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Slight sidebar: it's so frustrating that Adobe made the new Lightroom some cloud based monstrosity. For photographers with serious workflows involving local dis

Slight sidebar: it's so frustrating that Adobe made the new Lightroom some cloud based monstrosity. For photographers with serious workflows involving local disks, we're now relegated to "Lightroom Classic" which makes me feel like I'll be discontinued in N years from now. I hope they change course and drop this whole cloud thing, the yearly subscription model is bad enough.

leetrout 6y ago
No chance :( It’s their cash cow and it’s not going anywhere.
underwater 6y ago
There are a lot of alternatives if you don't mind switching workflows a little. I'm only a casual photographer, but I made the jump to Exposure X5 (which blows Lightroom out of the water on performance). Capture One also looked like a good alternative.
old-gregg 6y ago
Apparently they're doing pretty well. Don't expect them to change course. But this created the opportunity for others. I have migrated to Affinity photo + Capture One. No regrets.
- nhooyr 6y ago
  Is Capture One significantly better than editing files just in folders?
  - petepete 6y ago
    Yeah, in my opinion. The catalog gives you loads of power, eases the culling process, allows you to easily export batches of photos with recipes, do searches against metadata. It also has 'sessions' which are aimed at individual shoots or projects. I suspect most pros use them instead of catalogues. It's essentially a self-contained directory structure that C1 understands,
- gwittel 6y ago
  How did you find the migration? I’ve been resisting Lightroom upgrades as I don’t want the cloud stuff. But as raw support for new cameras falls off it’s getting harder since the two step DNG import is such a pain. Moving to Capture One or something else seems worthwhile. Tried Darktable but wasn’t a big fan.
  - aikinai 6y ago
    I switched to Capture One and it’s so much better. The main factor is speed. Also allowing layers for all adjustments.
    - gwittel 6y ago
      How’s its catalog? One thing I like about Lightroom is the catalog is just files on disk vs a giant database in say Aperture. I like having my own file layout and would hate to give that up.
      - wishinghand 6y ago
        I'm in the same boat and slowly realizing that the one-two punch of managing assets and editing may have to be split into separate apps.
      - justinclift 6y ago
        Isn't the database in SQLite? So, you can open it in a SQLite GUI (eg sqlitebrowser.org, which I'm a dev member of) to see and/or screw with stuff?
        gwittel 6y ago
        Lightroom’s is. Not sure about capture pro. In Apertures case, the photos and meta data are in one giant blob. I’d want to avoid that. Manage the files my way, then have a separate metadata store. The downside of the SQLite dB is no network editing. I’d love to be able to edit from multiple machines without a cloud subscription or super slow NFS.
- LordAtlas 6y ago
  Can Capture One migrate my existing LR catalogs?
darren_ 6y ago
They've also pulled off an incredibly hostile move for paid users of older Lightrooms - they're refusing to update it for 64bit-only OS X. The app itself is 64bit (in fact, the app itself is _only_ 64bit), but its licensing/installer components are not. So if you update OS X, it's not guaranteed that Lightroom (that you paid for) will run, or if it does, how long it will continue running for. This isn't some ancient software, this is the 2015 version of Lightroom. This is 100% intentional to drive users to subscriptions.
- testfoobar 6y ago
  This is why my main media computer is still Mojave.
- flandry93 6y ago
  Regardless of the apology, Adobe should not be allowed to simply dismiss that they deleted user files. In effect, due to Adobe negligence, they have destroyed user intellectual property. A signal and example needs to be made. Individual users can sue for damages -- lost value and opportunity -- illegal destruction of property. The computer fraud and abuse act could also be applied for criminal charges -- Adobe misused and misappropriated their access to customer data and systems. Arguing that it was a "mistake" and "we are sorry" does not correct the damage done. If Adobe makes such a fuss over protecting their IP, then they should not be surprised when their customers do so also. There is a potential for a class action here as well. And Adobe is very profitable -- some legal team representing this case, even if pro bono, will be/become quite rich. Moreover, telling people that they should have X, and Y, and Z, to protect themselves from the mistakes of rogue actors/apps, is simply a displacement of responsibility tactic. Just because something illegal/damaging was "done with a computer" does not mean it was "ok" and "an apology is enough" -- now pay us for our services you miserable worm/user!
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Software licenses always disclaim any warranty, implied or explicit, it's all "AS IS" and you accept it when you click that Accept button upon installation. And honestly, it's good this way. If you want to secure your photos, make backups yourself or sign a contract with some company that will guarantee something. But once they are liable and can be sued, the service will be astronomically expensive.
x87678r 6y ago
