Enough with "Classic is for serious photographers, Lightroom is for newbies" - Lightroom is better than you think, and the two aren't going to be separate products forever.
I'm pretty fixated on Capture One as my go-to editor, but I look forward to the days Adobe improves their business practices and Lightroom becomes a more viable product for me.
I tried so hard to make Capture One work for me, but I found the workflow didn't compare to Lightroom's. Separate view for culling? No thank you. And no way to put the Info panel as front-and-center as it is in Lightroom (I have the same issue with Classic).
Thanks for bringing up that LR can now use local photo storage, that is one red flag taken down. With not 20,000, but over a million photos, cloud storage is no option, unless it can be my own cloud, which coincidentally is my NAS.
But you also raised the next red flag: I use search for photo retrieval. It has to search my full catalog, on all drives. Otherwise I can not call it a photo management system. when I search for "1248264245", I want to exactly see the six photos that have that tag. No more, no less.
Which database is used is not relevant, as long as it works. The Classic keyword search system is amazing. It is one of the only parts of Classic that works at an acceptable, even decent, speed. I would like AI to soon also add keywords to my photos. In fact, I would like to teach it how and which keywords to add to my catalog, and to learn and remember which animals are not cats (to use your example).
That would make me happy. That, and speed increases.
Thanks for the comment Mike. Local photo storage in LR is interesting - you can connect any drive or folder, but it does not involve catalogs, which avoids a lot of user confusion.
It's true that search in LR is either "in the cloud" or "local" but not both at once. I'm sure that unifying that eventually is on their road map - I'd love to see that too.
I don't see any advantage to Classic's keywords system relative to Lightroom's unless the "tag nesting" feature is important to you (but it doesn't work when you export to a JPG and bring that into another app or viewer, so I kind of prefer the flat system).
Having transparency over how AI is being used for/in search would be amazing. But even without it, search in Lightroom is SO much more powerful than it is in Classic.
I'm a Classic nerd and have been annoyed by everything you described where Lightroom has the advantage. But not so much that I've considered migrating until reading your post. That said, it's now a year+ old, so what's changed?
I do a lot of printing in my studio and many of my photos are in Collections. I often do a first pass noise edit in DxO Pure Raw, replace skies in Luminar Neo and occasionally dip into Photoshop for things I just can't do in Classic. Oh, and I have a single catalog with nearly 100,000 images in it.
Am I stuck in Classic until the Convergence? Or is it time to dive in?
I wish I could say more has changed in the past year than actually has - we're not at convergence yet. No printing yet, for example. Lightroom's Denoise is so good I'm surprised you're still interested in DxO for that. With the partial plugin support you should be able to do round-trip editing between Lightroom and Neo or Photoshop.
As for 100,000 images, your choices would be to either:
0) Cull and delete the cruft like crazy :)
1) Pay a bunch of $ to upgrade from the 1TB to the 3TB plan
2) Keep the past year and your best images in the cloud, but use Lightroom's local storage for everything else.
I'm approaching the limits of my 1TB plan and am starting to go for the mixed local + cloud approach (#2). It works very well, but can sometimes mean having to search for something twice, which isn't great.
Thanks Scot. Looks like I’ll wait but do the cull and cleanup anyway as I know there is plenty of cruft! In the meantime, I’m researching moving fully into the DxO ecosystem - soup to nuts. Starting with what I’d lose or be able to discontinue (i.e. will I still need PS or does DxO plus available add ons do the job?). Wish me luck 😎
Thanks! I’m not a newbie anymore, but I’m still Lightroom all the way, and really struggle to understand the appeal of Classic when Lightroom has gotten so good.
Thanks for the comparison. It focuses fully on data basing and accessibility and search features but I wonder how they compare in terms of actual editing of raw files. Are there differences in editing options and quality? LRC and only local here.
No, there are no differences in quality. It’s all the same underlying code - just with a very different interface and workflow, updated for modern times.
Thanks Chris! Really glad you enjoyed the piece. The whole point was to get some Classic users to give LR some consideration, so am pleased to hear that landed with you. Cheers!
1) I find maps very intuitive (much more than names of places) and have a good memory for locations, so sometime to find a photo I’ll just look where I took it on the map.
2) To geotag, I take a gpx file of my photoshoot and Classic auto tags all the photos based on the time stamps. Still a bit clunky, but so much better than copy and pasting latitude and longitude.
Keep in mind that you can still look at where your photo is on a map in Lightroom - you just can't see where all of them at once are on a map.
That's a great point about GPX file support - I should have thought of covering that. In fact I think I'll change my "winner" vote for that category on that basis.
Just having the location of one photo on the map is certainly useful at times. But for me there are a couple of use cases I really appreciate many photos on a map (either in LR Classic or Apple photos):
1) I want to find that photo of say a lake I know I took from a particular hill - I can view all my photos on a map and quickly find it. Sure, keywords might help, but I don’t do that these days and it’s not how my brain works. Places stick better than names.
2) For favourite locations I revisit, it’s easy to see all my photos from a particular place in one view - to see changes through time. Again, you might accomplish that by keywords, but I like being able to select by location - and have sold a few photos from being able to do so.
Thanks for an interesting and thought provoking article. I should check out Lightroom again sometime, as I agree it’s going to be the only (Adobe) choice at some point. If these features don’t get added in, there must be another auto tagging GPX solution out there, and Apple photos is better for viewing on a map anyway (just less convenient to go from that to editing)
Hi Tim - Just for clarity - it sounds like you are mostly talking about fundability, and I completely agree. But here's the thing - whether I type the word "Oakland" into the City field or paste in a GPS coordinate aligned with Oakland, or drag the image onto a map of Oakland, the future findability is going to be exactly the same. If you want to find your Oakland images, you're going to type the word "Oakland" into the search bar - you're not going to bring up a giant map of the world and then zoom down to see what images were shot in Oakland. Right? So I really don't see how you're making an argument for Classic's big old Map view over Lightroom's smaller single-image map view - the future findability is identical either way.
I'm with you on hoping on hoping for a future GPX feature! That might be a good candidate for a plugin too.
Thanks, Scot for your in depth comparison. As a user of both Lr and LrC I have been sitting on the fence for a while. It’s the lack of plugin support and virtual copies in Lr that is the final thing holding me back. While I get that Versions provides the same things as virtual copies in Lr, I prefer having them as separate images in my catalogue, rather than having to remember they are there. I am ready to take the plunge across to Lr, as find LrC quite unwieldy at times but these are the final points holding me back. As you say, I expect Adobe to address much of these soon 🤞🏻
Thanks for reading. I think you make a great point about how Versions doesn't really fill the gap left from the absence of Virtual Copies, and that they need to sew that up. Hopefully soon!
Hey Jason - One of the main things I bring with my perspective is that I've been a solid user of both platforms, so nothing I say is (hopefully!) uninformed or under informed. Why do you say "clearly you've never use nested" when I talk about their advantages in the piece?
Unless I read wrong, you stated that key wording in Lr is better. I disagree. I’ve come close to using Lr while traveling a few times, but the lack of key wording is a deal breaker for bird photography.
