Lightroom v6.7 perpetual - where to go from here (don’t want subscription Adobe CC)


I love the cloud model. I pay $10 a month for Lr and PS. When I am off doing street photography with my phone...images appear simultaneously on my iPad and MacBook Pro. When I upload from my camera gear to the MacBook, I get the image s on my other devices as well.

What I find amusing is that I can have both software packages for $10 a month instead of forking over $650 for PS and $149 for Lr....and then spending $250 every couple of years for an update. Do the math.
 
I'm likewise stuck with the final perpetual LR license, and not going to pay a subscription. The simplest reason is that too many things are subscription model today, and it obscures just how much we can spend on things like entertainment, photography and whatever else. All we ask ourselves is, can we afford the monthly cost. Real life isn't like that, though, and life events don't come along spread out over months. They happen all of a sudden. It's a better mental exercise to find the funds for a single purchase and then SAVE monthly income, than to let everything slip into monthly equilibrium and become the frog that doesn't realize the pot is hot until it boils to death.

On another note, I've tried multiple editing options and I am strongly leaning towards DXO. PhotoLab 3 is really, really good with the way it handles noise reduction, detail and lighting. It may feel a little less full featured than LR or On1, but how much do we really need? For me, Prime noise reduction and the subtle sharpening and detail tools are where it's at. I also have the older DXO version of Nik, which I am fairly sure will still interface. Waiting to find a really good deal on PhotoLab 3.

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If software vendors do not have a secure method of funding development and support for bug fixes and new features then users have no future for bug fixes and new features.


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You might look at the (still in beta) Photo Mechanic Plus. It's absolutely riddled with DAM features :).

I really like Capture One, but its DAM features feel less fully developed than Lightroom's. Also, I find the spot/healing tools in C1 to be inferior to Lightroom. Otherwise, I feel like I get better results from C1 overall.
 
I decided to go with Lightroom Classic and it's been good so far.

I dislike the monthly payment, don't have any need or desire for the other products offered on the $10/month plan... So it now costs me $120 a year rather than $150 and then $80 every 18 months.

It works, that makes me happy. But I'm sure Adobe will try to snooker me into a higher monthly no matter what and I refuse to use their Cloud stuff at all. So I keep looking for suitable alternatives.

G
 
So, what's the exit plan after you get on the LR subscription treadmill for a while? My understanding is that the LR software remains on your computer to allow you to search through your catalog and visualize the instructions in the sidecar, even if you are no longer a subscriber.

However, if you plan to start over in another program, my understanding is that the only way to do that is to export your edits into "finished" jpgs or tiffs and reload all of them into the new software package. My understanding is that you'd also loose most of your metadata.

If you still have 6.7 on your computer (who knows until when that will be forced into obsolescence) you could go back to that version of LR but all the sidecar instructions that were made with LR CC won't be visualized on the 6.7 version unless baked into the image.

Quite a headache!
 
Beating the drum again for Darktable... all your LR files can be imported straight into DT where new sidecar files are written containing all the LR metadata.
 
Thanks, Barry. Is the editing info stored in the sidecar interpreted faithfully? Have you been able to do a side by side comparison of the same LR-edited image opened in Darktable and Lightroom?
 
I don’t like the subscription idea. Maybe I would like it if I owned Adobe stock.

But I’m kinda out of the loop now as I use Photoshop CS4 and it works just fine for me. My iMac is old, by tech standards, but it also still does the trick for me.

My way of thinking, is if I change computers I would consider either OnOne or Elements. I have the On One version that works as a plug in with Photoshop. Haven’t checked out the stand alone version. The two most important ingredients with Photoshop are layers and blending.

But I may sound like a worn out record, but I’ve worked hard at understanding this stuff and I believe in getting it where I want it during the capture stage so as I don't have to spend, what I consider, a waste of time trying to get it correct during the process stage.
 
froyd said:
So, what's the exit plan after you get on the LR subscription treadmill for a while? My understanding is that the LR software remains on your computer to allow you to search through your catalog and visualize the instructions in the sidecar, even if you are no longer a subscriber.

However, if you plan to start over in another program, my understanding is that the only way to do that is to export your edits into "finished" jpgs or tiffs and reload all of them into the new software package. My understanding is that you'd also loose most of your metadata.

If you still have 6.7 on your computer (who knows until when that will be forced into obsolescence) ...
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I still don't know what LR 6.7 is. The final perpetual license version of LR that I ran for a long time (as it slowly became degraded by OS and Adobe back end changes) was v6.14. It died, permanently, when I installed macOS Catalina. That's when I tried On1 and found it too annoying to use ... Still have RAW Power, Luminar, Affinity Photo, et al to do testing with. :) But I needed to get some work down and Lightroom Classic presented the best path to that for the moment.

