9 ms·

Adobe Lightroom v6 is Falling Apart

171 points by kawera 6y ago

errantspark 6y ago
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I absolutely hate the SaaS model, the incentives are never in your favor as a customer. In case anyone is looking to ditch Lightroom I can't recommend the FOSS alternative RawTherapee strongly enough. It's got a number of features I now find indispensable. I particularly find it easy to use to get that nice rounded off highlight quality film has using RT. I made the swap years ago and have never missed LR.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  Does it have a good catalog module? I use LR 99% for organization and only do basic touch up. My requirements for a replacement would be an excellent import/export/organizer and a decent raw converter.
  - diarrhea 6y ago
    A popular path is to ditch Lightroom for the trio of Rapid Photo Downloader, digikam and finally RawTherapee. This was entirely unusable for me. RawTherepee is only for RAW treatment/export. Digikam can only do photo organization. Now here's the kicker: the two won't talk. Metadata known and written by one is invisible to the other. Using Manjaro, Rapid Photo Downloader eventually started segfaulting on me. I also tried Darktable which looked much better and much more like a Lightroom replacement, but didn't like it. So back to Lightroom, and even Windows as a whole, it is for me.
    - dflynch 6y ago
      Sorry that you saw segfaults when running Rapid Photo Downloader under Manjaro. I am the developer of Rapid Photo Downloader. One thing to keep in mind is that Manjaro, similar to Fedora, is bleeding edge. Things break sometimes when running Manjaro or Fedora. That's the nature of a cutting edge distro. The good news is that things that break are often quickly fixed.
  - errantspark 6y ago
    It depends on your workflow I suppose. It has a catalog module that lets you tag images with a color, a star rating and inspect the image easily at 1:1. That's basically all I care about so I have no problems with it. I generally only keep the most recent 100 GB of photos or so locally and I have a decent organization system using folders so I don't lean on it too heavily.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  Broken software here is the "prize" for the people who opted out of "the SaaS model".
  - errantspark 6y ago
    Fair enough, I was more thinking at the time I wrote the comment that people's collective decision to enable these business models was the "playing stupid games" aspect. I could have been less grumpy and more clear about it.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  the incentives are never in your favor as a customer. They weren't really in your favor with the old model either. Adobe used to pile on new features without thought in an attempt to sell upgrades every other year. In the mean time bugs would continue to exist from one release to the next.
charrondev 6y ago
> While many (or even most) photographers have embraced the switch to paying a subscription in exchange for having always-up-to-date apps, some photographers have still been holding out and riding their perpetual versions for as long as possible. While I feel for the people in the former camp, it’s an interesting conundrum. Should a company be forced to pay a license for external IP in perpetuity because they once sold licenses the way Adobe did? If so that will likely only force more businesses down the rabbit hole of subscription services.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Should a company be forced to pay a license for external IP in perpetuity because they once sold licenses the way Adobe did? Companies shoud mark it with huge red warning letters when they have a time-limited licensed tech in a product they sell you a "perpetual" license for.
- wmf 6y ago
  If you're selling a perpetual license obviously you need perpetual licenses for all your dependencies.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Licensing and support seem reasonable to separate out. Something like this sounds totally reasonable to me (I've just written this for the sake of discussion): This product utilizes services that may cease to function in the future; if they cease to function prior to X we will repair them. It would end up being a bad thing for everybody if it isn't possible to limit future support (as part of the initial transaction).
    - wmf 6y ago
      The face recognition sounds like it isn't a service, just a library that was only licensed for five years.
      - maxerickson 6y ago
Groxx 6y ago
Huh. Did the ToS / other sale media mention that this was a time-limited feature? I have seen things like google maps integrations listed with expiration dates on non-subscription software. It's unfortunate for users, but I do think it's reasonable for some of these "depends on a third party" features to expire (or when they change APIs), as otherwise it's implying perpetual upkeep, which will absolutely not happen. It just needs to be communicated... and crashing the program when that occurs is just plain inexcusably bad.
pmlnr 6y ago
Leave it. Rawtherapee, darktable, digikam are all excellent, open source raw (and sometimes more) editors. Hugin ( http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ ) can create brilliant panoramas, even from a bad batch. Note: there is still no alternative to PS, given it's both a raster and a vector editor.
- pizza234 6y ago
  A few years ago I've tried a couple of alternatives, and Lightroom was by far the easiest to use. If the audience is casual editing (ie. a short time to improve a photo, and little user skills), I think Lightroom is significantly ahead of the competition - in particular, UX has never been a strong point of open source software. I don't know if the latest years changed the landscape, but I suppose not - Adobe kept enhancing Lightroom. License wise... that's definitely another story (I personally preferred when a license was valid for a single major version).
  - Jnr 6y ago
    Sadly those mentioned open source products are still light years away from what Lightroom can offer. It is like comparing Gimp to Photoshop. Yes, they can do some of it, but they can't do it better or even close to that if you are serious at what you do. I am a developer, I have been Linux user for years and photography is my hobby. I periodically try some Lightroom "alternatives" in hopes of finding something good, but they are still nowhere near of replacing it. And with the limited budget they will probably never be as good. I know only one great open source software example in the arts field, and that software is Blender. Blender can probably do it because they have been receiving millions in donations from major game development companies in the recent years. Unless something similar happens in the field of photography, I don't think we'll be able to get away from proprietary software soon.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - robotmay 6y ago
nbzso 6y ago
My view as a serious hobby photographer is simple. No Adobe products in my life. Period. There are things that are logical with subscription plan, servers, cloud, collaboration functionality. Designing creative software with dark UX is Adobe business model. In the past their software was highly overpriced but you can have a lifespan of 3-4-5 years with updates. The reason that people are falling in Adobe Subscriptions trap was the notion that there is no alternative. But there is, Affinity, Capture One, Darktable - free, Raw Therapy- free, and more. I have invested in platform independent metadata workflow since Apple killed Aperture and left photographers in Adobe hell. Side note: One of the reasons people to shoot film is the focus on creative process without complicated software relationships. Can you imagine, if you are an artist and your brush "must" have subscription license and suddenly crashes without internet connection? This is the future according to software companies. Services, services, services:)