Wow is that old fashioned local software without a subscription. I didn't know that was available, sounds perfect. I'm a guy that only wants to upgrade every 5 years and the subscriptions are offensively expensive.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  Well with Lightroom Classic you can’t use it until you login to your Adobe Cloud account. I have a literal boxed copy of it that I can’t run because I don’t want to associate it with my cloud account (which I also don’t want to have).
prawn 6y ago
I also detest the subscription as I rarely update and don't care about new features. It compares really poorly too with the other key piece of software I use - DaVinci Resolve. Resolve has an incredibly good free version and then the paid upgrade is a single payment.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  An observation I've made is that DaVinci Resolve seems to be a more technically capable still image editing tool than Adobe Lightroom, despite being designed for video colour grading instead of photography. For example, Lightroom does not allow custom colour spaces for the output, they're restricted to a fixed list of baked-in ICC profiles. The only option is to export in the large ProPhoto space and then externally convert to the target space as a second step. Lightroom has no support for true HDR, the type that requires HDR10 or Dolby Vision displays. If you want to edit a 14-bit RAW photo for, say, the background image in a HDR computer game or a YouTube video, Lightroom can't help you. Even in SDR mode, the colour grading in Lightroom is much more primitive than Resolve. There's no vector scope, for example, something that would be trivial to implement for them. Adobe talks a lot about their "AI" features, but they're very basic. They've left a lot of low hanging fruit on the tree. For example, it would be great feature that when flicking through a bunch of shots of a face while zoomed in, the eyes should be automatically aligned between each shot to make it easy to compare shots. Similarly, they could train an AI to recognise in-focus and out-of-focus faces, and automatically "score" a shot based on things like: "Are both eyes in focus, or just one?" These days, this stuff is trivial to implement in software, yet Adobe is still firmly rooted in the 1900s era of "It's just like your darkroom! All the terminology of the black and white film era is unchanged! You can dodge! You can burn! Just... with a computer!" Reminds me of AutoCAD 20+ years ago: it was a digital blueprint software. More computer-native CAD with proper 3D modelling capabilities such as SolidWorks ate their lunch...
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    Adobe stagnation is not surprising given that they've switched to a subscription model. Perpetual licensing means that software vendors are essentially competing with the previous versions of their own products and have to provide compelling improvements to their customers for them to upgrade. Ongoing revenue, and with it, vendor survival, depends on continual improvements. In contrast, subscription models combined with cloud-based vendor lock-in allow software vendors to extract economic rents from their victims indefinitely. There are no previous versions to compete against and victims must pay in perpetuity to access their own data. Vendors get paid without needing to do work, so they do no work, make no improvements, and reap disproportionate profits. Software subscriptions are a perfect example of rent seeking, with all that implies about the relationship between vendor and victim and the prospects for ongoing product improvements.
mauflows 6y ago
Especially when the cloud thing installs unkillable daemons and a top level folder that requires editing the windows registry
jiggliemon 6y ago
I’ve been shooting for a very long time. And I shoot several sessions per month, and roughly 60gb per session. Sometimes much more, sometimes less. There is no possible way, nor reason, to have all those images in the cloud. I split up my catalogs aggressively, so I don’t really know how many images I have saved. But it’s in the hundreds of thousands. New Lightroom might be OK for the casual photographer. But for the pro or even advanced amateur, the new Lightroom is completely useless.
- fludlight 6y ago
  What's your local storage setup?
  - berkes 6y ago
    Not OP. But a friend photographer has a large cupboard with "pigeonholes", I think it was some old mail-sorting cabinet or so. He stacks them with labeled USB drives. Hundreds of them. His reasoning, when I asked about "NAS" or so, was: it's cheap, it lasts, and it is cold storage. Paying for storage of that amount that is fire-, flood and software-error-proof is so much more expensive that it really was no choice. -his words-.
    - teddyh 6y ago
      > it lasts Flash storage degrades, and is only expected to last about 10 years or so.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        Flash storage has a certain maximum number of writes and so will eventually fail as a reusable storage medium. But if you simply want to back up old photos, then you are still likely to be able to read back from the medium for much longer than 10 years.
api 6y ago
The cloud is DRM. If the software doesn't run locally or only parts of it do, then it's impossible to pirate. It's also possible to impose a continuous rent on users. If the user can run disconnected that's hard to enforce. That's really the motive for a lot of things going cloud.