However it is still baffling to me that Adobe hasn’t merged these applications yet. I have zero desire to rely on an internet connection to manage my photos, but I find great utility in leveraging the cloud when I’m traveling. I’ve been encouraged by Adobe adding the ability to work with local files instead of requiring everything to be uploaded to the cloud server.
I think they really need to get all their developers in a room and lock the door until they standardize features between Lightroom (all flavors) and Photoshop. I mean, whose idea was it to use CMD-K to invoke the brush tool in Lr? Did the Photoshop developers threaten to sue?
Mmm, not quite. That was the one category to which I did *not* award a winner, and in it I said "Classic may have the upper hand in functionality here, but honestly, it feels kind of overkill." I then went on to list its pros and cons. IOTW I could go either way with the winning approach here. If they do go with nested in the converged product, I hope they find a way to simplify the UI - we shouldn't need four sub-modules to support that functionality.
I agree about how baffling it is that the convergence is taking so long! Hopefully we'll start to see a groundswell of interest from users looking forward to and to the years-long confusion.
Given my use of three different drives and over 10TB of photos, I continue to prefer Classic while remaining baffled by Adobe’s direction for the product line(s). I’m glad they’re offering direct plugin support now in Lr. Sometimes I just scratch my head.
Hey Scot. Thanks for being brave and stirring up the hornet's nest on this one!
I'm with you on most of your assertions. LrC is too slow, too clunky, too old-fashioned these days. I'm completely addicted to how Lr manages everything in the cloud - instant access to everything from my Mac, PC, iPad and iPhone. That's very hard to accomplish cleanly when LrC is in the mix. Syncing always seems to break.
That said, there are a few things that I wish they'd bring over from LrC that would make me very happy:
1. Better control over import. It's an inconsistent experience between Lr desktop and Lr mobile. On mobile, you can at least filter between RAW and JPG/HIF and choose what to import easily enough. On desktop, there's no filter. There's no way to zoom into a thumbnail to pick which of the 14 identical-but-somehow-subtly-different photos *should* be imported.
2. Being able to handle RAW/JPG pairs as one (at least from a metadata perspective). LrC does it. Capture One does it. Photo Mechanic does it. Apple Photos does it. C'mon Lr!
3. Virtual copies. I *love* the ability to have a virtual copy of my photos. Often I'll tinker with multiple processing choices for a photo and it's useful to see them all side by side. Sure, Versions can emulate that (a little), it still won't allow for side-by-side viewing. On the back-end, it's just another XMP sidecar linking back to a common RAW file. Sure, we can duplicate photos, but in the era of 100MB RAW files, that starts adding up. XMP files are (thankfully) still measured in kilobytes.
3a. If you can't give me virtual copies, please give me the ability to auto-stack based on my criteria of choice (like date captured or base filename).
4. Metadata handling. Why (WHY???) is the Caption field only one line and not resizeable? In the same vein, why are Alt Text and Extended Description 2 and 4 lines big and unable to handle multiline text? I understand the need to make accessibility fields more visible (and more likely to be used), but why did they put them in at the expense of the Caption field (which actually gets used). That's just bad UI.
5. Maps. Sure, you can copy & paste a GPS coordinate from your favourite maps app onto one or many photos, but there's a certain elegance with being able to shift-click or cmd-click a bunch of photos and drag them onto a specific spot on a map. This is also REALLY useful for spotting inaccurately tagged photos and quickly placing them where they ought to be, without jumping around to multiple apps & websites.
6. More export options, specifically around variable-based file naming. It would be nice to append keywords automatically at export time as well.
Overall, you're right: Lr has come a long way. As a longtime LrC user who went on hiatus a while ago and came back to the Lr ecosystem, I've come to appreciate Lr and cannot use LrC anymore. It just feels too old and limited esp. wrt cloud integration.
Thanks Eric - Felt good to finally get this all down on paper and out there into the world. Turned out it was impossible to say it all concisely, unfortunately. A few responses to your feedback:
1) I just import everything and use my culling workflow to remove what I don't want (and I format every time) so I haven't encountered those, but good points.
2) Interesting. Isn't the idea that if you are importing both, that you hide RAW unless you need to access a RAW for more control? (I shoot RAW only so had not noticed this).
3) I have a section here on Versions vs Virtual Copies + Snapshots. I do appreciate why Adobe simplified those two confusing and overlapping features. Are you not liking the Versions that replace Virtual Copies?
4) I agree about the arbitrary-ness of those field sizes.
5) I did address that point - to me I don't see the advantage of dragging onto map vs either typing in a city or pasting in coords. But you're right about being able to visually see if one got missed for example.
6) I sure would like title to be one of the options for file naming during export!
1) I shoot RAW+JPEG but use the RAW 99.5% of the time. So why even bother with the JPG? Because I like to shoot in different aspect ratios (square, 5:4 etc.) and compose in camera. Fujifilm doesn't let me choose an aspect ratio unless I'm also saving in JPG or HEIF format. When I know I'm not going to use the JPG, I'd rather not import it at all, and the current import dialog on Lr desktop doesn't allow for filtering. iOS import actually has filtering ability.
Another point: I'll sometime review my photos in-camera and apply star ratings to the photos I *know* I'll want to keep. It would be neat for the import dialog to allow for filtering on star rating too
3) I see Versions as a great 1:1 replacement for Snapshots. A virtual copy can allow for multiple versions of the same photo to coexist (say, colour and B+W, different aspect ratios, etc.) each with their own metadata. Super practical.
It sounds like you think that Lightroom *requires* you to store everything in the cloud! While a cloud-first workflow was one of the original motivations for its creation, it has also supported local storage for the last year. So if you don't want to store in the cloud, you don't have to! You choose how much "hot storage" vs "cold storage" you want to work with at any given time. The point of the article though is to show how many *other* things about Lightroom are better than Classic, not just cloud stuff.
"In 2025, virtually everything we do is in the cloud. We use it daily in all walks of life, and have come to trust it implicitly. We’re long past the point of NOT using cloud storage for everything, and clearly that was the main event in Adobe’s initial split of Lightroom into two products."
Sorry there's just no reason other than Adobe wanting to extract more money out of users for people to be forced to use and pay for cloud storage using Lightroom. They could have built in functionality from the beginning to allow local storage but they chose not to. It's fine that some people find benefit from this approach, but I bet they are only just now finally offering local storage support in LR only reluctantly after realizing they are not going to get people like me to pay to pay rent to keep accessing my own photos for the convenience of cloud access I don't need or want. Remember you can always substitute "someone else's computer" for the word cloud to remind yourself that the popularity and ubiquity of cloud storage and services comes with additional risk, always.
Hmm, I don't see it that way at all. First of all, even with Classic you're paying Adobe monthly rent - you don't have to pay for storage to already be trapped in their monthly ransom game. Secondly, it makes sense to me that adding local storage is something that appeared around this time in the transition. With all of the core functionality in place, it's time to start attracting the Classic users to come over, and local storage is obviously a key piece of that.
> for the convenience of cloud access I don't need or want.
I'm surprised to read that part - do you not have a bank account? Or use a smart phone? EVERYthing we do is in the cloud now. It sounds like you read that part of the piece, but disagree with it... but what exactly do you disagree with? Having some portion of your collection in the cloud is *massively* useful in half a dozen ways - you're the first person I've encountered who actually expressed that it wasn't something you wanted at all.