- GordonS 6y ago
  I've got an ancient version of Lightroom (maybe 2010?) that I still use to manage photos on Windows. Feature-wise, it's great, but it is very slow and a little buggy. I've been meaning to try out Darktable since it introduced Windows support around a year ago, but it's difficult to find time to replace something that works :)
  - _jal 6y ago
    I do that, too. I also run some 15-ish year-old machining software. I've mostly moved these into VMs with a fossilized OS that works for them. Between applications that keep getting worse with each revision, subscriptions and other annoyances, I think a lot of my software use will follow this model.
    - PicassoCTs 6y ago
      Same here- just put the whole setup in amber like the jurassic-park-fly - store the software at peak performance and keep it there. Bonuspoints if the VM is under Linux, to prevent the OS from sabotaging those efforts.
  - 6y ago
rgbrenner 6y ago
Sold for $150, released in April 2015. End of life was Dec 2017. 3 years after that it breaks. Eh.. 5.5 years is a good run. Do people really expect software to work forever after it's reached end of life? Even with Windows updates? And hardware changes? What does "end of life" mean to people if it doesn't mean what the words say?
- gruez 6y ago
  >Do people really expect software to work forever after it's reached end of life? Yes, actually. Office 97 still works on windows 10[1]. >Even with Windows updates? And hardware changes? But neither of them occurred. The software simply stopped working after a certain timespan has passed. If it broke because a because of a OS update that's understandable, but because an arbitrary date has passed, that's less understandable. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/abandonware/comments/9tfgtb/office_97_and_windows_10_ridiculous_compatibility/ https://old.reddit.com/r/abandonware/comments/9tfgtb/office_...
  - a2tech 6y ago
    And Office 97 works great. All the features added after 97 are cruft that are not central to actually getting work done in the composite apps.
- ratww 6y ago
  After OS Updates and Hardware updates? Not really. That's why I use VMs and emulators. After the clock changing? Of course.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    I guess that there is one instance of the clock changing that is acceptable for out of support software to break : a Y2k/2038 time rollover bug.
- wnoise 6y ago
  Yes. Bits don't wear out.
alkonaut 6y ago
I’m happy with my perpetual LR (4.X) license. Obviously I don’t use anything that would need internet access such as a third party API and I understand that anything that relies on a third party API is never really perpetual. I’d be annoyed if a library “expired” crippling my software though.
AuthorizedCust 6y ago
> Adobe’s earnings have been shattering expectations in recent years, sending the company’s stock soaring over 700% over the past half-decade, so the Creative Cloud subscription model has definitely been a savvy switch. While like many here I prefer other solutions, the marketplace is validating Adobe’s approach.
- adrianb 6y ago
  The old software development model where users are buying the license for a specific version of a program and then use it and only come back to spend more when they need an upgrade is pretty much dead now. Most software moved to either free downloads with paid support (even Windows these days?) or to membership-based model (Adobe, Office365). The reason is that as you add features and fix bugs in a software, fewer users need the upgrade (why spend another 150$ on this year's release for some features I never use?). But the development team still needs to be paid and the advanced features they add each year tend to be harder to implement, so over time the costs are increasing while sales go down. Adobe might be successful with this business model because they have a strong market in professionals but they definitely lost the amateurs and hobbyists. EDIT to add: also it didn't help that CPUs and OS APIs haven't had major changes in more than a decade. There was no major reason for a large majority of users to upgrade (such as the move to 64 bit CPUs).
  - josephg 6y ago
    > But the development team still needs to be paid and the advanced features they add each year tend to be harder to implement, so over time the costs are increasing while sales go down. Do they need to? I mean, if users don’t see the value in spending $150 for a few new features they don’t use, that says that maybe the ROI isn’t there for those features. Think about the marginal value of each hour of developer time. Value = number of feature’s users across the product’s lifetime * utility of the feature per user / cost to implement that feature. Early in a product’s lifecycle the features added have high utility (you add the most important features first) and most of your users haven’t bought your product yet. (So features are a long term investment). Marginal expected value is high - assuming you get the sales. Later in a product’s lifecycle the features are more marginal (and often more costly to implement). If users don’t want to pay for the upgrade, what they’re saying is the new features being added aren’t worth the development cost. If the user base is still growing it might still be worth adding those features. But at some point you should entertain the idea that the product is essentially done. The best play might be to move most of the engineers to a new product. Keep a small team which can fix bugs, renew google maps API keys and add ARM support and so on and call it a day. Profit should go up at that point because you should keep getting sales while your costs plummet. Over time sales drop as your old product has sold to most users who want it, and in that time the income can be used to bring a new product to market. This is the model the video game industry uses (to great effect). Why are we so allergic to the idea of “feature complete” in software? The alternative is what Adobe does - try to wring ever more money from your customers while providing them less value each year. It’s no wonder customers are desperate for alternatives to their products.
ksec 6y ago
- Off Topic : Why Apple kept Final Cut Pro and killed Aperture is beyond me. Still no news from Affinity LR replacement.
- Brian-Puccio 6y ago
  > Why Apple kept Final Cut Pro and killed Aperture is beyond me. Same. > Still no news from Affinity LR replacement. I gave up waiting and when Capture One announced really good integration with Leica’s SL2 (and a SL2 can scan way better than my Coolscan 4000 and cover medium/large formats) I bought their perpetual license. Capture One 21 works for 4 years, I’ll be happy. Anything else beyond that is gravy.
dmcy22 6y ago
