bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

There is ongoing and recurring analysis here around the wisdom of subscribing to Adobe's Photographer's Plan. ($10/month/year contract). What happens if you quit?

Every day Tim Grey sends out a "Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter" with a tip in it. Sign up, it's free. This morning's is about Lightroom Classic cancellation.

Tim is one of the photography trainers with a business of teaching about cameras, shooting and post processing. I suspect his daily eNewsletters are for marketing development, so I doubt if he will mind me sharing his email as long as there is credit.

Tim Grey wrote:

"Today's Question....
What happens if I stop paying the monthly charge for Creative Cloud? I assume I can no longer utilize Photoshop, but how about my Lightroom catalog information that I have invested a lot of time in?

Tim's Quick Answer:
When you cancel an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, you will actually still have access to Lightroom Classic on your computer, though some features would be limited. Photoshop would no longer be available after your subscription ends.

More Detail:
I think many photographers would be surprised to learn that they can continue to make use of Lightroom Classic to manage their photos, even after they have canceled their subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud. Of course, some features would be unavailable, and you would not be able to upgrade the software. That means, for example, you would not be able to get the latest updates for new camera raw capture formats.

Here is how Adobe describes the limitations of using Lightroom Classic after you've canceled your subscription:

<< You continue to have access to all your photos on your local hard drive through Lightroom [Classic] for the desktop. You can continue to import and organize photos and output your edited photos through Export, Publish, Print, Web, or Slideshow. Access to the Develop & Map modules and Lightroom for mobile is not available after your membership ends.

After cancellation, your allowed cloud storage is reduced to 2 GB. If you are over your storage limit, you have 90 days to reduce your online usage.>>

What this all means is that you would be able to continue managing your existing catalog of photos with some limitations, and your online storage allowance would be reduced. However, the feature that remain available would enable you to continue managing your workflow as you transition to other software. "

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

If you possess a pre-subscription version of Lightroom, might that work for you.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

I won't go into specific software, but I have researched one in particular to help a friend out that made the switch from the subscription. There is one program that will use sidecar files (.xmp) from LightRoom and apply a good portion of edits made so the user doesn't have to re-create all of the edits made in post-processing.

Again, I am not campaigning for anyone leaving their subscription, but it's not as dire as most would believe. If you would like that information, please just PM me so we don't have to start a side-topic under this thread.

Good thread Bill!

bengbeng Loc: Houston, Texas

The Lightroom Classic catalog is not backwards compatible with Lightroom 5 or Lightroom 6 standalone versions.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The subscription gives ordinary people the chance to use the same software as the rich.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

This is not completely accurate. As mentioned in an earlier comment, the XMP files are a method to 'transfer' the edits LR to other software, including older LR software. Another possibility is to export all the images from the subscription-based LR catalog to DNGs and then import those DNGs into a target LR version. You may need to experiment with the DNG version compatibility setting, but this Adobe feature is very powerful tool for communicating within Adobe software versions.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

The xmp files can transfer the edits to older versions, as long as the edits are done with features available in the older versions.

I don't think the xmp files would be good for trying to transfer the edits to non-Adobe software.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

That sounds reasonable and it's what I've heard as well, but then I've also heard otherwise out here in the real world. Since we know for a fact that Adobe lies.....

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63435571
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63448152

Joe

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

It's a 'probably it depends' situation. LR responds to XMP files created by other software. I'd expect some responsiveness from other software to LR's XMPs. I wouldn't expect 100% of all the editing details from LR to transfer to other software, but I haven't tested with other software to confirm / disprove.

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

While that is true, do the individual image files reside in some folder or set of folders. Why could one not access those files?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

This is not an issue of access to the original image files, nor even the exported files containing the resulting edits. Those are freely available and have nothing to do with the photographer's edit history and settings as stored with the Lightroom Catalog aka database. Getting that 'intellectual property' transferred from one LR installation to another is the issue.

bengbeng Loc: Houston, Texas

[quote=CHG_CANON]This is not completely accurate.

Well, the LR classic catalogue is not backwards compatible, you would actually be rebuilding a new catalogue in the older LR version and , hopefully, relinking the XMP files, and hoping all the adjustments could be captured . Some adjustments made using newly developed LR features won't be re-imported and will be lost - Well that was my experience about two years ago. Very keen to understand a foolproof way of capturing all LR edits and also preserving the raw files.

Note: the adobe DNG format is not as universal as you might think. I used DNG for a while, as a camera wasn't supported by my version of LR at the time. I then tried to use these DNGs in another RAW editor I had (corel aftershot) and it could not read the DNGs!

Again , this was a few years ago so support might be better now, but I don't believe DNG is as widely supported as it could be.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

These are the edits that can be read from the xmp file for the software I researched for my friend. It's not a 100% solution, but I found it pretty amazing that a lot of software devs put the time and energy into a somewhat stardardized format.

- tags and hierarchical tags
- color labels
- ratings
- GPS information
- crop and rotate (crop and rotate)
- black level (exposure)
- exposure (exposure)
- vignette (vignette)
- clarity (local contrast)
- tone curve (tone curve)
- HSL (color zones)
- split toning (split toning)
- grain (grain)
- spot removal (spot removal)

bengbeng Loc: Houston, Texas

Oh you can access the old files and any exported files, no problem.
You just won't necessarily have access to all of the edits and changes you made in Lightroom.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

[quote=bengbeng]

You're mixing a few oranges in with the apples ... I'm suggesting DNG only within an Adobe ecosystem. I'd never trust a camera to create a 'perfect' DNG. I'd put more hope into another software company to import (aka receive) a DNG to transfer most of the LR edit info. But, I'd expect some amount of limitations that would need to be tested, identified and accessed for their impact relative to the success (or failure) of the proposed transfer.

So, if you want to give up on the subscription version of LR, one should first test and pick their new solution (old LR, if available, or another software). Investigate the transfer process on a few images and estimate the work effort of the entire process, such as: do you have the diskspace for a full export of all images as DNGs? as TIFFs? Have you tested and thoroughly confirmed the results of the transfer? What consistently transfers, what doesn't? Can you do something to mitigate this issue?