> "someone else's computer"
Yes we all agree that that's what the cloud essentially is. It doesn't change how useful or attractive that model is.
I do landscape photography and time lapse photography. I don't need to collaborate with anyone over the internet. I have abundant local storage and backups. Keeping photos in the cloud and managing what is "hot" and "cold" doesn't serve a useful purpose for me. Accessing photos over the internet is way slower than local storage that is faster than 1 gigabyte per second, which comes in handy when processing hundreds of raw files for time lapse. Obviously, I've never been the target of this new branch of Lightroom. But "You (are forced to) use the cloud for other things so why not this one more thing" is not a valid argument in favor of something. And I further don't want to just give other people control over my data unnecessarily by placing it in remote storage managed by someone else when there's just no reason for it.
The cloud is not some magical thing that makes everything more useful and better by default. There are practical tradeoffs in some use cases and there are legit concerns for privacy. And if Adobe messes up your data, or that of a few other customers, they might say "whoops, sorry!" but they know your loss isn't going to have a meaningful impact on people fleeing their service because you or I are too small for them to care.
I have direct knowledge of data being destroyed in a cloud environment which was the result of the way that cloud storage was structured and attempts to manage what was on what tier of access (and thus cost). When everything costs money all the time, it requires you to manage what is the hot storage and what is the cold storage, to use Adobe's terms, and it introduces opportunities for mistakes to be made. I cannot give specifics due to NDAs, but I work by day in film and tv and we deal with huge quantities of data on the cloud. It's not foolproof. Assume everything works perfectly and your data will be always protected at your peril.
Hi Scot, thanks for this interesting and thorough examination of the pros & cons comparing the two versions. I'll reflect on your points here, but a couple of things up front:
I'm probably not really much of a power user, in part since I'm not a working pro. So I haven't invested in really trying to optimize my UX habits with the software. I've also been woefully negligent in adding metadata to my images. And I can totally envision advantages to a cloud based workflow — no question. It does look like there are ways to sync with the cloud selectively using collections in LRC? That's something I may end up looking into.
Finally, to wrap up the TLDR part of my comment, I've never tried using LR (vs LRC), so yeah, in a certain sense beyond comparisons such as yours, I don't know what I'm missing. But I also don't feel any real impetus to explore it either, despite the advantages you extoll — perverse of me I know!
Now I'll just jot down any comments I have as I go through your post:
- In terms of being "locked into" one version or another, sounds like LR is more sticky that way since as you note they make migrating to LRC more difficult than the other way around?
- On some level I believe all versions are probably leveraging the same underlying platform as such? Adobe Camera Raw seems like the core of it, otherwise the different versions are layering content management and UX stuff on top of that? But of course not to minimize the disparities and extra effort to maintain those layers. But it's not necessarily uncommon for platforms to maintain different development teams for different delivery platforms either — the company I work has separate teams for Web, Android and iOS. AFAIK there are no plans to somehow merge those (although these are of course just the FE clients, with the bulk of functionality really existing on the BE).
- For myself, I'm not concerned about the looming convergence, if in fact that comes to pass. That is, I'll deal with it when and if I'm forced to. Stubborn of me, I know!
- With regards to the "Classic" name … well Coca Cola went through some pain with that. But I don't know whether the "New" coke is still a thing or not … did they finally just lose the "Classic" label once they backtracked? With regards to innovation parity, I think that's attributable to all flavors sharing the same fundamental engine, and I noted above.
- With respect to migration, it would be nice if Adobe made it easy to move in either direction. Crippling one migration direction again seems like a kind of lock-in.
- With respect to trusting the cloud, yeah I wouldn't be intrinsically concerned with Adobe safeguarding my images. But there are a few aspects to that that do give me a little pause:
1. Presumably if I stop paying Adobe, after some period of time they will delete my images? Arguably if for whatever reason that happens, maybe I don't care about them anymore anyway … but if there's a hard drive on my desk, it's not subject to evaporating (or not in that way at least).
2. I recall hearing about a Google user who lost access to their cloud data because he shared an image with their pediatrician — which Google flagged as child pornography. And his many appeals and corroboration of that benign fact failed to move them. I don't know if Adobe is scanning your images for those sorts of reasons — do you?
3. You mention that of course you're free to (and should) make your own backup. Does LR make that easy in the file ingestion process? I presume you have some way you do that?
- But I do agree with your basic assertion, that there are inherent advantages in our multi-location multi-device world to cloud based solutions, and we shouldn't really fear them.
Part II (btw, I just looked for a section labelled "Part I" ;-))
- Info panel: ok, full disclosure, I have done woefully little with metadata. But at a glance those functions seem pretty accessible in LRC? They are a persistent part of the right hand tool palette for me, so not really seeing an issue with that?
- Modern UI Paradigms: yeah, I agree about the lack of love given those secondary dialogs and such. But I also don't care about that very much.
- Keyboardability: I like being able to just hit Tab to hide the UI in LRC. I've kinda forgotten some of the keyboard shortcuts otherwise over time due to the fact again I haven't been much of a power user. "F" is also nice for full screen mode — I presume that's also present in LR.
- Profile: I only ever choose between the basic ones which are directly available in the profile dropdown … so personally not a limitation _for me_ in LRC
- The Mosaic Grid does look pretty schmexy, but I don't feel like I'm really missing out on something key either. I am a little curious what algorithm it uses for laying those images out that way — seems like it must sometimes be cropping out bits of images to make them fit that way?
- Catalogs and Collections -> Folders and Albums: as I understand it, in LRC the catalog is where your edits are usually persisted (a DB effectively)? I am curious how that works in LR — I think I just read that every file you work with in LR is duplicated as a DNG (is that right?). Seems like LRC paradigm is more storage conservative if so — I know you can also persist edits as sidecar files as opposed to duplicating the whole image as well.
- I don't do printing at home, so I've never explored that ability in LRC. But I do use tethered capture when scanning my slides from my digital camera, and that is super useful. This would be a deal breaker for me if I couldn't do that.
- Map module: I don't understand your argument here — how could visually selecting a location on a graphical representation of a map not be easier than getting the GPS coordinates through other means first (assuming it's not already metadata)? I haven't actually used it (to my detriment), but I also fail to see how it is in the way, or less useful or intuitive.
- Navigation strip: I get your point about that navigation strip taking up a fair bit of real estate for not much purpose. To date I've only ever toggled between "Library" and "Develop" (but again, kinda keen about that "Map" thing!). While you can't entirely get rid of it, it's also pretty easy to collapse to a thin bar. Keyboard shortcuts can then supply what you'd be missing graphically.
- I like and use Virtual Copies quite a bit. Since I haven't used LR, I don't know how that compares to "Versions". So … I'd argue sometimes more is more?
- Local Storage and Visible File Management: Yeah, I never actually liked that DB sort've thing in Apple Photos, which is a reason I never delved into it. I like the classic desktop metaphor as such, where a file is a file, and I can see where that is, and what it's named. Maybe I'm just wrong and old to feel that way.