leetrout 6y ago

No chance :( It’s their cash cow and it’s not going anywhere.

underwater 6y ago

There are a lot of alternatives if you don't mind switching workflows a little. I'm only a casual photographer, but I made the jump to Exposure X5 (which blows Lightroom out of the water on performance). Capture One also looked like a good alternative.

old-gregg 6y ago

Apparently they're doing pretty well. Don't expect them to change course. But this created the opportunity for others. I have migrated to Affinity photo + Capture One. No regrets.

nhooyr 6y ago
Is Capture One significantly better than editing files just in folders?
- petepete 6y ago
  Yeah, in my opinion. The catalog gives you loads of power, eases the culling process, allows you to easily export batches of photos with recipes, do searches against metadata. It also has 'sessions' which are aimed at individual shoots or projects. I suspect most pros use them instead of catalogues. It's essentially a self-contained directory structure that C1 understands,
gwittel 6y ago
How did you find the migration? I’ve been resisting Lightroom upgrades as I don’t want the cloud stuff. But as raw support for new cameras falls off it’s getting harder since the two step DNG import is such a pain. Moving to Capture One or something else seems worthwhile. Tried Darktable but wasn’t a big fan.
- aikinai 6y ago
  I switched to Capture One and it’s so much better. The main factor is speed. Also allowing layers for all adjustments.
  - gwittel 6y ago
    How’s its catalog? One thing I like about Lightroom is the catalog is just files on disk vs a giant database in say Aperture. I like having my own file layout and would hate to give that up.
    - wishinghand 6y ago
      I'm in the same boat and slowly realizing that the one-two punch of managing assets and editing may have to be split into separate apps.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      Isn't the database in SQLite? So, you can open it in a SQLite GUI (eg sqlitebrowser.org, which I'm a dev member of) to see and/or screw with stuff?
      - gwittel 6y ago
        Lightroom’s is. Not sure about capture pro. In Apertures case, the photos and meta data are in one giant blob. I’d want to avoid that. Manage the files my way, then have a separate metadata store. The downside of the SQLite dB is no network editing. I’d love to be able to edit from multiple machines without a cloud subscription or super slow NFS.
LordAtlas 6y ago
Can Capture One migrate my existing LR catalogs?

darren_ 6y ago

They've also pulled off an incredibly hostile move for paid users of older Lightrooms - they're refusing to update it for 64bit-only OS X. The app itself is 64bit (in fact, the app itself is _only_ 64bit), but its licensing/installer components are not. So if you update OS X, it's not guaranteed that Lightroom (that you paid for) will run, or if it does, how long it will continue running for. This isn't some ancient software, this is the 2015 version of Lightroom. This is 100% intentional to drive users to subscriptions.

testfoobar 6y ago
This is why my main media computer is still Mojave.
flandry93 6y ago
Regardless of the apology, Adobe should not be allowed to simply dismiss that they deleted user files. In effect, due to Adobe negligence, they have destroyed user intellectual property. A signal and example needs to be made. Individual users can sue for damages -- lost value and opportunity -- illegal destruction of property. The computer fraud and abuse act could also be applied for criminal charges -- Adobe misused and misappropriated their access to customer data and systems. Arguing that it was a "mistake" and "we are sorry" does not correct the damage done. If Adobe makes such a fuss over protecting their IP, then they should not be surprised when their customers do so also. There is a potential for a class action here as well. And Adobe is very profitable -- some legal team representing this case, even if pro bono, will be/become quite rich. Moreover, telling people that they should have X, and Y, and Z, to protect themselves from the mistakes of rogue actors/apps, is simply a displacement of responsibility tactic. Just because something illegal/damaging was "done with a computer" does not mean it was "ok" and "an apology is enough" -- now pay us for our services you miserable worm/user!
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Software licenses always disclaim any warranty, implied or explicit, it's all "AS IS" and you accept it when you click that Accept button upon installation. And honestly, it's good this way. If you want to secure your photos, make backups yourself or sign a contract with some company that will guarantee something. But once they are liable and can be sued, the service will be astronomically expensive.

