mikeroetex Loc: Lafayette, LA

Amazes me why people who "buy" the software think they actually did. They bought a license to use the software. If the developer abandons the software, you have no support and a software technology left behind. Not many people still use Win98, but they all think they "bought" the software. If the developer upgrades, you have no future benefit from the original "purchase" and have to --- wait for it --- spend money again and buy another version.

Subscription or "purchase", you are going to pay to stay current. I prefer to to pay $120 a year instead of $600 every 5 years. And don't tell me you never need to upgrade and are happy because your version suits your needs. So do phones with rotary dials from 30 years ago, but how many of those are still around?

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Thanks.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Funny how every discussion here of the Adobe photography tools turns to the same buy vs rent argument. CrazyJane, new here, wanted to start a discussion about the new features in a new edition of Lightroom Classic. It quickly turned to how evil, or not evil, Adobe's software subscription plans are.

There is a way to get all of Adobe's Creative Cloud software for free. Adobe has forums like this one. If you participate regularly and can get "nominated" as an "Expert", Adobe returns the favor by giving you the full subscription at no cost to you.

Vanderpix Loc: New Jersey

Photoshop actually predates digital cameras and is very much a graphics editor which can edit photos very well. But there is a lot of legacy controls in Photoshop that most photographers do not need. Lightroom was developed as a catalogue and raw editor for photos only. When it was first introduced it's editing capabilities were modest but good results could still be achieved. With each update it has gotten better but with intro of AI it really is a game changer and many of us rarely go to Photoshop. Of course one can achieve the same results more or less with ON1 and Affinity and not have to pay till the end of their days, but as you say YMMV. I am also puzzled on why they keep making Lightroom stronger with danger that Photoshop is obsolete but I think there enough raster editors that this will not happen soon. It is telling that they do not offer respective subscriptions for just LR of PS but only as the $10 bundle for both. And Adobe continues to update Photoshop Elements updates without a subscription. If you have never used LR try it for the whopping 6 days Adobe gives you to see what you can accomplish.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Then why does Adobe include PS with LR. IF LR has the same, or superior editing capabilities, it would seem unnecessary to have the same, or lessor editor [PS] included in the package?

Would seem prudent [to me] to eliminate PS, or include cataloging in PS and eliminate LR🤷‍♂️ My preference would be to have a separate catalog app included with PS. That way, software development would be separate and not step on each others toes. YMMV of course. Adobe obviously has their reasons...

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍. Layers are duplicate images that have their own processing. Roughly if you have a 20MB image with 5 layers you now have a much bigger file but it does allow for finer work in some cases. Make them smart objects and they will be even bigger. Layers and smart objects were not in the original Photoshop so it was destructive but with them, you can come back to them to make changes. Both Photoshop and Lightroom use Camera Raw for raw processing. Photoshop does have features Lightroom doesn't like neural filters. If you do restoration work (for family) some of them are amazing. You can probably do them in Photoshop 6 but it would take a lot of skill.

Lightroom uses code not a duplication of the images. That code is not in the original image. It is not a layer and results in much smaller file sizes in storage.

The new release of Photoshop and Lightroom is great. Adobe is in the business of making money. They want to increase their customer base. To do that it has to be easier to use and do more things with a click of a button. Most of the time that is all they want. Close is good enough because most of the time it is just stored in Lightroom, maybe shared on FB, and almost never printed. That is not how I believe most UHHers think or want.

I am a retired software executive. I work for companies much larger than Adobe. All code used to be written languages like Cobal and FORTRAN. They were difficult and the people that have the skill sets made lots of money writing code. Big companies like the first one I work for created 4GL languages which were easier to learn and use. But those old-time programmers fought to keep them out because their worth was their special knowledge. To give me an example of how hard this was there was a building in Denver that had four floors on it and billions of lines of cobalt code that ran all of the long-distance phone services in the United States. For over 20 years they resisted changing it as it failed, and the programmers retired and died.

So my philosophy is to do what you want. You can process your images any way you want. I'm 73 and not a pro though I have been. I don't have weeks to spend on a single image to get it perfect. Anything that helps me speed up my processing of raw images is a godsend.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I maintain all my original files in a separate folder. RAW files I almost always delete, and keep the processed jpg. I can then always edit the jpg enough after editing the raw to get where I want. For complex edits, I save the jpg edit as a PSD file which preserves the edits so I can go back w/o starting over. This works for me, YMNMV.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I hope your wrong, but, with competition this may never happen. Affinity Photo is a good example. PS, the premier editor is subscription only. Affinity moved into the non subscription market, which includes me, and offers fine product for one low price, and free upgrades. I have no clue what percentage of the market Affinity (and others) have grabbed from the Adobe market, but from the number of users just on the HOG, I'd say it's more than a little.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

In the $10/month plan, you do get PS and Bridge that, with some organizational discipline on your part, will keep an inventory of your photographic work.

Many miss that Adobe has been, and continues, building an "ecosystem" of interrelated parts. There is not one Lightroom and one Photoshop. There are several Lightrooms, Photoshop, some storage and more. The idea is to start with the customer's creative dream and try to provide them with the digital tools they may need to accomplish that dream.

A couple of interesting newer, less known, parts of the ecosystem are Photoshop Express and Adobe Express.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

I don’t use PS or LR. Are you saying that PS would destroy an original RAW file?

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I've not used Affinity Photo, but agree. If one wants a single purpose, single application photo editor, Affinity Photo should be an excellent and cheaper choice.

If you add the other things that come in the Adobe package it starts looking different. You can go further with added value that comes with the interconnections to Adobe's InDesign and Illustrator, applications most here don't use.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

When you buy a car you get a warranty, when it runs out, you still own the car. I have software that is over twenty years old, still works perfectly fine, and I've never upgraded it. If you see a jpg image on your computer, you are viewing it with a piece of proprietary software code that hasn't changed since 1994. I've been running Affinity Photo since 2019 and it cost me 40 bucks, all upgrades have been free. For those keeping track and worried about price, thats 3 cents a day, 10x cheaper than PS, and gets cheaper by the day. I used PS for many years, and it is GREAT software for editing, but so is Affinity. There are some things Affinity does better, and some PS does better. For example, smart objects are built into Affinity, cumbersome in PS.

One BIG thing Affinity does better is marketing strategy. So far, I haven't had to pay a penny to stay current with Affinity. Affinity is so good and cheap I'm hoping they charge soon as I'm starting to feel guilty spending just 40 bucks for such a good application that gives free upgrades to all it's customers. I don't use Affinity because I can't afford PS, I use it because I don't like rentals, and I like the application.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Not RAW files from your camera. But JPEGs and maybe DNGs might get destroyed. In Lightroom the original is never changed. But, in Photoshop, you can use the Save or Save As commands in ways to overwrite the original. In Photoshop it become more of a user responsibility to use non-destructive procedures.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I personally don't like renting anything. I don't rent cars, housing, radio stations etc. I wouldn't call them "EVIL" just a marketing plan I don't like. My brother in law rents all his cars... to each their own.

He nor his rental scheme is not evil, just something everyone is not on board with. Why do opposing opinions have to be evil?

Vanderpix Loc: New Jersey

No, because the photo is edited in Photoshop it must be converted to a TIFF PSD or some other non RAW file. Any changes will saved as that file, the RAW will not be changed. One can have a non destructive edit by saving all the layers but this results in very large files. In Lightroom a set of instructions is placed upon the raw file which does not change the raw file. But those same edits are used to export the finished photo to a JPEG of Tiff leaving the RAW file untouched. You can go back into the LR catalogue and create virtual copies of any file and have different sets of edits. Again the original file is not changed