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.

 

[clee01l]

You stop paying they give you a YEAR to download your originals (free).

If you have a large image inventory, it will probably take a full year to download your originals. Then, what about the adjusted derivatives? With LR Classic if you stop your subscription, you still have alll of your originals AND local software to produce (export) derivatives as needed. This is what I mean by being held hostage. Perhaps kidnapped is a better term. “We won’t kill the baby as long as you continue to pay ransom.”

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Perhaps kidnapped is a better term. “We won’t kill the baby as long as you continue to pay ransom.”

I think 'daycare' is a better analogy. Adobe didn't steal that baby, you brought it to them.

 

[PhilBurton]

After {mumble} years working in IT, trusting any vendor isn't something I tend to do.

And having worked for many vendors (for enterprise information security, mainly) for {mumbley-mumble} years myself, I have often been the cause of this issue. Not me personally, but my company overall.

Phil

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

If you have a large image inventory, it will probably take a full year to download your originals. Then, what about the adjusted derivatives? With LR Classic if you stop your subscription, you still have alll of your originals AND local software to produce (export) derivatives as needed. This is what I mean by being held hostage. Perhaps kidnapped is a better term. “We won’t kill the baby as long as you continue to pay ransom.”

For those migrating to Lightroom CC, the good news is for the vast majority, internet upload speed is a small fraction of download. So if it took 3 days to upload, it only might take 8 hours to download. Now those who buy in and develop a huge archive in the cloud could have this sneak up on them a few gigabytes at a time, and be astounded when they try to download.

I think a far more interesting internet aspect is going to be people who do not really think about it, and are on metered services or cellular plans, and their $10 adobe bill gets over-shadowed by $150 internet bill unexpectedly. Especially for mixed Classic/CC users, especially^2 for those with several devices -- you pay going up, then it comes back down and maybe more than once if you have multiple devices.

The edits issue is interesting. The simplest option would appear to be to use Lightroom Classic (part of your subscription or add for $10 for a month depending), sync down to it, and then stop paying. You have Classic available to view/export your edits in full. Maybe you can do it from Lightroom CC Desktop also, I have not tried, but Classic gives a familiar and more full featured way to manage it post subscription since it has print/export/plugins.

But honestly when someone is exiting the Adobe world, they likely want to cover that archive from parametric edits to real ones, and export as TIFF's. Buy a lot of storage for that day, but it's also a viable option. I wish someone else would reverse engineer Adobe edits so you could migrate to a new tool WITH non-destructive edits, but no sign of that on the horizon that I have seen.

 

[mylesvk]

My Lightroom story. Have had Lightroom from the beginning back in 2007. Photography is just a hobby. I am the keeper of the family photos. On Sept 24, I upgraded to LR 6 for $79. Yesterday, Oct 19th I decided I would take the plunge and go with the $9.99 subscription. I called Adobe at their 800 number told them my story and what i wanted to do. Adobe said No Problem. I paid the $119 for the annual subscription, and they refunded my $79. Now I have Lightroom Classic 7, LR CC, LR for my iPad, and LR mobile. Many people are upset with Adobe and their subscription plans. I just thought to myself Lightroom is by far the Best out there, in the grand scheme of things nothing really comes close. So I decided to stay with what I know, what I am comfortable with, what took me years to learn. $ 9.99 monthly is really a very small price to pay for the Best.

 

[CloudedGenie]

I have been collecting the “most original” versions of all my raw files (some straight file copies from the memory cards, others after being mangled by early versions of idImager) to weed out duplicates and find order after our earlier data loss when our old NAS RAID controller died. Between the iPhones uploaded to the PCs and iPads and cloud... that is a mess of its own... On top of that, I have scans of all my negatives and prints and now those of my mom and mother in law as well...

As I’m going through these files, I’m cleaning up the files using exiftool, making sure the local time and timezone is correct, and adding the new exif standard tags for these where possible. Because Lightroom doesn’t recognise the camera for video files (I have not checked to see whether that is still the case in Classic 7), I am keeping each camera’s files together. It also makes it easier to manage, because each camera had a start date where we bought it, and a last date wherafter if was sold or fell in disuse... within each camera’ directory, everything is organized in date folders.

I’ve been doing this simply to get everything ready for import into a new Lightoom catalog, allowing me to distinguish between “touched” and “untouched” camera originals going forward.

