Is Lightroom Now Redundant? - Adobe Camera Raw JUNE 2020

Adobe Camera Raw has just gone through a new look on the interface. It is now getting much closer to the workflow and look of Lightroom.

If Lightroom catalogues are not that important to you, or you have had them fail on you, the question now is "do I need it?".

Here I take you through a handful of the changes in this version, based on operating from Bridge into the new Adobe Camera Raw UI.

For more complex work, whether its Camera Raw or Lightroom, it is still the same that you need sometimes finish off in Photoshop.

If you have the Adobe Photography package and would prefer to either move away from Lightroom or use something other than Lightroom, then this could be your answer. Photoshop as a stand-alone is more expensive than the Photography package so the monthly cost of Photoshop/Lightroom Classic/Lightroom is still the best value.

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[Sir_Grumpalot]

Very much agree with you Tony that this is a significant improvement on the UI for ACR. I personally much prefer it to LR Develop module. As I'm wedded to LR DAM because of the large number of images I have, years of LR use and extensive nested collections, which Bridge does not support sadly, I need to use LR for my organisation.
However I have discovered a way of getting to ACR via LR and retaining the automatic stacking etc. It involves opening the image as a smart object in PS from the develop module by right clicking and selecting the open as smart object option. In PS you can now double click on the layer thumbnail. This then opens up ACR from PS not as a filter, which is what normally happens, but as full ACR (complete with crop tool unlike ACR as a filter) on the RAW file which is of course the important part. As it is a smart object you can also go back in at any time and change your ACR work within PS so you retain a completely non destructive workflow.
I suspect that this is unintentional on the part of Adobe and they may even regard this as a bug. I intend to go into the Adobe forums and put a feature request in to formally include a tidier version of this option to allow you to use ACR as a PS plugin from LR rather that the develop module. Perhaps even have an option to use that new UI within the develop module. Both could be an options rather than the default as many people will probably wish to retain the develop module as is.