I recently upgraded to an M1 Mac after my 2016 MacBook Pro died. It's an awesome machine; however, when I tried to install Lightroom 6, I wasn't able to because the installer isn't 64 bit. As a hobbyist who edits photos only a handful of times a year – usually after trips or photoshoots – moving to a subscription model is really costly. What's silly is that I was able to use Lightroom 6 on my 2016 MBP, even after upgrading to Big Sur. I don't blame Adobe for not supporting a product that came out 5 years ago but how nice would it be if they did.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  Companies like Adobe don't have much of a reason to cater to these unprofitable use cases. They're going to go deep on maximizing customer lifetime value (CLV) for folks willing to pay more. That's how they keep (or more probably, their only option) for delivering double-digit growth year-over-year, which becomes challenging once reaching a certain size.
  - dmcy22 6y ago
    Absolutely agreed that it doesn't make much business sense to keep supporting LR6. And 5 years is a long timer in the software world. That said, I wonder if there are companies that do support older versions of software just for the sake of customer delight.
  - JoelTheSuperior 6y ago
    Indeed but equally this is something I dislike about Macs - on Windows this software would still work just fine.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  I had a similar issue with 32-bit software with a 16-bit installer. I've solved it by installing it within a VM running a 16-bit compatible OS, then copying the resulting program folder over to the main OS. Have you tried something like this?
  - dmcy22 6y ago
jrockway 6y ago
I wish Lightroom was good. I stopped using it because it's incredibly slow. Even on a 32 core Threadripper, things like "list the files in this directory" take seconds. I can't deal with it. Honestly, I would have dealt with it, if Adobe's mandatory extra software weren't so annoying. The installer auto-installs a "cloud drive", and then it's in every Explorer window, slowing down every file operation in the OS... that was the last straw for me. (They promised to remove it, but never did, so I stopped paying for their software.) Honestly, Lightroom never really worked for me. It made easy things hard and hard things impossible. I take a lot of film photographs, and it just didn't integrate with any of the tools I use to capture the images. I do everything manually in several separate pieces of software, and adding one more didn't help much.
- diarrhea 6y ago
  Throw cores at that particular problem all you want. Throw 64GB RAM at it, and GPU acceleration. Won't help, since that issue is very likely I/O bottlenecked. So it's unfair to blame Lightroom here. My photos sit on a 5400 RPM, no SSD cache NAS behind 1G LAN. That is incredibly slow compared to local HDD or even SSD. I don't blame Lightroom here. In fact, the software only takes its time when operating on large volumes on that slow connection. CPU-bound tasks have been just fine for me (16k photos catalogue, i7 mobile CPU, 16GB RAM).
  - bumblebritches5 6y ago
    It's unfair to criticize Lightroom for using a slow sorting algorithm? lol wat
  - ancientworldnow 6y ago
    I have the same issues as the parent comment (maybe not quite as bad) despite also having a threadripper, 2080ti, 64GB of ram, and my photos living on a 10GbE connected NAS that's gets 1000+ MB/s. Similar issues when I move things into my pcie SSD I use for caching and temp storage. I work with 8k raw video frequently for my day job and lightroom is by far the slowest app on my system my orders of magnitude.
mbloom1915 6y ago
Figma FTW
danielfoster 6y ago
Capture One is 10x better than Lightroom.
zzleeper 6y ago
Any suggestions for an Acrobat alternative that can do simple things such as rotate a PDF or extract a page from it? I use SumatraPDF as my daily PDF reader but still have to resort to Acrobat for those things. And the latest update (that requires creating an online account!) finally did it for me, I'm sick of Acrobat.
- warent 6y ago
  Pretty sure even GIMP can open and edit PDFs
- drwu 6y ago
  PDF arranger (https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger)
tomc1985 6y ago
Sounds like something fairly easy to crack for those so inclined.
herpderperator 6y ago
If you are looking for an extremely performant Lightroom alternative, a very common program among professional photographers is Photo Mechanic. I use it and it's stupid fast at rendering RAW images as fast as you can scroll.
systemvoltage 6y ago
JetBrains should develop design/media/production tools.
- pvg 6y ago
  Their business models are nearly identical and the different responses to them are interesting in themselves, perhaps suggesting it's not really about the cost or even the tools specifically.
- keyle 6y ago
  Have you seen their list of applications lately? It's mental. And a language... Kotlin which is doing reasonably well. I'm a full time user of IntelliJ and I love it. As much as I agree with you, they best stick to what they do best and keep making it great... Not spreading themselves thin in industries they might not know it all.
bumblebritches5 6y ago
It's a big piece of software from Adobe, of course it is.
coliveira 6y ago
While I'm not a fan of Adobe, people need to realize that the software industry changed a lot in the last decade. In the past one could write software for an OS such as Windows or Classic Mac and have it working for decades. Nowadays, any software developer will tell you how difficult it is to maintain software even across single digit changes. Companies like Apple, Google, and even MS have forced developers to toil on rewrites year after year to support the new operating systems they release. In the web this is even worse. So I think that the old model of buying software and expecting that it will work for a long time is dead, killed by the process used by big companies. What is left is either well-maintained open source or subscription-based commercial software.
- r3trohack3r 6y ago
  Seeing a lot of comments like this here. Lightroom v6 still seems to work, in spite of what you reference in your comment. This article isn’t about Adobe failing to maintain software, or that Lightroom v6 needs a rewrite. The software still works if you change the system clock. The software breaking seems to be a licensing issue. Adobe sold customers this software under a perpetual license when Adobe did not have a perpetual license for the libraries they bundled in the sale. I’m not sure how Adobe could legally do this.
- izacus 6y ago
  Oh, come on. The computer market has never been more consolidated, less diverse and running less operating systems than now. Adobes software runs on the same OSes it ran years ago - Windows and macOS. Even more so, the software itself has never been less configurable, less flexible and less platform specific. From times where you had adjustable title bars, UI panels and configurable professional UIs we ended up with inflexible, hardcoded layouts with unchangeable fonts and built in HTML filled with recycled JS components that were given to developers for free from others. And to top all that off, those developers now demand perpetual rent so they don't actually need to show value of updates while they forcefully shove them down our throats with no option to stop.
- grishka 6y ago
  Don't update your OS if the version you're currently using works well for you.
mjcohen 6y ago
I still use Picasa on my Macs. Works fine in High Sierra and works in Mojave after I click five times on a message saying that it doesn't work.
r3trohack3r 6y ago
tl;dr: It seems Adobe may have sold Adobe Lightroom v6 under a perpetual license, but Adobe didn’t have a perpetual license for the libraries they bundled in that sale. According to the article, Lightroom v6 still works when you change the system clock. And it only breaks when you attempt to use specific plugins after a certain date.