Now I also want to make sure that any metadata changes I make will be written to the file — into standard xmp fields (especially for Face tagging, location tagging and approximate date estimates for scanned photos) instead of just the Lightroom database. That way, if “Classic” lives on and in future becomes part of some “Lightroom Complete” version, life will just go on... but if they decide to EOL “Classis” or kill it to force me to store my date primarily in the cloud, it will be much easier for me to migrate to another solution.

To me, sadly, “Lightroom Classic” does not sound like there will be any new development, other than bug fixes — i.e. end of line...

 

[tspear]

@Ferguson
It is rather simple. Adobe had an implied promise with the software. You subscribe, we will provide improvements.
Now it is you subscribe, we will force you to also purchase our cloud storage.
You may not view it as being held hostage, but I do. The direction Adobe is going will make it harder to migrate to any other solution; they are planning to hold my data captive. I then lose access to it or I pay the ransom.

Is this a choice, technically yes. Just like technically Adobe did not lie that they will not have additional perpetual versions.
So I likely will disagree with you not wanting it to be called being held hostage. I along with many others, like to support or use companies which continue to provide value. And they keep our business by providing value, not due to walls being placed around me or my data.

The end result, those that want to live in the Adobe garden, may. Those that want the ability to leave, probably should before the official EOL for Classic. Personally, I do not see a value in continuing to invest in Lr and provide Adobe hundreds of dollars that could be spent on other solutions. When the longer I wait, the more pictures I have, the more time I have in learning the tool, the more I have invested, the more painful it becomes to switch. In fact, this morning I canceled the auto-renew for my Photography Plan. I hope I have found a solution to the conundrum before my current subscription period runs out (either I accept the Adobe garden or I found an alternative solution).

Tim

 

[tspear]

My Lightroom story. Have had Lightroom from the beginning back in 2007. Photography is just a hobby. I am the keeper of the family photos. On Sept 24, I upgraded to LR 6 for $79. Yesterday, Oct 19th I decided I would take the plunge and go with the $9.99 subscription. I called Adobe at their 800 number told them my story and what i wanted to do. Adobe said No Problem. I paid the $119 for the annual subscription, and they refunded my $79. Now I have Lightroom Classic 7, LR CC, LR for my iPad, and LR mobile. Many people are upset with Adobe and their subscription plans. I just thought to myself Lightroom is by far the Best out there, in the grand scheme of things nothing really comes close. So I decided to stay with what I know, what I am comfortable with, what took me years to learn. $ 9.99 monthly is really a very small price to pay for the Best.

The problem is not the $9.99 for Lr and Ps.
The problem is the cloud. I am not willing to pay $30 bucks a month for Lr and Ps.
I am almost at 1TB of images, and I am getting ready to add a lot more from my wife which are not in my current library. This means the 2TB cloud package; it also likely means I need to upgrade and maintain a faster internet plan. So $10 for the software, plus $20 for storage, plus $40 for faster internet... Sorry, too rich for my blood, and by the very approach, I can foresee Adobe is going to make it harder to move away by embedding more in the cloud and not on the desktop. Just look at Sensi for an example...

Tim

 

[mylesvk]

anything Cloud for me with Adobe is incidental. I could some day become more acquainted with their Cloud offerings as they evolve. For now my LR Classic uses Smugmug. My entire catalogue is (published) to an account with Smugmug. Gotta tell you, Smugmug saved my tail on one occasion. think its $60 for unlimited storage of Originals

 

[Johan Elzenga]

@Ferguson
It is rather simple. Adobe had an implied promise with the software. You subscribe, we will provide improvements.
Now it is you subscribe, we will force you to also purchase our cloud storage.

Why do you act like Adobe is holding a knife at your throat and forces you to go to Lightroom CC? Stick with Lightroom Classic! If and when Adobe discontinues Lightroom Classic, then you have every right to complain.

 

[Woodbutcher]

I liked Victoria's post. Basically the new CC is not complete, ie key features not implemented yet. Not being able to print is huge for me. The ability to publish to a hosting site is huge to me. These will be added as CC matures. Eventually they will be close and then I'll consider moving over. Or I'll look at other products. Change is a constant in the tech world. Meanwhile I'll start with some collections in Classic CC that I'll use for mobile just to see how that can fit into my workflow. Yes, that means smart previews, but it is a good way to test for future transition. I never really did that with mobile before other than testing.