- Catalogs: I'll admit that for the longest time I was "using" catalogs completely wrong. I've started to explore using them in a more useful way — effectively for organizing images across my file system into discrete projects — a kind of virtual organization. I look forward to doing more of that. If LR doesn't allow that I'd call this an advantage for LRC.
- In-App Trash definitely sounds like an improvement, especially if you also have the option to immediately irreversibly purge them anyway. Sounds like an improvement over having to search for images in the system trash and re-import them.
> But I also don't feel any real impetus to explore it either, despite the advantages you extoll — perverse of me I know!
Ironic! My main goal here really was to encourage Classic users to take a step back and consider spending some QT with Lightroom - long enough to realize that it's not just changes and "missing things" - there are also a lot of genuine advantages beyond the cloud aspect! But I realize as I see comments come in that there is more resistance (or is it momentum?) than I realized out there.
> In terms of being "locked into" one version or another, sounds like LR is more sticky that way since as you note they make migrating to LRC more difficult than the other way around?
> Crippling one migration direction again seems like a kind of lock-in.
Definitely. I see it as nothing more than a clear strategy decision by Adobe to usher users in a direction toward the future platform, and away from "going backwards." I could be wrong, but it feels intentional and therefore strategic to me.
> On some level I believe all versions are probably leveraging the same underlying platform as such?
For sure - I think there must be a ton of shared modules and functionality below the surface for masking, color management, etc. It would be almost impossible to maintain both if that weren't the case.
> the company I work has separate teams for Web, Android and iOS. AFAIK there are no plans to somehow merge those
I think that's different though. Your web and Android teams are making really different products for different use cases that will never be the same use case. LR/Classic on the other hand is a single platform for a single use case (Digital Asset Management and photo editor) that has (I think) temporarily bifurcated.
> 1. Presumably if I stop paying Adobe, after some period of time they will delete my images?
Certainly - but also you would certainly download them all to have a full local copy (with .xmp files) before canceling. Anyone canceling without doing that is basically asking to lose everything, IMO.
> which Google flagged as child pornography.
I remember that story - horrible. I haven't heard of Adobe doing this, but it wouldn't entirely shock me if they were being required to by feds? You're right, this is a valid concern.
> You mention that of course you're free to (and should) make your own backup.
There are two ways - you can copy every everything in Cloud storage to local storage on some periodic basis, or you can export your whole collection to a raw+edits dump. However, you're right that at this point those would not be automatic processes - they'd have to be done manually. However, users are free to use Lightroom in local-only mode, in which case this situation is no different than Classic.
> Info panel - They are a persistent part of the right hand tool palette for me, so not really seeing an issue with that?
Sort of. Again, LRc is including things that don't belong there ("Quick Edit") and leaving out things that do belong there, like Location. And the UI for the Metadata in Lightroom is just cleaner and more prominent (a minor difference I suppose but it counts to me). And LR has a keyboard shortcut for it where Classic does not.
> Profile: I only ever choose between the basic ones which are directly available in the profile dropdown … so personally not a limitation _for me_ in LRC
Right, but you don't have a keyboard shortcut to enter the Profiles browser, and it goes to list mode not thumbnail mode, so the usabilitiy just isn't there, IMO.
> schmexy
Love this new vocabulary word!
> The Mosaic Grid does look pretty schmexy, but I don't feel like I'm really missing out on something key either. I am a little curious what algorithm it uses for laying those images out that way — seems like it must sometimes be cropping out bits of images to make them fit that way
I can't put a screenshot in the comment here but I just did some testing and it looks like if you crop beyond a certain point it will add black bars to the thumbnail in order to preserve the mosaic.
> I think I just read that every file you work with in LR is duplicated as a DNG (is that right?).
That does not ring any bells and I don't see any evidence of it. I wonder what that person was referring to?
> as I understand it, in LRC the catalog is where your edits are usually persisted (a DB effectively)? I am curious how that works in LR
In cloud mode, the equivalent of your sidecar is in their cloud. In local mode, your .xmp file is there on your HDD. In neither case does the catalog help. Since catalogs have been a constant source of both confusion and performance issues over the years, I see Adobe's removal of them as very much intentional - it's not like a missing feature that Lightroom will eventually have. I see this as a strategy to slowly remove catalogs from the picture entirely. For searchability across images (which catalogs also provide), I mentioned that I can see them using SQLite or another hidden local auto-maintained db for that purpose.
> Tethering This would be a deal breaker for me if I couldn't do that.
Yeah I really do believe that tethering and printing are the two big remaining deal-breakers for serious users at this point - the rest of it is just a matter of difficult and thorny paradigm shifts.
> Map module:
There are really two aspects here: 1) The usefulness of being able to place an image onto a map by dragging (as you say) and 2) The relative uselessness (IMO) of being able to *see* all of your images on a map at once. You are right that there's a usability advantage in #1.
> I like and use Virtual Copies quite a bit. Since I haven't used LR, I don't know how that compares to "Versions". So … I'd argue sometimes more is more?
I'm seeing a lot of feedback from people who don't see Versions as an adequate replacement for the combination of Virtual Copies and Snapshots. I can see why they wanted to consolidate two similar features into one, but it sounds like people really like that Virtual Copies resulted in multiple thumbnails in the grid, which Versions does not do.
> Seeing where local files are and what theyir names are - "and what it's named. Maybe I'm just wrong and old to feel that way."
LOL not old and wrong - I just can't figure out a use case where it's useful, and it just feels like if they can automate away a useles detail, they ought to. This is an interesting one, as it seems like an awful lot of Classic users like the old way, but can't say why they think it's useful.
> Catalogs: If LR doesn't allow that I'd call this an advantage for LRC.
Even without cataglogs, there is zero limitation or restriction on what folders on my computer I can point Lightroom's local storage to. I just drag in folders from wherever and they're there. I don't see how catalogs are necessary to that functionality. And I give Adobe credit that their engineers are really smart and that they're removing catalogs because they're smart, not because they forgot to add them.
I started using Lightroom more regularly, particularly with an iPad when traveling. There’s a lot to like and you can do a lot with it but it’s still missing features, and it’s been ages since it’s been out now.
I want to switch but until it has feature parity for some of the key features of LRC then I don’t think I’ll ever completely make the jump.
Using Lightroom on the iPad would have you using Lightroom Mobile, which is a very different app from Lightroom on the desktop. It's nice in its own ways but is not the subject of my article! I should actually make that clear in the intro.
Did you disagree with my assessment of the features and their current state of parity/where we need to go to get there?
I'm pretty fixated on Capture One as my go-to editor, but I look forward to the days Adobe improves their business practices and Lightroom becomes a more viable product for me.
I tried so hard to make Capture One work for me, but I found the workflow didn't compare to Lightroom's. Separate view for culling? No thank you. And no way to put the Info panel as front-and-center as it is in Lightroom (I have the same issue with Classic).
Thanks for bringing up that LR can now use local photo storage, that is one red flag taken down. With not 20,000, but over a million photos, cloud storage is no option, unless it can be my own cloud, which coincidentally is my NAS.