staticshock 6y ago
There's one photo organization feature I really want that I haven't yet seen in any existing asset managers: a way to group bursted photos together and hide a set of images behind one "representative" image in the main stream, while still making them accessible if necessary. Anyone aware of software that comes close?
- r00fus 6y ago
  Didn’t iPhoto do this?
- Alt-ThrowAway 6y ago
  I figured out a way to do this in Lightroom using the stacking feature. It's not quite automatic as you need to run a command. Basically, there's a stack-by-time-taken option in a drop down menu and you set a time difference that fits your bursts (which it will save as default for next run). I use this to auto-stack iOS motion photos with the still version so I just see one item. I set it to auto-stack all media that has a capture time within two seconds of each other. This works for what I need. Sorry, I don't recall the name of the specific menu item. Hopefully, my description is enough to get you in the ballpark (if you use LR).
Alt-ThrowAway 6y ago
I can offer some perspective on this because I was a senior employee at Adobe before, during and after the entire transition to Creative Cloud. I was involved in much of the management discussions and decision-making related to the CC transition and business model change. First, a few "full disclosure" bullets: * I left Adobe on good terms and still have several current or former employees as acquaintances and friends. * Based on what I observed during my tenure, Adobe is a quality and ethical company that broadly tries to do right by customers, employees, shareholders, partners, and so on. Obviously, I'm speaking to overall ethos here. Adobe is a big, multi-national, publicly-traded, for-profit company and I'm certainly aware of a few notable exceptions over the years but such ethical lapses have been, to my knowledge, limited to specific individuals, groups or time-periods and not systemic or condoned at the senior management level. * I still use some Adobe creative tools including Lightroom for my personal needs and pay for them out of my own pocket. I don't make my living or earn income with creative tools. I also personally use some competitor's alternatives as well as open source tools if they suit my needs or preferences. * While an Adobe employee I earned salary, bonuses, benefits and RSU grants. I worked hard, did well and have personally profited from the increase in Adobe's stock price. I still hold a sizable-for-me stash of fully-vested Adobe shares which I'm in no hurry to sell. I think Adobe is one of the better large tech companies in the valley and I'm happy I accepted their job offer. With that out of the way... let's get to the meat. Note - I don't intend to share anything I learned while bound by confidentiality per my employment contract. I do intend to speak more frankly than I could while an employee. * The Creative Cloud value proposition is quite good for creative professionals who earn all or most of their income using two or more of the major applications. Do the math and the subscription pricing works out lower than the old perpetual pricing for the full Creative Suite + bi-yearly upgrades. * For single application users (except PS+LR), it's not quite as good. It is about equal if you were upgrading every cycle. If you opted to skip perpetual version upgrades sometimes then the subscription pricing is more expensive. * PS+LR is different because it is offered at a lower bundle price to accommodate the sizable base of hobbyist or aspiring photographers. * I plan to transition from using Photoshop and Lightroom to alternative tools for my personal needs by the end of next year. (No, I'm not sure which ones yet, there are several pretty good options ranging from open source to for-profit competitors) * PS and LR are still good products getting good upgrades and Adobe is still a good company. The only thing changing is Adobe's business interests are growing less aligned with my interests as an occasional hobby user. This trend seems unlikely to reverse. Adobe's professional users want powerful professional tools with pro service options. Many of them are willing and able to pay for that. It makes economic sense for them and Adobe. It just doesn't make as much sense for me. I'm an individual retail user buying one year (or month) at a time of Adobe's lowest margin flagship SKU. Most of Adobe's Creative Cloud profit comes from enterprise and agency site licenses sold in multi-year deals by the hundreds and thousands. * From support costs to sales costs to transaction costs (credit card bill backs and other PITA.) I'm just not as valuable of a customer by weight. Yes, there are companies that choose to cater to retail individual customers. This isn't easy but it can be done profitably if done at large enough scale and built as a core competency. * It can be argued that Adobe should cut the subscription price to attract much larger scale and make it up in volume. The problem is that this level of powerful tooling isn't needed by casual or occasional users. As an individual home user I don't need the scripting features in PS, SSO, enterprise remote automated installers, and so on. But Adobe's most profitable customers do. Even the neat AI automation features they are spending big R&D on aren't very valuable for me. I don't even do enough to make learning the time-saving AI features worth the effort. But someone who needs to process hundreds of photos could find those capabilities an essential part of their usage. I don't think this is anyone's fault. If we must place blame, I guess we should pin it on how the stock market values quarterly and yearly progress over 5 or 10 year progress. I hope the Long-Term Stock Market will become a thing but the reality is it won't be soon enough to change this situation. Making a big change now would be seen by Adobe investors as not worth the risk. Adobe's stock is up because they took a steep risk in making the leap to the cloud model. Back before committing to the leap, Adobe management knew it was going to be hard and perilous. Frankly, it was the least bad of the remaining options once it was clear the perpetual + upgrades treadmill was likely to turn into a downward spiral of ever-diminishing returns. Arguably, Adobe is one of the most successful examples of a legacy firm executing that difficult transition in a legacy market and doing so very, very well. They did the work, they are delivering value to a large and profitable segment of customers and monetizing it profitably. That customer just isn't me.
yumraj 6y ago
This is not restricted to Adobe Lightroom. Many other companies are ignoring older versions and in some cases the file formats have been changed to force people to update. Symptoms are different but root cause is similar. I have an older version of Sketch. Due to my use case, not a designer, I have no need to pay them actually. Lately I needed to use it, and none of the new templates work making my paid version of Sketch useless. At least my old version of Acrobat still works with new and old PDFs.
optician_owl 6y ago
Lightroom has some critical problems limiting professional use. * Forced lens profiles. (And more. There are reports of double application of profiles) * Color and light correction also changes untouched parameters (it's ok but there is no workaround). If you need to do a more accurate job then use C1 or Photoshop.
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171 points by kawera 6y ago