But I'm not going to do anything drastic until I see the announcement from Adobe that says Classic is going away.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I think 'daycare' is a better analogy. Adobe didn't steal that baby, you brought it to them.

Oh Johan, you made me laugh out loud, and that's quite an accomplishment this week!

 

[Jim Wilde]

Sorry to have been away while all this was kicking off (not by choice, I assure you), but now that I'm back I thought I might add my own 2c.

Victoria has done a fine job trying to bring some much-needed objectivity to the various debating points, all of which were in danger of becoming one single confused emotional issue. Unfortunately, some of the following comments are showing that objectivity is still somewhat lacking in some areas. So, for the record:

For the perpetual license holder, this absolutely sucks, no question. We all get that, even those of us that have no issue with a subscription model. But there's nothing that we can do in this forum (or even using any available back channels) that will change that fact. Vent about it by all means (for now, but please not for much longer), though I would suggest to you that venting here is just a waste of your time and you'd get more of your message home on an Adobe forum. At some point those of you who are adamant that they'll never subscribe will need to stop venting and start deciding what you're going to do next, though the options are somewhat limited if subscription is off the table. If you do move to a different software supplier, choose wisely....you might not like subscription software but the market seems to love it, so no guessing who else might look at Adobe's success with that model and decide to try it themselves.

LR Classic: now there's a name. For the record, I thought the whole naming thing was bizarre, and still do. Agreeing with Johan I suspect this decision was taken way above Tom Hogarty's level. Unfortunately it's added even more confusion and intrigue, and opened the door to all the expected conspiracy theories. I'm not getting into that, but would just like to say for the current subscriber, nothing has changed. Johan has made some excellent points, and I agree with him that there is plenty of time for the "end-of-lifers" to take stock and make their exit plans. In the meantime we've got some substantial performance improvements in many areas (even better if you're on a Mac), and a handy-looking new tool (when I figure out how to best use it). We also get the funny new kid on the block (more about which below), a bit of storage cloud storage to test it, and all at no extra price. What's not to like about that?

Will there be more new features? I'm betting yes, if only for the fact that Camera Raw will no doubt continue to be developed and I'd expect to see those improvements feed back into Classic. Also, I'd expect to see more performance improvements, especially on Windows10. So I see no reason yet for some of the "doom and gloom" being offered up. Concern, for sure if you're minded that way. I'm not, by the way (not that it matters).

And then we come to the new kid, LRCC. Let's start by getting rid of the "hostage crisis"....I mean, seriously? None of the existing subscribers are being forced to use the cloud unless they VOLUNTARILY choose to do so. And I don't for one minute think there is any question of assets being held hostage, but if anyone actually thinks there's a risk that Adobe would somehow hold you to ransom once you've signed up and uploaded then I'd suggest you just walk away before you even start....guys, it really is as simple as that! The only people who might want to look carefully at the T&Cs are those signing up to the LRCC-only plan, for whom there is no choice other than to have the images in the cloud. For those users, Ferguson has already expressed his own reservations, and there will doubtless be others with similar concerns, but I guess there'll still be plenty in today's world who wouldn't give such issues a second thought.

Has anybody used the new app yet? There's been a lot of stuff about it being rushed out too early, not ready yet, etc. And I'd agree if you're coming from the pro/power user perspective....it's not ready for that, IMO, and may never be ready for that segment (which would doubtless prolong Classic's life!). But I'm not entirely sure it was especially designed with those users in mind. I'm guessing that, initially at least, it was more to be aimed at all those users Adobe had in mind when they redesigned the Import module back in 6.2. I think that Adobe are betting that there's a (large) bunch of not-yet-affiliated users (both ILC and smartphone) who would welcome a top-quality image editor that also took away all the hassle of file/folder management. And when you put the whole ecosystem thing together, they are thinking that there's a lot of people going to want that. Time will tell, of course, but personally, I like it very much (the whole thing, not just the new LRCC desktop app), though it will be better with some hoped for additions (especially local peer-to-peer sync, for example). Selective sync I'm less bothered about, it can be done manually fairly easily if you still have Classic as part of the subscription. In short, I'll use it, especially looking forward to see how the AI stuff develops.....but it'll still be a long time before even this hobbyist would consider it a full replacement for Classic (did you read the feature comparison in Victoria's blog posts?). In the meantime I intend to carry on using Classic as my main desktop app, so all my images are still held and backed up locally. But as I've also got them uploaded to the ecosystem in full original form I've got all the benefits of the whole syncing and AI searching tools to play with as well. Which gives me choices and potential decisions further in the future.

