Which version of Lightroom?

[billtils]

After decades of happy and successful use of CaptureOne Pro for catalog and basic editing and Affinity Photo for advanced editing I am moving away from both. With Affinity the reason was that the last update I tried crashed about every other time I used it and I took a look at PS and loved it. Capture One was a bit more complex as my concern was not about functionality but cost - LR is included in the Adobe subscription and CaptureOne keep increasing their prices to where keeping it would more than double my outlay. The difference itself is not a problem but in principle there's no point in paying twice for the same tool.

However, it seems that there are two versions of LR and I'm not sure where to go. My workflow is to create a file on my computer, download to it, convert the RAWs to JPEG, edit to a reasonable degree, and round trip to a more powerful editor for those that need more work.

I thought LR would do the trick but it seems there are 2 versions - Classic and another one ...


(Just in case any C1 user wants to chip in, yes I know that you can get a perpetual licence and I haven't entirely discounted that option).


Bill

[DanK]

Classic. Lightroom (sans classic) is a cloud editing program that is getting better but isn't completely up to the level of Lightroom Classic or Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). Lightroom Classic and ACR are the same processing engine, but packaged with a different user interface. Lightroom Classic also has numerous features that ACR doesn't have, like a very powerful cataloging tool and an excellent print module that is far simpler than printing in Photoshop.

So if you are used to keeping your photos on the computer, then the local (Classic) version is the way to go.

You get all of these and Photoshop with the basic photographer's package, which in the US costs $10/month. There is a more expensive version, but it's the same software with more cloud storage (which) I don't use.

I do virtually all of my processing with just three packages: Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Zerene (for focus stacking).

[billtils]

I just won a bet with myself, namely that the the first reply would be exactly what I wanted and would be from DanK!

Thanks Dan, that's me nicely sorted - you even dealt with my unasked question of "Where does ACR fit in to all this?"

[DanK]

Bill,

Glad it was what you needed. LR has become far more powerful over the last few years, so there's a lot to learn. However, if you post questions here, I or others here can probably answer most of them.

Dan

[pnodrog]

I went from LR6 Lifetime license to the subscription product about a 2 years ago. initially I tried Lightroom but it fell so far short of my expectations that I switched to Lightroom Classic after a few days. A few years ago I was pretty anti the subscription model but so long as they keep the monthly sub reasonably low (a coffee a week) I am happy and it keeps me up to date.

[pschlute]

My workflow is to create a file on my computer, download to it, convert the RAWs to JPEG, edit to a reasonable degree, and round trip to a more powerful editor for those that need more work.

Although the interface of both LR and Photoshop/ACR have become more similar in recent years it may be helpful for you to understand some important differences in how they work.

In LR any edits you do in the Develop module are not actually saved in the original file. They are saved in a separate LR file. When you view the photo in the LR Library, the picture will always appear with your edits, but if you want to actually save the edits to the original or a new renamed file, you have to Export the image.

The Export function allows you to choose filenames/image type (TIFF, JPEG etc/colour space/image size/output sharpening and a few other things.

.................................................. ...................

In Photoshop/ACR any edits you do to an image need to be saved (save or save as) to preserve those edits.

Although the end result is the same, if you have not used LR before you may be scrambling around looking for the "save" command..... there isn't one.

Coming from Photoshop Elements prior to the Adobe Photography plan, I found it more intuitive to use ACR to process my raw files, open them in PS and do any more edits, before saving the working file as a TIFF and producing a JPEG end product from that (after resizing/colour profiling/output sharpening. I then import the DNG+TIFF+JPEG into LR, stack them so only the finished JPEG shows in normal view.

I use the Classic version of LR as a catalogue with albums and keywords, but rarely for editing.

[DanK]

Peter makes good points. Understanding the underlying logic of Lightroom (and ACR) is important. They don't change pixels in a file. Rather, they accumulate editing instructions ("parameters") that they apply in real time to display the edited image for you and on command ("export" in lightroom, as Peter says) to produce a new file incorporating those edits when you need those new files.

this will be a bit long, but....

However, unlike Peter, I find this a big advantage, for several reasons. One is that I don't have a lot of different files with different versions of my photos cluttering up my hard drive. For example, I almost never use JPEGs except to display photos on the web or a computer, and virtually none of those I display that way are stored on my computer. The JPEGs I show here are linked from Smugmug. Lightroom will "publish" directly to Smugmug, but I find that kludgy. Instead, I use a nifty plug-in by Jeffry Friedl that adds a section to the Export dialog to create a JPEG for smugmug. I just select the image, tell LR to export to Smugmug, choose the settings, and click. It creates a JPEG and uploads it to Smugmug but doesn't save the JPEG on my computer.

Another advantage is that you can have many different "virtual" versions of an image. For example, you can create a virtual copy of an image that you are editing in color and edit the virtual copy in black and white. There is still only one raw image file, but the software has stored two sets of commands.