LR Classic works exactly the same with respect to the files and editing parameters it stores as LR 6.14, but it's linked to the subscription payment model and give access to Adobe's Cloud (and tries to get you to use it as often as it gets the chance; I don't). The exit strategy is the same as what I planned all those years ago with the initial release of Lightroom in 2006:

When I finish a rendering, I make a 16bit-per-component export product as a TIFF file and store it separately from the original image file (of whatever format). These are organized by a slightly different derivative of the same organize by date folder hierarchy and contain all of the edits as I defined them as well as all the IPTC annotation data. I can browse or search for anything in this directory tree using a variety of tools, including the Finder (on macOS), LR, or any other image browser.

Work that I haven't finished, if I leave using LR, I just consider as new. Of course, I usually input at least preliminary IPTC annotation when I import into LR, and I save that metadata to the files. Most any useful image file browser can read the IPTC data either from embedded metadata or from sidecar files associated with the originals. Editing parameters are, of course, specific to LR although some apps ingest them and attempt to simulate them (like On1) with varying degrees of success. It doesn't matter to me, since like any other "new" work the only thing that's important is that the IPTC data is preserved and the grading I might have done is part of that IPTC data (stars basically).

I have always felt that since lossless, parametric editing is an interpretive game, one should always export a version of whatever you consider to be a finished rendering. This is because as the interpreter (LR) is upgraded, there is no guarantee that the parameters will always be treated exactly the same way in interpretation. It's just good practice, to me, to always cement into the actual pixel values whatever I consider as the final edit.

Bill Clark said:
I don’t like the subscription idea. Maybe I would like it if I owned Adobe stock.

But I’m kinda out of the loop now as I use Photoshop CS4 and it works just fine for me. My iMac is old, by tech standards, but it also still does the trick for me.

My way of thinking, is if I change computers I would consider either OnOne or Elements. I have the On One version that works as a plug in with Photoshop. Haven’t checked out the stand alone version. The two most important ingredients with Photoshop are layers and blending.

But I may sound like a worn out record, but I’ve worked hard at understanding this stuff and I believe in getting it where I want it during the capture stage so as I don't have to spend, what I consider, a waste of time trying to get it correct during the process stage.
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I'm with you, Bill ... the subscription model for LR use doesn't net me much in way of any benefit and actually costs me slightly more since I don't use the other tools included with it. But PS CS4 and the Adobe Camera Raw that supports it is way too old to support more of the more recent cameras that are of interest to me, and not upgrading to newer versions of Camera Raw that have had the benefit of a decade's worth of algorithm improvement since doesn't seem sensible. Even for ancient, existing cameras: For example, my 2003 Olympus E-1 produces very nice in-camera JPEGs but since it also produces raw files, I can reprocess with the latest raw converter even old photos I made with it and see significant improvements in the rendering quality. I can make new photos using higher ISO settings with the same camera that are better than I ever could with older versions of the raw converter.

Getting the exposure and framing right when capturing to raw files continues to have great value to getting the best rendering, but a raw file—no matter what the settings in camera—is NOT a finished image and requires interpretation by a raw converter to render to a finished image. That raw conversion is critical. Unless you're happy with the JPEG capabilities and rendering that your camera produces and consider that your finished image, or have cameras that your current tools produce the right finished results from to your satisfaction, the strategy of sitting still with an older version of an image processing computer, operating system, and image processing app is limiting. I continue to push boundaries and find that updated OS, apps, etc, all contribute to my satisfaction...

Maybe I'm just fussy and want something that is impractically difficult to achieve, but eh? such it is. :D

G
 
Yes, I capture 100% RAW. I use Bridge to look at and correct, if needed, then process making jpegs.

I see as an alternative DNG.

At any fate, the capture stage is most important for me.
 
I accept the subscription model as a direction a lot of software is moving. That's one of the things that's happening all over the industry, companies are starting to think about how they support themselves between releases. The Boom/Bust cycle that a lot of software (especially big software) lived with is somewhat unsustainable and is intrinsically bad developers (both small and large). I take it as a mix, you get riskier software releases (since they aren't betting the company on every release) but you also get more incremental change. It's neither great nor terrible.

Do I always love it? No, but I think I now accept it.
 
froyd said:
Thanks, Barry. Is the editing info stored in the sidecar interpreted faithfully? Have you been able to do a side by side comparison of the same LR-edited image opened in Darktable and Lightroom?
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Short answer: no I haven't. When I decided on the second occasion that I would abandon Adobe I exported all my LR images as TIFFs to ensure I'd retain the benefit of all the modifications I'd made. At that time I don't think I'd even heard of DT. I've since seen Bruce Williams' excellent YouTube video where migration is explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s41rmYxOQ0g&t=319s and apparently the migration is flawless.
 
ndnik said:
There's also On1, Luminar, RawTherapee, and Exposure X5.
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Thumbs up for RawTherapee. I've used on the past, along with Gimp.

RawTherapee for contrast, sharpness, etc. and Gimp for correcting negative scratches.


Regards

Marcelo
 
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