I see that since I started typing this, there have been some additional good points being made, so thanks for those, guys. I'll end with a plea: I understand many of you have concerns, and even though I think some are misguided or misplaced they're obviously real to you. Many of the issues you've raised are totally outside our control or influence, and some of those issues we also share. But other than give your our own perspective, there's little more that we can do....Victoria's given you a host of information about the changes, and it would be really great to help her by starting to think about putting these more emotive issues away (because we can't fix them here) and start perhaps looking in more detail at the changes and how they might be used. Thanks for listening.

 

[tspear]

Why do you act like Adobe is holding a knife at your throat and forces you to go to Lightroom CC? Stick with Lightroom Classic! If and when Adobe discontinues Lightroom Classic, then you have every right to complain.

You are missing my point. Even @Victoria Bampton says in her post that Lr Classic will go the way of the Dodo bird. If you want to continue with Lr at that point, you are forced into Lr CC.
I can look at how Lr CC is being designed, sold and pitched. In addition, look at the core foundations of how it works and its dependencies. It revolves around the Adobe cloud. That is fine, that is a design choice Adobe has made. If I want to continue with Lr at such a point, I am forced into the cloud. So yes, they have a metaphorical knife at my throat.
You will note, it is not just me that says this. This is being stated by all sorts of people on here who live and breathe software products for a living, or are software engineers. So far, I have yet to see any IT people who disagree with the fundamental analysis of the direction Adobe is going.

Adobe understands money, as long as they continue to get your money, they will not likely change. When they fear a loss of revenue, with out a replacement source of revenue, they will pay more attention. Therefore, if I continue to subscribe to the Photography plan I am:

1. Implicitly telling Adobe I am ok with the future direction they have selected. And I am not ok with it.
2. Based on simple math and accounting, my $10 bucks a month cannot fund the same level of growth as when there was just two products being supported. Now with three products being supported, there has to be less revenue to go around. The company can make some level of "investment", but I can pretty much guarantee which product will get short shrift. And it will not be Lr CC or Ps.
3. I am continuing to spend time and money for a product which I do not believe there is a long term path forward.

Hence, for me, I am 99% certain it is time to start looking for a new solution.

One last minor point. The timing to me matches the import dialog fiasco, which many people thought was Adobe's first step to appeal to what was labeled the Selfie crowd. When the import dialog blew up; which was the first step to build a product for the "masses"; the solution put forward by some MBA was we will create a new product. Build it for the "masses" on the cloud, and then get everyone to migrate over.

Tim

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Even @Victoria Bampton says in her post that Lr Classic will go the way of the Dodo bird.

No, I said IF it did. This is all purely theoretical, because it'll depend on the majority of users moving over to LRCC and Classic no longer having enough customers to be worth developing.

There's no question, they ARE going subscription. But even the cloud-native LR CC app doesn't force you to upload all your photos - you can pause sync and not unpause it again.

 

[OogieM]

I am reluctant to move all my images to the cloud for any number of reasons: it's not encrypted (by me), it's not documented in regards reliability, security, redundancy; it's expensive; it's slow. But to hold hostage implies they will keep them and not give them back unless you pay. How is that what they are doing? You pay, you use their storage. You stop paying they give you a YEAR to download your originals (free).

If you have a large image inventory, it will probably take a full year to download your originals. Then, what about the adjusted derivatives? With LR Classic if you stop your subscription, you still have alll of your originals AND local software to produce (export) derivatives as needed. This is what I mean by being held hostage. Perhaps kidnapped is a better term. “We won’t kill the baby as long as you continue to pay ransom.”

The issue with saving files externally is critical IMO. Try living in a rural area where even the cost of downloading updates to system software and apps can be huge. Plus the time. At our current upload speeds it would take me just over 6 months to upload only my existing photos to the cloud. Download is faster and that is not even counting any the stuff I am scanning, digitizing and editing for the historical society.

A single one of the Historical Society collections will comprise approximately 3 TB of data once finished. That is the smallest collection. The others are still unquantified but that small collection consists of about 1500 images. There is one collection that is at least 5000 images and another that no one really knows how big it is.

I also have major issues with the security, backups, copyright and other issues that everyone has mentioned.