You can also use this functionality for organizing. Say, for example, that you want to collect a bunch of photos to show at a class or an event, but they were taken at different times and live in different places on your hard drive. No problem. You don't need copies. Just select photos from anywhere in your catalog and put them in a "collection". The collection looks just like another folder (except that it is in a different place in the left panel), with all of your selected photos seeming to be there, but they aren't there at all; the collection is just a bunch of pointers that tell LR where the photos really are.

Once you get accustomed to this way of thinking, it's very powerful and flexible, and it saves both time and storage space.

LR also has lot of other functions, like a book creating module, a slideshow module, and a printing module. Some people look down their noses at LR printing, but IMHO, it's superb. They look down on it because it offers less control; for example, you select one of only three levels of print sharpening for each type of paper, but it doesn't show the output sharpening on your screen. Photoshop, in contrast, allows you to set any level of output sharpening you want. (If I'm not mistaken, the much praised printing software QImage also works like LR, but with 5 levels of sharpening.) However, the output sharpening algorithm is superb, and I have not once had to reprint because the output sharpening wasn't to my taste. Moreover, LR will save all of your print settings, both the software settings and the printer settings, as templates. I have bunches of them, organized by paper type, size, and margin. For example, I print a lot of prints that don't need to be archival on Moab Exhibition Luster paper. I have a bunch of templates for that paper, differing by size and margin. To pick an example, one is for people who show prints in 8 x 10 frames without mat board. The template prints 8 x 10 on standard 8.5 x 11 paper stock. If I decide to print for that purpose, I just select the edited image in the Develop module, switch to Print, and select the "Moab luster 8 x 10" template. LR sets the software settings I stored for that and sets all of the printer firmware settings, such as media type and which paper feed to use. Compulsively, I still check the settings, but it's really not necessary; I can just print.

There are lots of plugins for LR, which also can be a help. For example, I use Zerene for focus stacking. I often need a few simple edits before stacking. For example, if I often need to change the white balance. Here's my workflow, which shows how flexible LR is. I change the WB on the first photo in the stack, and I then tell LR to sync that setting, and any other changes I made, to the entire stack, which can be over 40 images. I keep that stack selected, go to the Export dialog, and say "export to Zerene". Because there is a Zerene plug-in installed, I have the parameters stored: 16-bit ProPhoto TIFF. LR then exports the entire stack as TIFFs, opens Zerene, and loads the entire stack to Zerene. When I'm done stacking, I save the image and close Zerene, which gets rid of (unless I tell it not to) all of the 3 to 40+ temporary TIF files. I have to "sync" the LR directory again to import the new TIFF, but then the composite is in LR, ready to edit. I do whatever edits I want in LR, and if I need photoshop, I use the keyboard shortcut to send the image to Photoshop. LR will ask me whether to include or exclude the edits in the new file, then create the new file, then open photoshop, and load the image. When I'm done in Photoshop, I save the image, and it imports the new image (which I save as a TIFF) into Lightroom for me. the process of moving among the software programs is nearly automatic and very fast.

Note that you have to set Photoshop's settings to tell it how to send the image back to LR. If you use "maximize compatibility", all layers are saved, and you can reopen the file in Photoshop with all of the Photoshop edits by selecting "original" from the export to photoshop dialog, "original' in this case meaning "the file originally sent back to LR from Photoshop"

Plan on taking some time with this. Because the program is so powerful, there is a lot to learn. I approached this by doing it in pieces. For example, I didn't fuss with collections until I was comfortable in LR generally.

Also, LR has the option of storing edits as XML "sidecar" files as well as in the catalog. I recommend that you turn this on. It does occasionally cause a slight delay, if LR has to rewrite a lot of this metadata, but it's an extra level of safety, as if you ever have to create a new catalog, LR will read the XML data and re-produce your edits, although not the history log.

[Cantab]

Dan, I was intrigued by your reference to a LR addon by Jeffry Friedl. I'll go hunting for it online tomorrow.

[DanK]

I just looked, and he has made his site more difficult to reach. Apparently, he disagrees with the common view that all sites should be HTTPS:// rather than HTTP://, and he has disabled his HTTPS:// tree. You won't be able to reach his site if your browser automatically changes HTTP:// addresses to HTTPS://. Some browers will let you manually use HTTP://, and that should work fine. I have my standard browser (Vivaldi) set not to allow that, but I tried with Firefox, and it worked.

He has produced a vast number of things, including plugins that upload to sites I've never heard of. I use only his smugmug and flickr ones. Just enter <export to smugmug>, and it will take you to the right place.

This is the top of the dialog:



His stuff is "donationware": make any size donation, and the transaction record is your registration key. From time to time, when there is a really big update to LR, you need to go back and make another donation to get a new key. It looks like that may have just happened, with the newest update of LR, which writes a new catalog.