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I absolutely hate the SaaS model, the incentives are never in your favor as a customer. In case anyone is looking to ditch Lightroom I can't recommend the FOSS alternative RawTherapee strongly enough. It's got a number of features I now find indispensable. I particularly find it easy to use to get that nice rounded off highlight quality film has using RT. I made the swap years ago and have never missed LR.

alkonaut 6y ago
Does it have a good catalog module? I use LR 99% for organization and only do basic touch up. My requirements for a replacement would be an excellent import/export/organizer and a decent raw converter.
- diarrhea 6y ago
  A popular path is to ditch Lightroom for the trio of Rapid Photo Downloader, digikam and finally RawTherapee. This was entirely unusable for me. RawTherepee is only for RAW treatment/export. Digikam can only do photo organization. Now here's the kicker: the two won't talk. Metadata known and written by one is invisible to the other. Using Manjaro, Rapid Photo Downloader eventually started segfaulting on me. I also tried Darktable which looked much better and much more like a Lightroom replacement, but didn't like it. So back to Lightroom, and even Windows as a whole, it is for me.
  - dflynch 6y ago
    Sorry that you saw segfaults when running Rapid Photo Downloader under Manjaro. I am the developer of Rapid Photo Downloader. One thing to keep in mind is that Manjaro, similar to Fedora, is bleeding edge. Things break sometimes when running Manjaro or Fedora. That's the nature of a cutting edge distro. The good news is that things that break are often quickly fixed.
- errantspark 6y ago
  It depends on your workflow I suppose. It has a catalog module that lets you tag images with a color, a star rating and inspect the image easily at 1:1. That's basically all I care about so I have no problems with it. I generally only keep the most recent 100 GB of photos or so locally and I have a decent organization system using folders so I don't lean on it too heavily.
jacobolus 6y ago
Broken software here is the "prize" for the people who opted out of "the SaaS model".
- errantspark 6y ago
  Fair enough, I was more thinking at the time I wrote the comment that people's collective decision to enable these business models was the "playing stupid games" aspect. I could have been less grumpy and more clear about it.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
the incentives are never in your favor as a customer. They weren't really in your favor with the old model either. Adobe used to pile on new features without thought in an attempt to sell upgrades every other year. In the mean time bugs would continue to exist from one release to the next.

charrondev 6y ago

> While many (or even most) photographers have embraced the switch to paying a subscription in exchange for having always-up-to-date apps, some photographers have still been holding out and riding their perpetual versions for as long as possible. While I feel for the people in the former camp, it’s an interesting conundrum. Should a company be forced to pay a license for external IP in perpetuity because they once sold licenses the way Adobe did? If so that will likely only force more businesses down the rabbit hole of subscription services.

coldtea 6y ago
>Should a company be forced to pay a license for external IP in perpetuity because they once sold licenses the way Adobe did? Companies shoud mark it with huge red warning letters when they have a time-limited licensed tech in a product they sell you a "perpetual" license for.
wmf 6y ago
If you're selling a perpetual license obviously you need perpetual licenses for all your dependencies.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Licensing and support seem reasonable to separate out. Something like this sounds totally reasonable to me (I've just written this for the sake of discussion): This product utilizes services that may cease to function in the future; if they cease to function prior to X we will repair them. It would end up being a bad thing for everybody if it isn't possible to limit future support (as part of the initial transaction).
  - wmf 6y ago
    The face recognition sounds like it isn't a service, just a library that was only licensed for five years.
    - maxerickson 6y ago

Groxx 6y ago

Huh. Did the ToS / other sale media mention that this was a time-limited feature? I have seen things like google maps integrations listed with expiration dates on non-subscription software. It's unfortunate for users, but I do think it's reasonable for some of these "depends on a third party" features to expire (or when they change APIs), as otherwise it's implying perpetual upkeep, which will absolutely not happen. It just needs to be communicated... and crashing the program when that occurs is just plain inexcusably bad.

pmlnr 6y ago

Leave it. Rawtherapee, darktable, digikam are all excellent, open source raw (and sometimes more) editors. Hugin ( http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ ) can create brilliant panoramas, even from a bad batch. Note: there is still no alternative to PS, given it's both a raster and a vector editor.

pizza234 6y ago
A few years ago I've tried a couple of alternatives, and Lightroom was by far the easiest to use. If the audience is casual editing (ie. a short time to improve a photo, and little user skills), I think Lightroom is significantly ahead of the competition - in particular, UX has never been a strong point of open source software. I don't know if the latest years changed the landscape, but I suppose not - Adobe kept enhancing Lightroom. License wise... that's definitely another story (I personally preferred when a license was valid for a single major version).
- Jnr 6y ago
  Sadly those mentioned open source products are still light years away from what Lightroom can offer. It is like comparing Gimp to Photoshop. Yes, they can do some of it, but they can't do it better or even close to that if you are serious at what you do. I am a developer, I have been Linux user for years and photography is my hobby. I periodically try some Lightroom "alternatives" in hopes of finding something good, but they are still nowhere near of replacing it. And with the limited budget they will probably never be as good. I know only one great open source software example in the arts field, and that software is Blender. Blender can probably do it because they have been receiving millions in donations from major game development companies in the recent years. Unless something similar happens in the field of photography, I don't think we'll be able to get away from proprietary software soon.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - robotmay 6y ago

nbzso 6y ago

My view as a serious hobby photographer is simple. No Adobe products in my life. Period. There are things that are logical with subscription plan, servers, cloud, collaboration functionality. Designing creative software with dark UX is Adobe business model. In the past their software was highly overpriced but you can have a lifespan of 3-4-5 years with updates. The reason that people are falling in Adobe Subscriptions trap was the notion that there is no alternative. But there is, Affinity, Capture One, Darktable - free, Raw Therapy- free, and more. I have invested in platform independent metadata workflow since Apple killed Aperture and left photographers in Adobe hell. Side note: One of the reasons people to shoot film is the focus on creative process without complicated software relationships. Can you imagine, if you are an artist and your brush "must" have subscription license and suddenly crashes without internet connection? This is the future according to software companies. Services, services, services:)

