Category: Software

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No More “Perpetual” Lightroom

There will no longer be any updates to Adobe Lightroom for those who don’t subscribe to an Adobe Creative Cloud plan.

Yesterday Adobe released version 6.14 of Lightroom, which is the final update to the “perpetual” version of Lightroom. There will no longer be any updates for bug fixes, proprietary raw capture support, lens profile support, or new feature updates.

Adobe had previously made it clear that by the end of 2017 Lightroom would no longer be updated for users who did not subscribe to an Adobe Creative Cloud plan. In a blog post from October 18, 2017, which focused on the release of Lightroom CC and the rebranding of Lightroom Classic CC, the following information was included:

Lightroom 6 is the last standalone version of Lightroom that can be purchased outside of a Creative Cloud membership. There will not be a Lightroom 7 perpetual offering. Lightroom 6 will remain for sale for an undetermined amount of time, but will no longer be updated with camera support or bug fixes after the end of 2017.

Needless to say, this milestone will frustrate many photographers who are not happy about Adobe’s shift toward a subscription model for software licensing.

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New Lightroom Downloader App

If you are a photographer who is using (or thinking about using) the new Adobe Lightroom CC and you are worried about your photos or metadata being “locked up”, you can now breathe a sigh of relief. Adobe has released the new Lightroom Downloader application that enables you to download all of your source photos with metadata updates from the Creative Cloud.

Prior to the release of this application, all photos you added to your Lightroom CC library would be uploaded to the Creative Cloud servers, and possibly deleted from your local storage. Any metadata updates would be stored within your library and synchronized to the Creative Cloud servers, but not stored with local copies of your photos.

This created some (very reasonable) concerns among photographers who were worried that their photos would be “locked up” with Lightroom CC, forcing them to continue paying for a monthly subscription just to retain access to their own photos.

The Lightroom Downloader application enables you to download copies of your original photos, along with metadata updates you applied within Lightroom CC. In other words, this application provides a way to access all of your photos and data should you choose to discontinue the use of Lightroom CC (or if you simply want a full backup of all of your photos and data to store locally).

When you use the Lightroom Downloader application, your photos will be organized into a folder structure based on the date of capture. This is the same folder structure Lightroom CC uses in the background, regardless of the folder structure you may have previously been using for your existing photos.

More details about the Lightroom Downloader application can be found on the Adobe website here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/kb/download-lightroom-photos.html

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Lightroom Gets Confusing

Adobe has just announced “Lightroom CC”, which of course is likely to confuse many photographers who have already been using Lightroom CC for a while, and who have been familiar with Lightroom for about a decade.

It turns out there is a completely new version of Lightroom that doesn’t actually replace the existing version of Lightroom. To make things more confusing, the new Lightroom is called “Lightroom CC”, and the prior version of Lightroom will become “Lightroom Classic CC”.

Confused? Me too!

Fortunately you can get some clarification in an episode of Tim Grey TV here: