Lightroom vs Lightroom Classic vs Photoshop: Did you choose right?

[modelcitizen]

The cloud part of creative cloud doesn’t do anything for me. Bring back perpetual licenses.

[shanewilliams]

Yes, I chose Affinity Photo when Adobe went to the subscription model and my current versions stopped recognizing new camera RAW files.
Have never looked back.

[sylvaindupuis]

I used Lightroom until version 5.7, when it became a monthly fee. I'm just a casual photographer so I didn't tough that I needed to pay each month. I now use DXO I still use Lightroom for it's library functionality (DxO is getting better at that, I may not need Lightroom at all in not too long), but for the treatment of my photos, DxO is really good enough for me.

[martt]

I would be nice if you guys would compare Lightroom to the competition like: Capture One, DxO, luminar etc..

[smaakjeks]

My process:
*1)* File dump onto hard drive -> Open Bridge -> Wait a few moments for preview render -> Full Screen and browse pics -> Open file I like in Adobe Raw, click Done instead of Cancel to create an XMP file -> Repeat until finished -> Scroll down the files on my OS file browser and select RAW images that have an XMP file associated with them -> Open in Adobe Raw -> Edit -> Open in Photoshop -> Final edits -> Save as JPG high def (for print), and JPG small (for web).

*2)* Name folder by XMP files remain, instead of me having to remember which pics I liked.

*3)* Back up to 2 or 3 hard drives. Best ones on the cloud.

[jameschilton]

I moved away from Adobe to Affinity Photo due to their subscription model. To be honest, I could now easily afford Adobe but Affinity does everything I need and does some things better than Adobe for a very reasonable one off cost. I think I paid about £30 (～$41) four years ago and have had updates with improvements since then for free. The UI is so similar to Adobe there is very little relearning to do so it's easy to switch too.

[Jimsranch]

From a long time newby to photography thank you!! Whenever I was wanting to sign up for a class I was always asking myself which program to use - this naming legacy from Adobe has been impossible. Thank you very much Tony for putting this video together!!!

[Kneedeepinstock]

Paying a monthly subscription for everything now a days should be criminal. Just give me the software, i pay once and get minor updates...Crooks!

[Panagiotis-Skordilis]

I choose affinity and capture one, thank you :)

[multtsk]

Talk about perfect timing. I was just looking through your lightroom playlist looking for an updated video discussing thoughts and comparisons on lightroom vs classic. Over the last couple of days I've been going through and watching a lot of your content. It's amazing and really helpful and I hope you and Chelsea bring back Picture This! and T&C Live (T&C Live was hilarious, loved them)

[markexploringnewstuff]

Best and clearest explanation of of LRC, LR and PS. Thank you Tony!

[ccooper]

The break in video with the dog really sold me on this.

[nike]

Hi Tony, You should mention that if you create collections in Lightroom classic it stores pictures globally for free but at a lower file size

[sfink]

I refuse to pay monthly fees, so I use Open Source Darktable. I have old versions of Adobe, including Elements, C3, C5, etc. I may have considered buying Adobe products had I still had the ability to purchase whichever one I wanted to purchase. So I'll stay with Darktable until that time ever comes, if ever.

[lour]

I use all 3. I pay for the 1TB photography plan. I upload all my new photos to Lr. Once uploaded, I can edit in both Lr and LrC. I create albums to share using Lr (you didn’t mention this in your video). LrC is my main cataloging app. As my cloud storage gets full, I delete older pics from Lr, but they are retained by LrC (stored on HD). I use Backblaze to backup my LrC HD.

The sharing feature of Lr is very useful, I don’t have to export edited pics, then upload to Dropbox, or Flickr, etc…. I can create as many online albums as I choose.

An FYI, if you upload pics to your cloud via Lr, your shared albums have full resolution pics available for download. If you upload pics only from LrC via online collections, your albums have 2048 px images max available for download.

[junkbop]

Thanks for the breakdown. I always appreciate your POV, Tony. In this instance, I think there are some very popular use cases that you're under-weighting.

For example... I take photos for pleasure, mostly with my Canon R5 but also with my iPhone 13 Pro Max. I use all of LR, LRC, and PS... but the single most RELAXING & ENJOYABLE photo editing experience I've had is using LR on my iPad with an Apple Pencil. I can easily transfer my big-camera photos directly to LR on the iPad using an SD card dongle, and the app seamlessly syncs with photos taken on my iPhone. LR even integrates with the iPad version of PS (which is much simpler than the PC version, but can get many basic PS jobs done... certainly good enough for many social media use cases). I can do all of this from my couch... which feels a lot less like work and a lot more like art... to me.

[erik]

Thank you Tony for delineating for me when I survived on my own as well in regards to the relative purposes of the various programs.

[konstawillberg]

I would like to hear your take on Capture One from a photoediting perspective. Pricing etc is what it is.

[bioliv]

Lr in the cloud and Capture One on your desk is the ultimate combination and the best from two worlds!

[d_dave]

I have no intention of paying for cloud storage for my photos. Sorry.

I have a high quality NAS system in my home, an extra backup in a fireproof, flood proof lockbox, and a third copy at a family member's home (also in a fireproof, flood proof lock box). Yes, if something extremely unlikely happens, I might lose the more recent photos that are just on my hard drive and NAS, but honestly that's not enough to make me pay a company for the rest of my life. If a shoot is really super important to me, like a major life event, I'll make sure it's fully backed up in all three places immediately. No system is foolproof, but this is more than good enough for me.

(I'm also still using an old version of Lightroom so I don't have to pay a subscription. Though with all the new features, I'll probably cave on that at some point since it would certainly save me time.)