Going to just the feature set. I do a huge amount of stuff using smart collections. Without that option LR CC Cloud is useless to me. I wish the LR mobile app that will still work with Classic supported keywording, that is the most critical component of what I need to do.

I am paying for the subscription and for that I do expect continued bug fixes and upgrades. But forcing me to the cloud is not an option.

Since in my case my primary use for LR is cataloging and metadata I may have more options compared to other folks. I could go with other museum cataloging software, (and in fact Adobe's actions have made me start a project to go out and investigate open source museum and image cataloging SW again) or worst case roll my own. As I mentioned in another thread the LR SQLite Database is fairly easy to deal with and if all I needed to do was deal with editing metadata, keywords and so on I could probably hack something to keep that part at least updating even when LR Classic is killed. For me the key is the database of information not the tool I use to edit, access and use it.

For me the actions of major corporations are forcing me more and more into moving everything critical to open source or at least things I can control and SW that allows me to import and export the critical data into many different formats to adapt to future SW tools.

 

[OogieM]

FBut honestly when someone is exiting the Adobe world, they likely want to cover that archive from parametric edits to real ones, and export as TIFF's. Buy a lot of storage for that day, but it's also a viable option. I wish someone else would reverse engineer Adobe edits so you could migrate to a new tool WITH non-destructive edits, but no sign of that on the horizon that I have seen.

hmm the idea of reverse engineering the edits is intriguing...

As an aside what other cataloging and image management tools have non-destructive edits as an option?

 

[tspear]

No, I said IF it did. This is all purely theoretical, because it'll depend on the majority of users moving over to LRCC and Classic no longer having enough customers to be worth developing.

There's no question, they ARE going subscription. But even the cloud-native LR CC app doesn't force you to upload all your photos - you can pause sync and not unpause it again.

Touche, you did qualify it...

Tim

 

[Johan Elzenga]

You are missing my point. Even @Victoria Bampton says in her post that Lr Classic will go the way of the Dodo bird. If you want to continue with Lr at that point, you are forced into Lr CC.

And you're missing mine. First of all, Victoria did not say that. But even if she did, my point is that by the time you have to make that decision, the situation is probably quite different from what it is now. Lightroom CC will be much more capable. Storage will cost $1/TB rather than $10/TB. And if that still isn't enough for you to switch to Lightroom CC, then that's fine. There will be plenty of mature alternatives, like MacPhun Luminar. Apparently they are adding a DAM in 2018 that will read a Lightroom catalog. So maybe by the time you need to take that dreaded decision, you will be able to convert to Luminar in a way that is as easy as going from Lightroom CC2015 to Lightroom Classic.

 

[tspear]

And you're missing mine. First of all, Victoria did not say that. But even if she did, my point is that by the time you have to make that decision, the situation is probably quite different from what it is now. Lightroom CC will be much more capable. Storage will cost $1/TB rather than $10/TB. And if that still isn't enough for you to switch to Lightroom CC, then that's fine. There will be plenty of mature alternatives, like MacPhun Luminar. Apparently they are adding a DAM in 2018 that will read a Lightroom catalog. So maybe by the time you need to take that dreaded decision, you will be able to convert to Luminar in a way that is as easy as going from Lightroom CC2015 to Lightroom Classic.

lol, and here is Macphun's response:
Lightroom Alternative? LUMINAR for Mac & Windows.

A small fast, nimble company.

Tim

 

[Conrad Chavez]

Has anybody seen this yet? Adobe just published a post on their Lightroom Journal blog: Answering Your Questions on Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic CC and More. It has responses to some of the issues in Victoria's original post; here are a couple of interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

Is Lightroom Classic being phased out?
Lightroom Classic…is a tool you know and love and so it has an exciting roadmap of improvements well into the future. But please hold us accountable as we make updates in the following months and years to let us know if we’re meeting your expectations.

Does everything have to be synced to Lightroom CC or can users pick and choose what content syncs with the cloud?
For this 1.0 release, everything imported is intended to upload to Creative Cloud. We clearly understand that there are situations where a customer would not want all of their images uploaded to Creative Cloud so let’s talk about those situations and how we can address them.

The wording implies that selective sync might be part of a future CC update, so that maybe I could keep 4TB local, and only upload to the cloud those few albums I really do want to reach from any device. Of course we don't know what will really happen here, but if CC drops the requirement to store every image on Adobe servers that would change how a lot of people perceive the application. It would also remove the entire “hostage situation” argument.