GordonS 6y ago
I've got an ancient version of Lightroom (maybe 2010?) that I still use to manage photos on Windows. Feature-wise, it's great, but it is very slow and a little buggy. I've been meaning to try out Darktable since it introduced Windows support around a year ago, but it's difficult to find time to replace something that works :)
- _jal 6y ago
  I do that, too. I also run some 15-ish year-old machining software. I've mostly moved these into VMs with a fossilized OS that works for them. Between applications that keep getting worse with each revision, subscriptions and other annoyances, I think a lot of my software use will follow this model.
  - PicassoCTs 6y ago
    Same here- just put the whole setup in amber like the jurassic-park-fly - store the software at peak performance and keep it there. Bonuspoints if the VM is under Linux, to prevent the OS from sabotaging those efforts.
- 6y ago

rgbrenner 6y ago

Sold for $150, released in April 2015. End of life was Dec 2017. 3 years after that it breaks. Eh.. 5.5 years is a good run. Do people really expect software to work forever after it's reached end of life? Even with Windows updates? And hardware changes? What does "end of life" mean to people if it doesn't mean what the words say?

gruez 6y ago
>Do people really expect software to work forever after it's reached end of life? Yes, actually. Office 97 still works on windows 10[1]. >Even with Windows updates? And hardware changes? But neither of them occurred. The software simply stopped working after a certain timespan has passed. If it broke because a because of a OS update that's understandable, but because an arbitrary date has passed, that's less understandable. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/abandonware/comments/9tfgtb/office_97_and_windows_10_ridiculous_compatibility/ https://old.reddit.com/r/abandonware/comments/9tfgtb/office_...
- a2tech 6y ago
  And Office 97 works great. All the features added after 97 are cruft that are not central to actually getting work done in the composite apps.
ratww 6y ago
After OS Updates and Hardware updates? Not really. That's why I use VMs and emulators. After the clock changing? Of course.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  I guess that there is one instance of the clock changing that is acceptable for out of support software to break : a Y2k/2038 time rollover bug.
wnoise 6y ago
Yes. Bits don't wear out.

alkonaut 6y ago

I’m happy with my perpetual LR (4.X) license. Obviously I don’t use anything that would need internet access such as a third party API and I understand that anything that relies on a third party API is never really perpetual. I’d be annoyed if a library “expired” crippling my software though.

AuthorizedCust 6y ago

> Adobe’s earnings have been shattering expectations in recent years, sending the company’s stock soaring over 700% over the past half-decade, so the Creative Cloud subscription model has definitely been a savvy switch. While like many here I prefer other solutions, the marketplace is validating Adobe’s approach.

adrianb 6y ago
The old software development model where users are buying the license for a specific version of a program and then use it and only come back to spend more when they need an upgrade is pretty much dead now. Most software moved to either free downloads with paid support (even Windows these days?) or to membership-based model (Adobe, Office365). The reason is that as you add features and fix bugs in a software, fewer users need the upgrade (why spend another 150$ on this year's release for some features I never use?). But the development team still needs to be paid and the advanced features they add each year tend to be harder to implement, so over time the costs are increasing while sales go down. Adobe might be successful with this business model because they have a strong market in professionals but they definitely lost the amateurs and hobbyists. EDIT to add: also it didn't help that CPUs and OS APIs haven't had major changes in more than a decade. There was no major reason for a large majority of users to upgrade (such as the move to 64 bit CPUs).
- josephg 6y ago
  > But the development team still needs to be paid and the advanced features they add each year tend to be harder to implement, so over time the costs are increasing while sales go down. Do they need to? I mean, if users don’t see the value in spending $150 for a few new features they don’t use, that says that maybe the ROI isn’t there for those features. Think about the marginal value of each hour of developer time. Value = number of feature’s users across the product’s lifetime * utility of the feature per user / cost to implement that feature. Early in a product’s lifecycle the features added have high utility (you add the most important features first) and most of your users haven’t bought your product yet. (So features are a long term investment). Marginal expected value is high - assuming you get the sales. Later in a product’s lifecycle the features are more marginal (and often more costly to implement). If users don’t want to pay for the upgrade, what they’re saying is the new features being added aren’t worth the development cost. If the user base is still growing it might still be worth adding those features. But at some point you should entertain the idea that the product is essentially done. The best play might be to move most of the engineers to a new product. Keep a small team which can fix bugs, renew google maps API keys and add ARM support and so on and call it a day. Profit should go up at that point because you should keep getting sales while your costs plummet. Over time sales drop as your old product has sold to most users who want it, and in that time the income can be used to bring a new product to market. This is the model the video game industry uses (to great effect). Why are we so allergic to the idea of “feature complete” in software? The alternative is what Adobe does - try to wring ever more money from your customers while providing them less value each year. It’s no wonder customers are desperate for alternatives to their products.

ksec 6y ago

- Off Topic : Why Apple kept Final Cut Pro and killed Aperture is beyond me. Still no news from Affinity LR replacement.

Brian-Puccio 6y ago
> Why Apple kept Final Cut Pro and killed Aperture is beyond me. Same. > Still no news from Affinity LR replacement. I gave up waiting and when Capture One announced really good integration with Leica’s SL2 (and a SL2 can scan way better than my Coolscan 4000 and cover medium/large formats) I bought their perpetual license. Capture One 21 works for 4 years, I’ll be happy. Anything else beyond that is gravy.