But you also raised the next red flag: I use search for photo retrieval. It has to search my full catalog, on all drives. Otherwise I can not call it a photo management system. when I search for "1248264245", I want to exactly see the six photos that have that tag. No more, no less.
Which database is used is not relevant, as long as it works. The Classic keyword search system is amazing. It is one of the only parts of Classic that works at an acceptable, even decent, speed. I would like AI to soon also add keywords to my photos. In fact, I would like to teach it how and which keywords to add to my catalog, and to learn and remember which animals are not cats (to use your example).
That would make me happy. That, and speed increases.
Thanks for the comment Mike. Local photo storage in LR is interesting - you can connect any drive or folder, but it does not involve catalogs, which avoids a lot of user confusion.
It's true that search in LR is either "in the cloud" or "local" but not both at once. I'm sure that unifying that eventually is on their road map - I'd love to see that too.
I don't see any advantage to Classic's keywords system relative to Lightroom's unless the "tag nesting" feature is important to you (but it doesn't work when you export to a JPG and bring that into another app or viewer, so I kind of prefer the flat system).
Having transparency over how AI is being used for/in search would be amazing. But even without it, search in Lightroom is SO much more powerful than it is in Classic.
I love the improved speed in LR over Classic!
I'm a Classic nerd and have been annoyed by everything you described where Lightroom has the advantage. But not so much that I've considered migrating until reading your post. That said, it's now a year+ old, so what's changed?
I do a lot of printing in my studio and many of my photos are in Collections. I often do a first pass noise edit in DxO Pure Raw, replace skies in Luminar Neo and occasionally dip into Photoshop for things I just can't do in Classic. Oh, and I have a single catalog with nearly 100,000 images in it.
Am I stuck in Classic until the Convergence? Or is it time to dive in?
I wish I could say more has changed in the past year than actually has - we're not at convergence yet. No printing yet, for example. Lightroom's Denoise is so good I'm surprised you're still interested in DxO for that. With the partial plugin support you should be able to do round-trip editing between Lightroom and Neo or Photoshop.
As for 100,000 images, your choices would be to either:
0) Cull and delete the cruft like crazy :)
1) Pay a bunch of $ to upgrade from the 1TB to the 3TB plan
2) Keep the past year and your best images in the cloud, but use Lightroom's local storage for everything else.
I'm approaching the limits of my 1TB plan and am starting to go for the mixed local + cloud approach (#2). It works very well, but can sometimes mean having to search for something twice, which isn't great.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks Scot. Looks like I’ll wait but do the cull and cleanup anyway as I know there is plenty of cruft! In the meantime, I’m researching moving fully into the DxO ecosystem - soup to nuts. Starting with what I’d lose or be able to discontinue (i.e. will I still need PS or does DxO plus available add ons do the job?). Wish me luck 😎
Interesting... I haven't even considered that. I'm pretty locked in and loving plain Lightroom for now.
Good luck on the culling project too - that's zen satisfaction. I have another piece dedicated to the practice of intentional culling, if interested:
https://framespotting.substack.com/p/the-minimalist-approach-to-managing
Great piece! I guess I’m a newbie, because it’s Lightroom all day for me 😂
Thanks! I’m not a newbie anymore, but I’m still Lightroom all the way, and really struggle to understand the appeal of Classic when Lightroom has gotten so good.
Thanks for the comparison. It focuses fully on data basing and accessibility and search features but I wonder how they compare in terms of actual editing of raw files. Are there differences in editing options and quality? LRC and only local here.
No, there are no differences in quality. It’s all the same underlying code - just with a very different interface and workflow, updated for modern times.
Ok. Thanks. I’ll give it a try. So far I was under the impression that it was the same as the mobile version so thanks for clarifying that.
Ah! Common misconception, but no connection there. Enjoy!
Super in depth, Scot, thank you!
As a Classic user, I've never even considered using Lightroom, but your analysis certainly has me considering it.
Being old school, I'll probably wait for the convergence but I'd certainly open to trying some new options.
Thanks again!
Thanks Chris! Really glad you enjoyed the piece. The whole point was to get some Classic users to give LR some consideration, so am pleased to hear that landed with you. Cheers!
On maps in Classic
1) I find maps very intuitive (much more than names of places) and have a good memory for locations, so sometime to find a photo I’ll just look where I took it on the map.
2) To geotag, I take a gpx file of my photoshoot and Classic auto tags all the photos based on the time stamps. Still a bit clunky, but so much better than copy and pasting latitude and longitude.
Keep in mind that you can still look at where your photo is on a map in Lightroom - you just can't see where all of them at once are on a map.
That's a great point about GPX file support - I should have thought of covering that. In fact I think I'll change my "winner" vote for that category on that basis.
Just having the location of one photo on the map is certainly useful at times. But for me there are a couple of use cases I really appreciate many photos on a map (either in LR Classic or Apple photos):
1) I want to find that photo of say a lake I know I took from a particular hill - I can view all my photos on a map and quickly find it. Sure, keywords might help, but I don’t do that these days and it’s not how my brain works. Places stick better than names.
2) For favourite locations I revisit, it’s easy to see all my photos from a particular place in one view - to see changes through time. Again, you might accomplish that by keywords, but I like being able to select by location - and have sold a few photos from being able to do so.
Thanks for an interesting and thought provoking article. I should check out Lightroom again sometime, as I agree it’s going to be the only (Adobe) choice at some point. If these features don’t get added in, there must be another auto tagging GPX solution out there, and Apple photos is better for viewing on a map anyway (just less convenient to go from that to editing)
Hi Tim - Just for clarity - it sounds like you are mostly talking about fundability, and I completely agree. But here's the thing - whether I type the word "Oakland" into the City field or paste in a GPS coordinate aligned with Oakland, or drag the image onto a map of Oakland, the future findability is going to be exactly the same. If you want to find your Oakland images, you're going to type the word "Oakland" into the search bar - you're not going to bring up a giant map of the world and then zoom down to see what images were shot in Oakland. Right? So I really don't see how you're making an argument for Classic's big old Map view over Lightroom's smaller single-image map view - the future findability is identical either way.
I'm with you on hoping on hoping for a future GPX feature! That might be a good candidate for a plugin too.
Thanks, Scot for your in depth comparison. As a user of both Lr and LrC I have been sitting on the fence for a while. It’s the lack of plugin support and virtual copies in Lr that is the final thing holding me back. While I get that Versions provides the same things as virtual copies in Lr, I prefer having them as separate images in my catalogue, rather than having to remember they are there. I am ready to take the plunge across to Lr, as find LrC quite unwieldy at times but these are the final points holding me back. As you say, I expect Adobe to address much of these soon 🤞🏻
Thanks for reading. I think you make a great point about how Versions doesn't really fill the gap left from the absence of Virtual Copies, and that they need to sew that up. Hopefully soon!
Clearly, you’ve never used nested keywords. I cannot use any of my keywords in Lr CC.
Hey Jason - One of the main things I bring with my perspective is that I've been a solid user of both platforms, so nothing I say is (hopefully!) uninformed or under informed. Why do you say "clearly you've never use nested" when I talk about their advantages in the piece?
Unless I read wrong, you stated that key wording in Lr is better. I disagree. I’ve come close to using Lr while traveling a few times, but the lack of key wording is a deal breaker for bird photography.
