UKnomad Loc: England

I connect camera to my Mac and 'copy' images across into My Pictures folder and LR Classic.
I then sort , delete, edit etc etc.
If/when I delete I choose the Delete from Disk option to remove them from my LR Catalog AND the My Pictures folder on my hard drive.
When exiting LR I choose to backup each time.

If I leave the subscription though I think (?) my photos in My Pictures folder and the backups in Time Machine and Carbon Clone (both done daily) will not be 'the same' as those I view in the LR catalog/library?

Am I correct and what is the solution so that I know I have the edited images safe and sound on both my Mac and my external HDs please?
Do I have to LR export every photo to the appropriate folder in My Pictures?

Many thanks in anticipation.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

Nothing, they are still right there on your computer and your drives.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Nothing happens to your photos. They remain where they are. Your Lightroom app just wont let you make any more imports or edits to existing files. However, you can still export files from Lr with all your stored changes applied. When you decide to subscribe again, you can pick up from where you suspended your subscription.

Remember, Lr NEVER makes changes to your original files. It stores changes in a database or sidecar file. It applies them only when you export, print, or post to the web. When you back up the catalog, you are just preserving the database. You must back up your original images by backing up your entire hard drive.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

If you're taking back-ups every time you exit LR, have you also been periodically deleting the older backup? You'll run low on diskspace if you don't. There's little value to back-ups from current -2. Just use the dates on the folders to identify those to be removed, maybe every month or even every week depending on how often you create a back-up.

UKnomad Loc: England

Burkphoto - many thanks......that was what I was querying in essence...in order to have the edited images I would need to export them all to my Mac hard drive should I exit LR.....or to have a copy if my hard drive fails

UKnomad Loc: England

CHG-CANON -Thanks! I haven't been so will start doing so....thanks for the prompt !

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Well, your ORIGINALS remain unchanged. If you drop your Lr subscription, you can still export from Lr with previous stored changes applied.

Software companies are not legally allowed to prevent you from using your data — and they would be stupid to do so, anyway! Your previous edits are accessible, but no changes can be made until you resume paying your $9.99 per month for the Photography Bundle of Lr, Lr CC, Ps, and Br.

Lots of people panic, thinking Adobe is ransoming them or something by charging subscription fees. That's crap. People with the previous Lr 6.x stand-alone version can keep using it until it is inconvenient to do so (meaning their computer OS won't support it any longer, or they need a new feature that wasn't in the original, such as support for a new camera raw profile).

Since I need both Ps and Lr CC, I subscribe. I've used Ps since version 1.0 back in the late 1980s. I used Lr since the first beta test.

I used to skip every other version of Ps, because the Adobe upgrade fees were too expensive. I couldn't afford $300 to $400 for a Ps upgrade, but I can afford $10/month. That's a decent bottle of wine, two or three Starbucks coffees, or four gallons of gas. You can't even buy a roll of film and processing that cheap, these days (That's about $30 if you want prints!).

I've said this before: Digital photography is an expensive hobby. By the time you get the equipment to do it right, a $10/month charge for software licensing is cheap, cheap, cheap! I have a small setup:

iMac $1200
Backup drives $1200
Network infrastructure $550
100Mbps Network access $50/month
Monitor Calibrator Kit $150 (The single most important tool I own!)
Desktop Printer $150
Photo Printer $400
Lumix GH4 $1300
Three lenses $1700
Other items (tripod, flash, filters, case, light stands, exposure targets, shoe mounts, LED lights, memory cards...) about $2000

So another $10 is not a big deal.

bengbeng Loc: Houston, Texas

I think that in the recent LR classic and LR CC updates the database structure ( that holds all the edit information) was changed so that it is now incompatible with the database used in Lightroom 6 standalone.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

This has always been the case when they issue a version upgrade, but not typically when they do updates.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

If I understand your question:

Images are there but the edits will not be accessible if there is no Lightroom Classic on the computer. If you give up LR, I would export the images as edited into large high quality jags or tiff files from LR. That way you can access them with just about any software.

DHooch

BurkPhoto:

Thanks for putting the monthly cost of a subscription service in comparison to the ultimate cost of photography. I don't own LR, but it is an interesting and valuable post.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It’s unfortunate that many enthusiasts will spend thousands for a D850 or D5 or D500 or 5D IV or 7D II or 5DSR... plus thousands more for great lenses, and then whine about “the Adobe ransom.”

Respect intellectual property. Pay for it. Help it grow. Its owners deserve to eat.

bengbeng Loc: Houston, Texas

hmm, I purchased Lightroom standalone 5 and 6 with no intention of ever going to the subscription model. However, Last year I tried it and will say photoshop is a fantastic tool and good value in the photographers package and something I would never have purchased as standalone software. So, I'm hooked, lol.

However, much of the physical equipment required lasts and has its own inherent value. I use many old lenses - e.g. Nikon 80-200 2.8 purchased used and over say five years it will maybe still have 40% value.
After 5 years or $600 an Adobe subscription has no resale value and in-fact becomes one of the bigger costs mentioned. If you are using the Adobe cloud storage options the costs are many times this amount.
I hope Adobe's business model does not push us too aggressively in to the cloud and these additional costs. I'll buy Adobe a meal but let me choose the restaurant.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Old software is obsolete, meaning it is unsupported and abandoned. In many instances, it requires an older operating system to run, along with older hardware to run it all. Running computers with older, unsupported versions of software and operating systems is a huge security risk. If you do any banking or purchasing transactions on the same computer, or have any personal information on it that you don't want stolen, you risk identity theft, financial loss, and worse.

The entire computing environment is advancing rapidly. Operating systems and chips will be evolving rapidly in the future to keep up with ever more dangerous security threats. It is, and has been a fact of life that computers and software need to be updated frequently. The point is that older computers and software have little or no value, and in fact carry significant negative risks.

Adobe and Microsoft recognized this. They set up subscription services to keep everyones' computers updated constantly. Apple started giving away OS X (now MacOS) updates and iOS updates a long time ago, so that users could stay safe, their support costs would be lower, and their support would be better. Fortunately, Apple has been able to keep every system made since the 2010 Mac Mini running well on the latest versions of their software and operating system. They keep patching security holes on a monthly basis, just as Microsoft does on their monthly Patch Tuesday.

If you're a hobbyist with limited funds, you can avoid Adobe. Buy a copy of Affinity Photo or something similar, and keep it on an up-to-date operating system for several years before upgrading it.