dmcy22 6y ago

I recently upgraded to an M1 Mac after my 2016 MacBook Pro died. It's an awesome machine; however, when I tried to install Lightroom 6, I wasn't able to because the installer isn't 64 bit. As a hobbyist who edits photos only a handful of times a year – usually after trips or photoshoots – moving to a subscription model is really costly. What's silly is that I was able to use Lightroom 6 on my 2016 MBP, even after upgrading to Big Sur. I don't blame Adobe for not supporting a product that came out 5 years ago but how nice would it be if they did.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Companies like Adobe don't have much of a reason to cater to these unprofitable use cases. They're going to go deep on maximizing customer lifetime value (CLV) for folks willing to pay more. That's how they keep (or more probably, their only option) for delivering double-digit growth year-over-year, which becomes challenging once reaching a certain size.
- dmcy22 6y ago
  Absolutely agreed that it doesn't make much business sense to keep supporting LR6. And 5 years is a long timer in the software world. That said, I wonder if there are companies that do support older versions of software just for the sake of customer delight.
- JoelTheSuperior 6y ago
  Indeed but equally this is something I dislike about Macs - on Windows this software would still work just fine.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
I had a similar issue with 32-bit software with a 16-bit installer. I've solved it by installing it within a VM running a 16-bit compatible OS, then copying the resulting program folder over to the main OS. Have you tried something like this?
- dmcy22 6y ago

jrockway 6y ago

I wish Lightroom was good. I stopped using it because it's incredibly slow. Even on a 32 core Threadripper, things like "list the files in this directory" take seconds. I can't deal with it. Honestly, I would have dealt with it, if Adobe's mandatory extra software weren't so annoying. The installer auto-installs a "cloud drive", and then it's in every Explorer window, slowing down every file operation in the OS... that was the last straw for me. (They promised to remove it, but never did, so I stopped paying for their software.) Honestly, Lightroom never really worked for me. It made easy things hard and hard things impossible. I take a lot of film photographs, and it just didn't integrate with any of the tools I use to capture the images. I do everything manually in several separate pieces of software, and adding one more didn't help much.

diarrhea 6y ago
Throw cores at that particular problem all you want. Throw 64GB RAM at it, and GPU acceleration. Won't help, since that issue is very likely I/O bottlenecked. So it's unfair to blame Lightroom here. My photos sit on a 5400 RPM, no SSD cache NAS behind 1G LAN. That is incredibly slow compared to local HDD or even SSD. I don't blame Lightroom here. In fact, the software only takes its time when operating on large volumes on that slow connection. CPU-bound tasks have been just fine for me (16k photos catalogue, i7 mobile CPU, 16GB RAM).
- bumblebritches5 6y ago
  It's unfair to criticize Lightroom for using a slow sorting algorithm? lol wat
- ancientworldnow 6y ago
  I have the same issues as the parent comment (maybe not quite as bad) despite also having a threadripper, 2080ti, 64GB of ram, and my photos living on a 10GbE connected NAS that's gets 1000+ MB/s. Similar issues when I move things into my pcie SSD I use for caching and temp storage. I work with 8k raw video frequently for my day job and lightroom is by far the slowest app on my system my orders of magnitude.

mbloom1915 6y ago

Figma FTW

danielfoster 6y ago

Capture One is 10x better than Lightroom.

zzleeper 6y ago

Any suggestions for an Acrobat alternative that can do simple things such as rotate a PDF or extract a page from it? I use SumatraPDF as my daily PDF reader but still have to resort to Acrobat for those things. And the latest update (that requires creating an online account!) finally did it for me, I'm sick of Acrobat.

warent 6y ago
Pretty sure even GIMP can open and edit PDFs
drwu 6y ago
PDF arranger (https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger)

tomc1985 6y ago

Sounds like something fairly easy to crack for those so inclined.

herpderperator 6y ago

If you are looking for an extremely performant Lightroom alternative, a very common program among professional photographers is Photo Mechanic. I use it and it's stupid fast at rendering RAW images as fast as you can scroll.

systemvoltage 6y ago

JetBrains should develop design/media/production tools.

pvg 6y ago
Their business models are nearly identical and the different responses to them are interesting in themselves, perhaps suggesting it's not really about the cost or even the tools specifically.
keyle 6y ago
Have you seen their list of applications lately? It's mental. And a language... Kotlin which is doing reasonably well. I'm a full time user of IntelliJ and I love it. As much as I agree with you, they best stick to what they do best and keep making it great... Not spreading themselves thin in industries they might not know it all.

bumblebritches5 6y ago

It's a big piece of software from Adobe, of course it is.

coliveira 6y ago

While I'm not a fan of Adobe, people need to realize that the software industry changed a lot in the last decade. In the past one could write software for an OS such as Windows or Classic Mac and have it working for decades. Nowadays, any software developer will tell you how difficult it is to maintain software even across single digit changes. Companies like Apple, Google, and even MS have forced developers to toil on rewrites year after year to support the new operating systems they release. In the web this is even worse. So I think that the old model of buying software and expecting that it will work for a long time is dead, killed by the process used by big companies. What is left is either well-maintained open source or subscription-based commercial software.

r3trohack3r 6y ago
Seeing a lot of comments like this here. Lightroom v6 still seems to work, in spite of what you reference in your comment. This article isn’t about Adobe failing to maintain software, or that Lightroom v6 needs a rewrite. The software still works if you change the system clock. The software breaking seems to be a licensing issue. Adobe sold customers this software under a perpetual license when Adobe did not have a perpetual license for the libraries they bundled in the sale. I’m not sure how Adobe could legally do this.
izacus 6y ago
Oh, come on. The computer market has never been more consolidated, less diverse and running less operating systems than now. Adobes software runs on the same OSes it ran years ago - Windows and macOS. Even more so, the software itself has never been less configurable, less flexible and less platform specific. From times where you had adjustable title bars, UI panels and configurable professional UIs we ended up with inflexible, hardcoded layouts with unchangeable fonts and built in HTML filled with recycled JS components that were given to developers for free from others. And to top all that off, those developers now demand perpetual rent so they don't actually need to show value of updates while they forcefully shove them down our throats with no option to stop.
grishka 6y ago
Don't update your OS if the version you're currently using works well for you.

mjcohen 6y ago

I still use Picasa on my Macs. Works fine in High Sierra and works in Mojave after I click five times on a message saying that it doesn't work.