However it is still baffling to me that Adobe hasn’t merged these applications yet. I have zero desire to rely on an internet connection to manage my photos, but I find great utility in leveraging the cloud when I’m traveling. I’ve been encouraged by Adobe adding the ability to work with local files instead of requiring everything to be uploaded to the cloud server.
I think they really need to get all their developers in a room and lock the door until they standardize features between Lightroom (all flavors) and Photoshop. I mean, whose idea was it to use CMD-K to invoke the brush tool in Lr? Did the Photoshop developers threaten to sue?
Mmm, not quite. That was the one category to which I did *not* award a winner, and in it I said "Classic may have the upper hand in functionality here, but honestly, it feels kind of overkill." I then went on to list its pros and cons. IOTW I could go either way with the winning approach here. If they do go with nested in the converged product, I hope they find a way to simplify the UI - we shouldn't need four sub-modules to support that functionality.
I agree about how baffling it is that the convergence is taking so long! Hopefully we'll start to see a groundswell of interest from users looking forward to and to the years-long confusion.
Given my use of three different drives and over 10TB of photos, I continue to prefer Classic while remaining baffled by Adobe’s direction for the product line(s). I’m glad they’re offering direct plugin support now in Lr. Sometimes I just scratch my head.
Hey Scot. Thanks for being brave and stirring up the hornet's nest on this one!
I'm with you on most of your assertions. LrC is too slow, too clunky, too old-fashioned these days. I'm completely addicted to how Lr manages everything in the cloud - instant access to everything from my Mac, PC, iPad and iPhone. That's very hard to accomplish cleanly when LrC is in the mix. Syncing always seems to break.
That said, there are a few things that I wish they'd bring over from LrC that would make me very happy:
1. Better control over import. It's an inconsistent experience between Lr desktop and Lr mobile. On mobile, you can at least filter between RAW and JPG/HIF and choose what to import easily enough. On desktop, there's no filter. There's no way to zoom into a thumbnail to pick which of the 14 identical-but-somehow-subtly-different photos *should* be imported.
2. Being able to handle RAW/JPG pairs as one (at least from a metadata perspective). LrC does it. Capture One does it. Photo Mechanic does it. Apple Photos does it. C'mon Lr!
3. Virtual copies. I *love* the ability to have a virtual copy of my photos. Often I'll tinker with multiple processing choices for a photo and it's useful to see them all side by side. Sure, Versions can emulate that (a little), it still won't allow for side-by-side viewing. On the back-end, it's just another XMP sidecar linking back to a common RAW file. Sure, we can duplicate photos, but in the era of 100MB RAW files, that starts adding up. XMP files are (thankfully) still measured in kilobytes.
3a. If you can't give me virtual copies, please give me the ability to auto-stack based on my criteria of choice (like date captured or base filename).
4. Metadata handling. Why (WHY???) is the Caption field only one line and not resizeable? In the same vein, why are Alt Text and Extended Description 2 and 4 lines big and unable to handle multiline text? I understand the need to make accessibility fields more visible (and more likely to be used), but why did they put them in at the expense of the Caption field (which actually gets used). That's just bad UI.
5. Maps. Sure, you can copy & paste a GPS coordinate from your favourite maps app onto one or many photos, but there's a certain elegance with being able to shift-click or cmd-click a bunch of photos and drag them onto a specific spot on a map. This is also REALLY useful for spotting inaccurately tagged photos and quickly placing them where they ought to be, without jumping around to multiple apps & websites.
6. More export options, specifically around variable-based file naming. It would be nice to append keywords automatically at export time as well.
Overall, you're right: Lr has come a long way. As a longtime LrC user who went on hiatus a while ago and came back to the Lr ecosystem, I've come to appreciate Lr and cannot use LrC anymore. It just feels too old and limited esp. wrt cloud integration.
Thanks Eric - Felt good to finally get this all down on paper and out there into the world. Turned out it was impossible to say it all concisely, unfortunately. A few responses to your feedback:
1) I just import everything and use my culling workflow to remove what I don't want (and I format every time) so I haven't encountered those, but good points.
2) Interesting. Isn't the idea that if you are importing both, that you hide RAW unless you need to access a RAW for more control? (I shoot RAW only so had not noticed this).
3) I have a section here on Versions vs Virtual Copies + Snapshots. I do appreciate why Adobe simplified those two confusing and overlapping features. Are you not liking the Versions that replace Virtual Copies?
4) I agree about the arbitrary-ness of those field sizes.
5) I did address that point - to me I don't see the advantage of dragging onto map vs either typing in a city or pasting in coords. But you're right about being able to visually see if one got missed for example.
6) I sure would like title to be one of the options for file naming during export!
Following up...
1) I shoot RAW+JPEG but use the RAW 99.5% of the time. So why even bother with the JPG? Because I like to shoot in different aspect ratios (square, 5:4 etc.) and compose in camera. Fujifilm doesn't let me choose an aspect ratio unless I'm also saving in JPG or HEIF format. When I know I'm not going to use the JPG, I'd rather not import it at all, and the current import dialog on Lr desktop doesn't allow for filtering. iOS import actually has filtering ability.
Another point: I'll sometime review my photos in-camera and apply star ratings to the photos I *know* I'll want to keep. It would be neat for the import dialog to allow for filtering on star rating too
3) I see Versions as a great 1:1 replacement for Snapshots. A virtual copy can allow for multiple versions of the same photo to coexist (say, colour and B+W, different aspect ratios, etc.) each with their own metadata. Super practical.
Adobe can go to hell…and burn there !
I travel around rural and remote Australia, photographing everything that does and doesn't move.
Unfortunately, there is no connectivity once I drive more than five to ten kilometres outside a town/village, so I'll be sticking to classic.
I'm not forking out $200 a month to sign up for Starlink just to run Adobe software. That's a lot of beer!
It sounds like you think that Lightroom *requires* you to store everything in the cloud! While a cloud-first workflow was one of the original motivations for its creation, it has also supported local storage for the last year. So if you don't want to store in the cloud, you don't have to! You choose how much "hot storage" vs "cold storage" you want to work with at any given time. The point of the article though is to show how many *other* things about Lightroom are better than Classic, not just cloud stuff.
"In 2025, virtually everything we do is in the cloud. We use it daily in all walks of life, and have come to trust it implicitly. We’re long past the point of NOT using cloud storage for everything, and clearly that was the main event in Adobe’s initial split of Lightroom into two products."
Sorry there's just no reason other than Adobe wanting to extract more money out of users for people to be forced to use and pay for cloud storage using Lightroom. They could have built in functionality from the beginning to allow local storage but they chose not to. It's fine that some people find benefit from this approach, but I bet they are only just now finally offering local storage support in LR only reluctantly after realizing they are not going to get people like me to pay to pay rent to keep accessing my own photos for the convenience of cloud access I don't need or want. Remember you can always substitute "someone else's computer" for the word cloud to remind yourself that the popularity and ubiquity of cloud storage and services comes with additional risk, always.