x87678r 6y ago

Wow is that old fashioned local software without a subscription. I didn't know that was available, sounds perfect. I'm a guy that only wants to upgrade every 5 years and the subscriptions are offensively expensive.

thewebcount 6y ago
Well with Lightroom Classic you can’t use it until you login to your Adobe Cloud account. I have a literal boxed copy of it that I can’t run because I don’t want to associate it with my cloud account (which I also don’t want to have).

prawn 6y ago

I also detest the subscription as I rarely update and don't care about new features. It compares really poorly too with the other key piece of software I use - DaVinci Resolve. Resolve has an incredibly good free version and then the paid upgrade is a single payment.

jiggawatts 6y ago
An observation I've made is that DaVinci Resolve seems to be a more technically capable still image editing tool than Adobe Lightroom, despite being designed for video colour grading instead of photography. For example, Lightroom does not allow custom colour spaces for the output, they're restricted to a fixed list of baked-in ICC profiles. The only option is to export in the large ProPhoto space and then externally convert to the target space as a second step. Lightroom has no support for true HDR, the type that requires HDR10 or Dolby Vision displays. If you want to edit a 14-bit RAW photo for, say, the background image in a HDR computer game or a YouTube video, Lightroom can't help you. Even in SDR mode, the colour grading in Lightroom is much more primitive than Resolve. There's no vector scope, for example, something that would be trivial to implement for them. Adobe talks a lot about their "AI" features, but they're very basic. They've left a lot of low hanging fruit on the tree. For example, it would be great feature that when flicking through a bunch of shots of a face while zoomed in, the eyes should be automatically aligned between each shot to make it easy to compare shots. Similarly, they could train an AI to recognise in-focus and out-of-focus faces, and automatically "score" a shot based on things like: "Are both eyes in focus, or just one?" These days, this stuff is trivial to implement in software, yet Adobe is still firmly rooted in the 1900s era of "It's just like your darkroom! All the terminology of the black and white film era is unchanged! You can dodge! You can burn! Just... with a computer!" Reminds me of AutoCAD 20+ years ago: it was a digital blueprint software. More computer-native CAD with proper 3D modelling capabilities such as SolidWorks ate their lunch...
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Adobe stagnation is not surprising given that they've switched to a subscription model. Perpetual licensing means that software vendors are essentially competing with the previous versions of their own products and have to provide compelling improvements to their customers for them to upgrade. Ongoing revenue, and with it, vendor survival, depends on continual improvements. In contrast, subscription models combined with cloud-based vendor lock-in allow software vendors to extract economic rents from their victims indefinitely. There are no previous versions to compete against and victims must pay in perpetuity to access their own data. Vendors get paid without needing to do work, so they do no work, make no improvements, and reap disproportionate profits. Software subscriptions are a perfect example of rent seeking, with all that implies about the relationship between vendor and victim and the prospects for ongoing product improvements.

mauflows 6y ago

Especially when the cloud thing installs unkillable daemons and a top level folder that requires editing the windows registry

jiggliemon 6y ago

I’ve been shooting for a very long time. And I shoot several sessions per month, and roughly 60gb per session. Sometimes much more, sometimes less. There is no possible way, nor reason, to have all those images in the cloud. I split up my catalogs aggressively, so I don’t really know how many images I have saved. But it’s in the hundreds of thousands. New Lightroom might be OK for the casual photographer. But for the pro or even advanced amateur, the new Lightroom is completely useless.

fludlight 6y ago
What's your local storage setup?
- berkes 6y ago
  Not OP. But a friend photographer has a large cupboard with "pigeonholes", I think it was some old mail-sorting cabinet or so. He stacks them with labeled USB drives. Hundreds of them. His reasoning, when I asked about "NAS" or so, was: it's cheap, it lasts, and it is cold storage. Paying for storage of that amount that is fire-, flood and software-error-proof is so much more expensive that it really was no choice. -his words-.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    > it lasts Flash storage degrades, and is only expected to last about 10 years or so.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      Flash storage has a certain maximum number of writes and so will eventually fail as a reusable storage medium. But if you simply want to back up old photos, then you are still likely to be able to read back from the medium for much longer than 10 years.

api 6y ago

The cloud is DRM. If the software doesn't run locally or only parts of it do, then it's impossible to pirate. It's also possible to impose a continuous rent on users. If the user can run disconnected that's hard to enforce. That's really the motive for a lot of things going cloud.