Lightroom 6 - perpetual licence - signing in vs. signing out

[NairdaK]

Operating System: Windows 10
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info): 6.13

Dear all,

I have some problems with my installation and I am trying to figure out the source for it; maybe this discussion here can help.

So; I am an owner of LR6 with a perpetual licence.

I have got it running on two machines. However; the installations show a different behaviour when it comes to being signed in to your Adobe account.

I really would like to know, which of those behaviours is the typical.

So; let me explain:

Machine a):
Lightroom is updated to the latest version 6.14. When I go to Help at the upper panel, I can chose to sign out from my Adobe account.

I can do that and everything works, as before. I can close LR and restart, and everything is fine. This is, what I would expect, as I am a perpetual licence user.

Machine b):
Lightroom is still on 6.13. However; when I try to sign out here from my Adobe account I get a warning that if I do so, my software is going to be deactivated, and I would need to activate it again on restart. And this is, what happens. If I close LR and restart, I am asked to sign in to my account, and then I am offered a 30-day trial or I can directly activate it by typing in my serial number. This works, but then of course I am signed in again.

So; long story short; why is the software behaving such differently on both machines? Why do I need to always be signed in on machine b), although I own the perpetual licence?

Which behaviour is the correct one?

Thx

 

[Jim Wilde]

My understanding that Machine b) is the correct behaviour. If you think of "sign in/out" as really being "activate/deactivate" then the behaviour makes more sense. Yes, you have a perpetual license, but that license is only good for two computers.....so the sign in/out thing is Adobe's way of ensuring a user doesn't try to use Lightroom on more than those two computers (you can install Lightroom on more than two, but the system will only allow two concurrent "activations").

But I can't explain why your 6.14 installation is operating differently, you should not be able to run that unless you are signed-in. Have you verified that all the LR functions still work when you run it when signed out, particularly the Develop and Map modules (I'm just wondering if you've been put into the reduced functionality mode)?

Also, do Help>System Info on machine a) to verify that it shows version 6.12 and Perpetual License, and not CC2015.14.

 

[NairdaK]

My understanding that Machine b) is the correct behaviour. If you think of "sign in/out" as really being "activate/deactivate" then the behaviour makes more sense. Yes, you have a perpetual license, but that license is only good for two computers.....so the sign in/out thing is Adobe's way of ensuring a user doesn't try to use Lightroom on more than those two computers (you can install Lightroom on more than two, but the system will only allow two concurrent "activations").

But I can't explain why your 6.14 installation is operating differently, you should not be able to run that unless you are signed-in. Have you verified that all the LR functions still work when you run it when signed out, particularly the Develop and Map modules (I'm just wondering if you've been put into the reduced functionality mode)?

Also, do Help>System Info on machine a) to verify that it shows version 6.12 and Perpetual License, and not CC2015.14.

About the functionality on machine a). Will need to verify that, but I am pretty sure that everything works although signed-out.
The info of both shows nearly the same. LR6 with perpetual licence. The only difference is, it shows 6.14 for a) and 6.13 for b).

The background of this all is that I am not able to update machine b) to 6.14.
Neither by the cloud app, which does not offer an update and tells me that I am up to date, nor via the manually downloaded 6.14 patch. There it tells me that it is not applicable for me.

On machine a) the update worked fine via the cloud app.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

I suspect you have installed by mistake the subscription version on machine b. Could you check and tell us what the Help/System info says on both machines ?

 

[NairdaK]

I suspect you have installed by mistake the subscription version on machine b. Could you check and tell us what the Help/System info says on both machines ?

Hi;
for machine b) the first 5 lines read:

Version von Lightroom: 6.13 [ 1141928 ]
Lizenz: Unbegrenzt
Betriebssystem: Windows 10
Version: 10.0
Anwendungsarchitektur: x64
Systemarchitektur: x64


I would need to copy and paste it for machine a) later.
However; I also already looked at it, and it is basically the same, the differences are:
- LR version 6.14 (some other number in [])
- in line 4 it does not only show 10.0, but 10,xxxx (some more digits). This I find a little strange, as both system have the same Win10 version.

Thx again for having a thought about it.

Cheers

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

According to the system info, machine b is running a perpetual licence version of LR and shouldn't ask for a login.

Is the synchronisation activated on machine b ?

 

[NairdaK]

Well; this is how I would understand it. Perpetual licence = no need to be signed in.
However; I get very contradicting info/comments on it. For example above in the thread Jim Wilde considers machine b) to behave correctly.
The same response I got in the Adobe forum, although I do not understand it. In particular within the context of my problem that the updater doeas not show me any updates for machine b) and I am not able to update to 6.14.

Well; complicated.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Well; this is how I would understand it. Perpetual licence = no need to be signed in.

There has been a huge amount of conflicting information out there, plus I believe that Adobe screwed up some aspects of the implementation leading to inconsistencies, but I believe that the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop application was intended to be a license management tool for perpetual as well as Subscription, in that if you logged out of it, it de-activated the perpetual license on that machine to make it available to install on another. For subscription there was a 30 day window to contact Adobe to validate the signin, for perpetual that was either longer (I kept hearing 1 year) or non-existent depending on who you asked.

So from what I understood there was a need to sign in once, and you COULD sign out and sign in somewhere else in perpetual.

But... there are myriad of reported situations where this all worked differently and inconsistently, and my guess is Adobe just failed to get the enforcement to work right in some cases.

Perpetual was a concept, does not mean that Adobe did not implement some technical checks and limitations to ensure people were not cheating. And like so many vendors who do so (a) cheaters still find a way, and (b) the technical checks often inconvenience honest people.

 

[cristphoto]

Have you tried updating computer B to version 6.14? Maybe you are confusing Adobe by having the same serial number running two different versions.