r3trohack3r 6y ago

tl;dr: It seems Adobe may have sold Adobe Lightroom v6 under a perpetual license, but Adobe didn’t have a perpetual license for the libraries they bundled in that sale. According to the article, Lightroom v6 still works when you change the system clock. And it only breaks when you attempt to use specific plugins after a certain date.

staticshock 6y ago

There's one photo organization feature I really want that I haven't yet seen in any existing asset managers: a way to group bursted photos together and hide a set of images behind one "representative" image in the main stream, while still making them accessible if necessary. Anyone aware of software that comes close?

r00fus 6y ago
Didn’t iPhoto do this?
Alt-ThrowAway 6y ago
I figured out a way to do this in Lightroom using the stacking feature. It's not quite automatic as you need to run a command. Basically, there's a stack-by-time-taken option in a drop down menu and you set a time difference that fits your bursts (which it will save as default for next run). I use this to auto-stack iOS motion photos with the still version so I just see one item. I set it to auto-stack all media that has a capture time within two seconds of each other. This works for what I need. Sorry, I don't recall the name of the specific menu item. Hopefully, my description is enough to get you in the ballpark (if you use LR).

Alt-ThrowAway 6y ago

I can offer some perspective on this because I was a senior employee at Adobe before, during and after the entire transition to Creative Cloud. I was involved in much of the management discussions and decision-making related to the CC transition and business model change. First, a few "full disclosure" bullets: * I left Adobe on good terms and still have several current or former employees as acquaintances and friends. * Based on what I observed during my tenure, Adobe is a quality and ethical company that broadly tries to do right by customers, employees, shareholders, partners, and so on. Obviously, I'm speaking to overall ethos here. Adobe is a big, multi-national, publicly-traded, for-profit company and I'm certainly aware of a few notable exceptions over the years but such ethical lapses have been, to my knowledge, limited to specific individuals, groups or time-periods and not systemic or condoned at the senior management level. * I still use some Adobe creative tools including Lightroom for my personal needs and pay for them out of my own pocket. I don't make my living or earn income with creative tools. I also personally use some competitor's alternatives as well as open source tools if they suit my needs or preferences. * While an Adobe employee I earned salary, bonuses, benefits and RSU grants. I worked hard, did well and have personally profited from the increase in Adobe's stock price. I still hold a sizable-for-me stash of fully-vested Adobe shares which I'm in no hurry to sell. I think Adobe is one of the better large tech companies in the valley and I'm happy I accepted their job offer. With that out of the way... let's get to the meat. Note - I don't intend to share anything I learned while bound by confidentiality per my employment contract. I do intend to speak more frankly than I could while an employee. * The Creative Cloud value proposition is quite good for creative professionals who earn all or most of their income using two or more of the major applications. Do the math and the subscription pricing works out lower than the old perpetual pricing for the full Creative Suite + bi-yearly upgrades. * For single application users (except PS+LR), it's not quite as good. It is about equal if you were upgrading every cycle. If you opted to skip perpetual version upgrades sometimes then the subscription pricing is more expensive. * PS+LR is different because it is offered at a lower bundle price to accommodate the sizable base of hobbyist or aspiring photographers. * I plan to transition from using Photoshop and Lightroom to alternative tools for my personal needs by the end of next year. (No, I'm not sure which ones yet, there are several pretty good options ranging from open source to for-profit competitors) * PS and LR are still good products getting good upgrades and Adobe is still a good company. The only thing changing is Adobe's business interests are growing less aligned with my interests as an occasional hobby user. This trend seems unlikely to reverse. Adobe's professional users want powerful professional tools with pro service options. Many of them are willing and able to pay for that. It makes economic sense for them and Adobe. It just doesn't make as much sense for me. I'm an individual retail user buying one year (or month) at a time of Adobe's lowest margin flagship SKU. Most of Adobe's Creative Cloud profit comes from enterprise and agency site licenses sold in multi-year deals by the hundreds and thousands. * From support costs to sales costs to transaction costs (credit card bill backs and other PITA.) I'm just not as valuable of a customer by weight. Yes, there are companies that choose to cater to retail individual customers. This isn't easy but it can be done profitably if done at large enough scale and built as a core competency. * It can be argued that Adobe should cut the subscription price to attract much larger scale and make it up in volume. The problem is that this level of powerful tooling isn't needed by casual or occasional users. As an individual home user I don't need the scripting features in PS, SSO, enterprise remote automated installers, and so on. But Adobe's most profitable customers do. Even the neat AI automation features they are spending big R&D on aren't very valuable for me. I don't even do enough to make learning the time-saving AI features worth the effort. But someone who needs to process hundreds of photos could find those capabilities an essential part of their usage. I don't think this is anyone's fault. If we must place blame, I guess we should pin it on how the stock market values quarterly and yearly progress over 5 or 10 year progress. I hope the Long-Term Stock Market will become a thing but the reality is it won't be soon enough to change this situation. Making a big change now would be seen by Adobe investors as not worth the risk. Adobe's stock is up because they took a steep risk in making the leap to the cloud model. Back before committing to the leap, Adobe management knew it was going to be hard and perilous. Frankly, it was the least bad of the remaining options once it was clear the perpetual + upgrades treadmill was likely to turn into a downward spiral of ever-diminishing returns. Arguably, Adobe is one of the most successful examples of a legacy firm executing that difficult transition in a legacy market and doing so very, very well. They did the work, they are delivering value to a large and profitable segment of customers and monetizing it profitably. That customer just isn't me.

yumraj 6y ago

This is not restricted to Adobe Lightroom. Many other companies are ignoring older versions and in some cases the file formats have been changed to force people to update. Symptoms are different but root cause is similar. I have an older version of Sketch. Due to my use case, not a designer, I have no need to pay them actually. Lately I needed to use it, and none of the new templates work making my paid version of Sketch useless. At least my old version of Acrobat still works with new and old PDFs.

optician_owl 6y ago

Lightroom has some critical problems limiting professional use. * Forced lens profiles. (And more. There are reports of double application of profiles) * Color and light correction also changes untouched parameters (it's ok but there is no workaround). If you need to do a more accurate job then use C1 or Photoshop.

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