Hmm, I don't see it that way at all. First of all, even with Classic you're paying Adobe monthly rent - you don't have to pay for storage to already be trapped in their monthly ransom game. Secondly, it makes sense to me that adding local storage is something that appeared around this time in the transition. With all of the core functionality in place, it's time to start attracting the Classic users to come over, and local storage is obviously a key piece of that.
> for the convenience of cloud access I don't need or want.
I'm surprised to read that part - do you not have a bank account? Or use a smart phone? EVERYthing we do is in the cloud now. It sounds like you read that part of the piece, but disagree with it... but what exactly do you disagree with? Having some portion of your collection in the cloud is *massively* useful in half a dozen ways - you're the first person I've encountered who actually expressed that it wasn't something you wanted at all.
> "someone else's computer"
Yes we all agree that that's what the cloud essentially is. It doesn't change how useful or attractive that model is.
I do landscape photography and time lapse photography. I don't need to collaborate with anyone over the internet. I have abundant local storage and backups. Keeping photos in the cloud and managing what is "hot" and "cold" doesn't serve a useful purpose for me. Accessing photos over the internet is way slower than local storage that is faster than 1 gigabyte per second, which comes in handy when processing hundreds of raw files for time lapse. Obviously, I've never been the target of this new branch of Lightroom. But "You (are forced to) use the cloud for other things so why not this one more thing" is not a valid argument in favor of something. And I further don't want to just give other people control over my data unnecessarily by placing it in remote storage managed by someone else when there's just no reason for it.
The cloud is not some magical thing that makes everything more useful and better by default. There are practical tradeoffs in some use cases and there are legit concerns for privacy. And if Adobe messes up your data, or that of a few other customers, they might say "whoops, sorry!" but they know your loss isn't going to have a meaningful impact on people fleeing their service because you or I are too small for them to care.
I have direct knowledge of data being destroyed in a cloud environment which was the result of the way that cloud storage was structured and attempts to manage what was on what tier of access (and thus cost). When everything costs money all the time, it requires you to manage what is the hot storage and what is the cold storage, to use Adobe's terms, and it introduces opportunities for mistakes to be made. I cannot give specifics due to NDAs, but I work by day in film and tv and we deal with huge quantities of data on the cloud. It's not foolproof. Assume everything works perfectly and your data will be always protected at your peril.
Hi Scot, thanks for this interesting and thorough examination of the pros & cons comparing the two versions. I'll reflect on your points here, but a couple of things up front:
I'm probably not really much of a power user, in part since I'm not a working pro. So I haven't invested in really trying to optimize my UX habits with the software. I've also been woefully negligent in adding metadata to my images. And I can totally envision advantages to a cloud based workflow — no question. It does look like there are ways to sync with the cloud selectively using collections in LRC? That's something I may end up looking into.
Finally, to wrap up the TLDR part of my comment, I've never tried using LR (vs LRC), so yeah, in a certain sense beyond comparisons such as yours, I don't know what I'm missing. But I also don't feel any real impetus to explore it either, despite the advantages you extoll — perverse of me I know!
Now I'll just jot down any comments I have as I go through your post:
- In terms of being "locked into" one version or another, sounds like LR is more sticky that way since as you note they make migrating to LRC more difficult than the other way around?
- On some level I believe all versions are probably leveraging the same underlying platform as such? Adobe Camera Raw seems like the core of it, otherwise the different versions are layering content management and UX stuff on top of that? But of course not to minimize the disparities and extra effort to maintain those layers. But it's not necessarily uncommon for platforms to maintain different development teams for different delivery platforms either — the company I work has separate teams for Web, Android and iOS. AFAIK there are no plans to somehow merge those (although these are of course just the FE clients, with the bulk of functionality really existing on the BE).
- For myself, I'm not concerned about the looming convergence, if in fact that comes to pass. That is, I'll deal with it when and if I'm forced to. Stubborn of me, I know!
- With regards to the "Classic" name … well Coca Cola went through some pain with that. But I don't know whether the "New" coke is still a thing or not … did they finally just lose the "Classic" label once they backtracked? With regards to innovation parity, I think that's attributable to all flavors sharing the same fundamental engine, and I noted above.
- With respect to migration, it would be nice if Adobe made it easy to move in either direction. Crippling one migration direction again seems like a kind of lock-in.
- With respect to trusting the cloud, yeah I wouldn't be intrinsically concerned with Adobe safeguarding my images. But there are a few aspects to that that do give me a little pause:
1. Presumably if I stop paying Adobe, after some period of time they will delete my images? Arguably if for whatever reason that happens, maybe I don't care about them anymore anyway … but if there's a hard drive on my desk, it's not subject to evaporating (or not in that way at least).
2. I recall hearing about a Google user who lost access to their cloud data because he shared an image with their pediatrician — which Google flagged as child pornography. And his many appeals and corroboration of that benign fact failed to move them. I don't know if Adobe is scanning your images for those sorts of reasons — do you?
3. You mention that of course you're free to (and should) make your own backup. Does LR make that easy in the file ingestion process? I presume you have some way you do that?
- But I do agree with your basic assertion, that there are inherent advantages in our multi-location multi-device world to cloud based solutions, and we shouldn't really fear them.
Part II (btw, I just looked for a section labelled "Part I" ;-))
- Info panel: ok, full disclosure, I have done woefully little with metadata. But at a glance those functions seem pretty accessible in LRC? They are a persistent part of the right hand tool palette for me, so not really seeing an issue with that?
- Modern UI Paradigms: yeah, I agree about the lack of love given those secondary dialogs and such. But I also don't care about that very much.
- Keyboardability: I like being able to just hit Tab to hide the UI in LRC. I've kinda forgotten some of the keyboard shortcuts otherwise over time due to the fact again I haven't been much of a power user. "F" is also nice for full screen mode — I presume that's also present in LR.
- Profile: I only ever choose between the basic ones which are directly available in the profile dropdown … so personally not a limitation _for me_ in LRC
- The Mosaic Grid does look pretty schmexy, but I don't feel like I'm really missing out on something key either. I am a little curious what algorithm it uses for laying those images out that way — seems like it must sometimes be cropping out bits of images to make them fit that way?
- Catalogs and Collections -> Folders and Albums: as I understand it, in LRC the catalog is where your edits are usually persisted (a DB effectively)? I am curious how that works in LR — I think I just read that every file you work with in LR is duplicated as a DNG (is that right?). Seems like LRC paradigm is more storage conservative if so — I know you can also persist edits as sidecar files as opposed to duplicating the whole image as well.
- I don't do printing at home, so I've never explored that ability in LRC. But I do use tethered capture when scanning my slides from my digital camera, and that is super useful. This would be a deal breaker for me if I couldn't do that.
- Map module: I don't understand your argument here — how could visually selecting a location on a graphical representation of a map not be easier than getting the GPS coordinates through other means first (assuming it's not already metadata)? I haven't actually used it (to my detriment), but I also fail to see how it is in the way, or less useful or intuitive.
- Navigation strip: I get your point about that navigation strip taking up a fair bit of real estate for not much purpose. To date I've only ever toggled between "Library" and "Develop" (but again, kinda keen about that "Map" thing!). While you can't entirely get rid of it, it's also pretty easy to collapse to a thin bar. Keyboard shortcuts can then supply what you'd be missing graphically.
