Adobe, a well-known name among photographers, finally made the decision that we as photographers will certainly not appreciate. They are no longer going to have a standalone licensed version of Adobe Lightroom after 2017. For those of us who have been a creative cloud user for a long time, deep inside our hearts, we knew this decision would come one day. Lightroom 6 is the last standalone version offered by Adobe outside of the creative cloud. Lightroom 6 will not be updated with bug fixes and camera RAW updates after 2017. So yeah, all the excitement about new DSLR cameras to be released in 2018 will come to a full stop sadly. But let's talk about what has changed.





Lightroom has 2 version now, which is actually quite confusing as Adobe decided to keep the same name. One is called as Adobe Lightroom CC and the other one is Lightroom Classic CC. The one already on our desktops or laptops has been renamed to Adobe Lightroom Classic CC, and it is a part of creative cloud service. It is the full-fledged digital asset management and raw photo editing tool like it existed before. I personally didn't like the name change, it makes the Lightroom sound outdated. Lightroom CC is the online cloud-based version of Lightroom and has fewer features than the Lightroom Classic CC. Both of them can be installed side by side on your system. Maybe Adobe decided to make a lighter version in order to give a tough competition to Apple photos. One positive aspect of Lightroom CC is the ability to sync easily whether you are using it on an iPad, Mobile or a laptop. Some of the features missing in Lightroom CC are:

-Hotkeys

-Colour labels

-Tone curves

-No printing

-No maps

-No history in Develop module

-Side by side image comparison

Pricing and Storage:

-Adobe's $9.99 photography plan includes Lightroom Classic CC, Lightroom CC, Photoshop CC and 20 GB of cloud storage.

-If you want more cloud based storage for your raw files, same plan above is $19.99 for 1 TB of online storage. Buying an external hard drive could be another option here.

-If you think you can be happy with Lightroom CC only for your photography needs, the Lightroom CC plan is $9.99 with 1 TB of online storage.





Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC

Changes in Lightroom Classic:

-First and the major breakthrough is the drastic improvement in speed. Yeah, try it yourself. Switching modes is considerably faster now and so is importing/cataloging RAW DSLR images. Importing a folder of 2000 Canon DSLR RAW images took approx 6 minutes on my desktop.

-In addition to this, there is a new feature called as range mask feature. It is located under local adjustment (linear, radial, etc.). If you think you will be okay with a monthly subscription with Adobe, Lightroom Classic CC is the tool to keep.









Possible replacement options for Lightroom:

Not everyone likes to pay on monthly basis for using a software, it is time to possibly look for Lightroom replacement options. Few of the photo editing tools I have personally tried include RAWTherapee, Darktable, Affinity photo, ACDSee, Capture One 11 and Photoscape X. All of them have their own place in the market, so it's hard to appoint one as the best replacement for Lightroom Classic CC. I might do a couple of posts in next few weeks about Lightroom vs Affinity photo, Lightroom vs RAW Therapee and Lightroom vs Darktable.





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