noticed the Lightroom CC and 1 TB of storage plan Does not include Photoshop OR Lightroom Classic. Further evidence that Adobe is more interested in the phone photo/selphie crowd.

 

[Gnits]

I do not mind if Adobe have a Pro product (Ie Classic) and a more consumer / phone product (Ie Cc).

The fear is that Adobe will follow the Apple model where ultimately their 'Pro' products (hardware and software) fade into insignificance or oblivion.

 

[PhilBurton]

I do not mind if Adobe have a Pro product (Ie Classic) and a more consumer / phone product (Ie Cc).

The fear is that Adobe will follow the Apple model where ultimately their 'Pro' products (hardware and software) fade into insignificance or oblivion.

Gnits,

I think your fear is reasonable, but I would like to suggest that Adobe's "sweet spot" in the overall marketplace is professional creatives and businesses.

Look at the Adobe Creative Cloud | Software and services for creative professionals. Does this web page, and the products it promotes, appeal to the phone-camera users?

How about Adobe Document Cloud ?

And there is also Marketing Cloud, Experience Cloud, Advertising Cloud and Analytics Cloud.

Phil

 

[Replytoken]

I do not mind if Adobe have a Pro product (Ie Classic) and a more consumer / phone product (Ie Cc).

The fear is that Adobe will follow the Apple model where ultimately their 'Pro' products (hardware and software) fade into insignificance or oblivion.

I would be happy to have their new product if they did not kill the old one. And if the market for the classic product is not profitable for Adobe, then at least attempt to spin it off rather than kill it if they have any care about the photographic community.

--Ken

 

[Man-Machine]

Adobe - like virtually all companies in the digital field - thinks the future is in the mobile. I don't argue there.
Wether Classic will survive or not depends on if Adobe manages to lure the mobile crowd to use LR.
If not they'll go back to their old cash cow, Classic.
If they do Classic will certainly be discontinued at some point.
The coming years will show.

 

[tspear]

I just had a funny call, well I think it is funny, but my friend is really pissed.
He and his wife are Apple aficionados, they always are upgrading and install the latest greatest of whatever without thinking stuff through. e.g. Apple removing Aperture on a release, iPhoto to Photos... So a big part of why the switched to Adobe was to avoid such problems.
They just got a new computer Thursday because the old one was low on space. Installed the new Lr CC, import a few thousand images, spend all day Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday editing images from a recent trip.
Now they decided the wanted to move over the catalog from the old machine, and print a series of images from the recent trip and the last trip for the in-laws.
Well, Lr CC has no print, and Lr CC does not seem to have a good way to migrate the existing Lr 6 catalog (or there are warnings about losing what you have already loaded, his comments).
As I see it, he has a few choices, none of which are very good.
1. Import the images into the old catalog and redo all the edits.
2. Import the catalog into Lr CC, and hope all the existing edits are not lost. Problem is he has 7TB of images. Not sure Adobe is ready for that one, and not sure he is willing to pay $70 a month for storage.
3. Live in a dual world until Adobe gets it act together.

I know this sucks for him, but I have to laugh at how the marketing screw up and timing just bit him on the but again. Does anyone have any suggestions for my friend who always fails to look before leaping?

Tim

 

[CloudedGenie]

Does anyone have any suggestions for my friend who always fails to look before leaping?

Tell your friend Adobe believes modern people no longer print stuff, printing is for old folks...

I would export the edited, cropped and sharpened photos as TIFF or high quality JPG, import those into a new temporary catalog in LR6 and print from there...

 

[clee01l]

For printing, you can use the Edit function to open Photoshop and print from that app.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

.

For printing, you can use the Edit function to open Photoshop and print from that app.

If they have the Lightroom CC plan, they don't have Photoshop. Come to think of that: it's kind of cynical that Lightroom CC is the future of photography, can only use Photoshop as external editor, but you only get Photoshop if you subscribe to the plan that contains good old dying Lightroom Classic...