- I like and use Virtual Copies quite a bit. Since I haven't used LR, I don't know how that compares to "Versions". So … I'd argue sometimes more is more?
- Local Storage and Visible File Management: Yeah, I never actually liked that DB sort've thing in Apple Photos, which is a reason I never delved into it. I like the classic desktop metaphor as such, where a file is a file, and I can see where that is, and what it's named. Maybe I'm just wrong and old to feel that way.
- Catalogs: I'll admit that for the longest time I was "using" catalogs completely wrong. I've started to explore using them in a more useful way — effectively for organizing images across my file system into discrete projects — a kind of virtual organization. I look forward to doing more of that. If LR doesn't allow that I'd call this an advantage for LRC.
- In-App Trash definitely sounds like an improvement, especially if you also have the option to immediately irreversibly purge them anyway. Sounds like an improvement over having to search for images in the system trash and re-import them.
- I like the History panel. I would miss it.
Thanks again for the interesting write-up!
> But I also don't feel any real impetus to explore it either, despite the advantages you extoll — perverse of me I know!
Ironic! My main goal here really was to encourage Classic users to take a step back and consider spending some QT with Lightroom - long enough to realize that it's not just changes and "missing things" - there are also a lot of genuine advantages beyond the cloud aspect! But I realize as I see comments come in that there is more resistance (or is it momentum?) than I realized out there.
> In terms of being "locked into" one version or another, sounds like LR is more sticky that way since as you note they make migrating to LRC more difficult than the other way around?
> Crippling one migration direction again seems like a kind of lock-in.
Definitely. I see it as nothing more than a clear strategy decision by Adobe to usher users in a direction toward the future platform, and away from "going backwards." I could be wrong, but it feels intentional and therefore strategic to me.
> On some level I believe all versions are probably leveraging the same underlying platform as such?
For sure - I think there must be a ton of shared modules and functionality below the surface for masking, color management, etc. It would be almost impossible to maintain both if that weren't the case.
> the company I work has separate teams for Web, Android and iOS. AFAIK there are no plans to somehow merge those
I think that's different though. Your web and Android teams are making really different products for different use cases that will never be the same use case. LR/Classic on the other hand is a single platform for a single use case (Digital Asset Management and photo editor) that has (I think) temporarily bifurcated.
> 1. Presumably if I stop paying Adobe, after some period of time they will delete my images?
Certainly - but also you would certainly download them all to have a full local copy (with .xmp files) before canceling. Anyone canceling without doing that is basically asking to lose everything, IMO.
> which Google flagged as child pornography.
I remember that story - horrible. I haven't heard of Adobe doing this, but it wouldn't entirely shock me if they were being required to by feds? You're right, this is a valid concern.
> You mention that of course you're free to (and should) make your own backup.
There are two ways - you can copy every everything in Cloud storage to local storage on some periodic basis, or you can export your whole collection to a raw+edits dump. However, you're right that at this point those would not be automatic processes - they'd have to be done manually. However, users are free to use Lightroom in local-only mode, in which case this situation is no different than Classic.
> Info panel - They are a persistent part of the right hand tool palette for me, so not really seeing an issue with that?
Sort of. Again, LRc is including things that don't belong there ("Quick Edit") and leaving out things that do belong there, like Location. And the UI for the Metadata in Lightroom is just cleaner and more prominent (a minor difference I suppose but it counts to me). And LR has a keyboard shortcut for it where Classic does not.
> Profile: I only ever choose between the basic ones which are directly available in the profile dropdown … so personally not a limitation _for me_ in LRC
Right, but you don't have a keyboard shortcut to enter the Profiles browser, and it goes to list mode not thumbnail mode, so the usabilitiy just isn't there, IMO.
> schmexy
Love this new vocabulary word!
> The Mosaic Grid does look pretty schmexy, but I don't feel like I'm really missing out on something key either. I am a little curious what algorithm it uses for laying those images out that way — seems like it must sometimes be cropping out bits of images to make them fit that way
I can't put a screenshot in the comment here but I just did some testing and it looks like if you crop beyond a certain point it will add black bars to the thumbnail in order to preserve the mosaic.
> I think I just read that every file you work with in LR is duplicated as a DNG (is that right?).
That does not ring any bells and I don't see any evidence of it. I wonder what that person was referring to?
> as I understand it, in LRC the catalog is where your edits are usually persisted (a DB effectively)? I am curious how that works in LR
In cloud mode, the equivalent of your sidecar is in their cloud. In local mode, your .xmp file is there on your HDD. In neither case does the catalog help. Since catalogs have been a constant source of both confusion and performance issues over the years, I see Adobe's removal of them as very much intentional - it's not like a missing feature that Lightroom will eventually have. I see this as a strategy to slowly remove catalogs from the picture entirely. For searchability across images (which catalogs also provide), I mentioned that I can see them using SQLite or another hidden local auto-maintained db for that purpose.
> Tethering This would be a deal breaker for me if I couldn't do that.
Yeah I really do believe that tethering and printing are the two big remaining deal-breakers for serious users at this point - the rest of it is just a matter of difficult and thorny paradigm shifts.
> Map module:
There are really two aspects here: 1) The usefulness of being able to place an image onto a map by dragging (as you say) and 2) The relative uselessness (IMO) of being able to *see* all of your images on a map at once. You are right that there's a usability advantage in #1.
> I like and use Virtual Copies quite a bit. Since I haven't used LR, I don't know how that compares to "Versions". So … I'd argue sometimes more is more?
I'm seeing a lot of feedback from people who don't see Versions as an adequate replacement for the combination of Virtual Copies and Snapshots. I can see why they wanted to consolidate two similar features into one, but it sounds like people really like that Virtual Copies resulted in multiple thumbnails in the grid, which Versions does not do.
> Seeing where local files are and what theyir names are - "and what it's named. Maybe I'm just wrong and old to feel that way."
LOL not old and wrong - I just can't figure out a use case where it's useful, and it just feels like if they can automate away a useles detail, they ought to. This is an interesting one, as it seems like an awful lot of Classic users like the old way, but can't say why they think it's useful.
> Catalogs: If LR doesn't allow that I'd call this an advantage for LRC.
Even without cataglogs, there is zero limitation or restriction on what folders on my computer I can point Lightroom's local storage to. I just drag in folders from wherever and they're there. I don't see how catalogs are necessary to that functionality. And I give Adobe credit that their engineers are really smart and that they're removing catalogs because they're smart, not because they forgot to add them.
I started using Lightroom more regularly, particularly with an iPad when traveling. There’s a lot to like and you can do a lot with it but it’s still missing features, and it’s been ages since it’s been out now.
I want to switch but until it has feature parity for some of the key features of LRC then I don’t think I’ll ever completely make the jump.
Using Lightroom on the iPad would have you using Lightroom Mobile, which is a very different app from Lightroom on the desktop. It's nice in its own ways but is not the subject of my article! I should actually make that clear in the intro.
Did you disagree with my assessment of the features and their current state of parity/where we need to go to get there?
Sorry, I should say I use both. I’ve given the desktop version a lot of time as well and the same argument on my end still stands.