Obviously, all of that doesn't provide hard answers and could raise more questions, but it’s more to think about.

If Adobe fulfills the positive implications of the statements above, the only reason to object would be the perpetual license issue. But I’m feeling more and more like that isn’t a real issue. I have piles of perpetual license disks that can’t be used anymore for one reason or another. Most often, it’s that the software stopped being developed and won’t run properly (or at all) on today’s combination of hardware and operating system. Yes, I even keep some old hardware around to be able to run some old applications, but enough years have gone by that a couple of those machines no longer boot properly, so at some point I have to find time to work out why and get them fixed.

I started thinking about what it would take to migrate away from Lightroom. The metadata is easy, XMP files or embedding. The develop edits are harder although at least Adobe Camera Raw would support them. The virtual organization (proprietary collections) is the hardest to migrate but could be addressed through keywords or another metadata field, or maybe another application’s migration tool could handle that.

But based on my experience with decades of abandoned perpetual license software, any other software I switch to would probably have the same issues down the road. Switching implies some faith that On1 or MacPhun are going to offer the same software in the same form and same pricing model 15-25 years from now, and I am not sure they can do that any better than Adobe has. So for now, I’m sticking with Classic and hoping Adobe lives up to their statement that Classic has an “exciting roadmap of improvements well into the future.”

Even then…it’s concerning to see that on the CC Photography Plan product page, Classic has been given so little space at the bottom that it looks like a footnote.

 

[CloudedGenie]

I see the "exiting roadmap of improvements for Classic" does not yet include being able to recognize the video files from my iPhones (with the EXIF data in the standard fields) as coming from an iPhone... it is still an "Unknown Camera" with an "Unknown Lens"...

Has anybody had a look at Lightroom CC to see if it can read the video camera file metadata?

 

[Tom Hogarty]

You are missing my point. Even @Victoria Bampton says in her post that Lr Classic will go the way of the Dodo bird.

I'm not sure if there are any additional words I can say to reassure this group about Lightroom Classic. Actions are more important than words so please hold us accountable while we continue to update LrClassic over time. As I've mentioned publicly before our focus is performance, editing enhancements and features/functionality that have been strong customer requests over time(the new embedded preview workflow is a strong indication of that type of direction).

Regards,
Tom Hogarty
Adobe Systems

 

[tspear]

@Tom Hogarty
Glad to see you on here. I am cynical by nature, but I am hopeful for Adobe does right by the loyal customers.

Tim

 

[Eric Bowles]

It's great to see the input here. I'm wearing multiple hats.

As an Adobe shareholder, the company just announced positive earnings and is forecasting increased revenue growth over the next quarters - and the immediate response was a 15% rise in stock price. That alone has paid for me to have a lifetime use of the Photographers plan plus some storage. As a company, Adobe is doing very well and that supports ongoing development and investment. :happy:

I can also wear the software/program management hat. With any new product the initial 1.0 release is going to have compromises. You have to deliver something that is good enough to attract attention and grow. But there are features for future versions that are going to be left out of an initial release. For field work and mobile editing, LR CC is a very good product. Sometimes there is a whole module of features that is not included. Cloud storage is still in it's relative infancy. Storage will get cheaper, bandwidth will improve, and speeds will get much faster. I fully expect to see selective synch with the catalog or catalogs spread over multiple storage platforms - computer, external drives or NAS, and cloud. Multiple cloud platforms could be part of a future solution.

As a photographer, I'd like to expand use of cloud storage, but with a 6 TB archive it's impractical. The new Nikon D850 is making that even more of a challenge as I've added 400 GB of images in the last 5 weeks and will be on a rate for 2-3 TB per year. The decision to drop the perpetual license was not hard to see even three years ago. If that's the direction of software in general, and Photoshop was already moved to the cloud, you had to see it as a likely option.

Cloud storage and cloud processing offers a lot of benefit. It's not going to be free, but the model allows a lot of different tiers of access. It pairs very nicely with Adobe's other products. Longer term, there is no need to process images locally with the full image residing on the cloud. You can simply use a smart preview or the equivalent, and let the cloud download or update as needed in the resolution needed. The last thing I need is a 50 MB image on my mobile device, but I do want to be able to process that image using my mobile device and then use it on a computer back in the office.