Mama Bear984 Loc: Langley, BC Canada

I haven’t used my Lightroom subscription for a few years. I’m one of the old original Lightroom 4 desktop owners. Yes I used it lots in the past then got tired of paying each month for something I wasn’t using as much so I cancelled it. I never did go to the cloud went they had split the program for desktop or cloud.
The other day I got an email say I needed to download everything I have within 30days or I won’t have access.
So I guess the question is if I don’t can I still pull up the images?
I could before even though I wasn’t paying each month.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

You probably want to look closer and consider if that email applies to your actual situation. The LR Classic software always installed local to your computer and operated on images there on your local disks. Nothing was 'in the cloud' other than copies of images meant for transfer between mobile devices and your primary LR catalog on your local computer.

If you still have your LR Classic installed, that software remains partially operational. You can view images, and I believe, export; just no editing. You can open / confirm the software is installed and review the image locations via the Library model and folder view. Everything should be located on your local drive(s).

Mama Bear984 Loc: Langley, BC Canada

That’s what I kind of thought.
I just got tired of paying for something I wasn’t using.
Mine was mostly used when I travelled then Covid hit & stayed home.
So what was the point in paying.
Thanks

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I use LR every single day, searching for images, or edited / re-editing images, updating their collection / keywords, and probably still other ways, mostly in ways unrelated to brand new images as I don't shoot every day.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I hate paying monthly but love the new features. I cannot imagine being without them. I do not use every new feature but each major release has something I appreciate and use. My results get better all the time.

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

Technically there is no "major" release. The current subscription model(numerically at 12.3) is just one continuous stream where new function and fixes come in the service stream.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Technically, you are right. However, the releases are not uniform in scope of new or updated features. They do not always explain the impact of some of the changes. That is why people understandably underestimate the value of the changes or subscription.

lreisner Loc: Union,NJ

With Lightroom you get 20gbs of cloud storage. You must have saved files to the cloud. The question is, do you have them backed up in another storage place. If not then download the files, so you do not lose them. It is always good practice to keep files both in the cloud and on a harddrive as well.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The 20GB cloud storage is provided, but this is a scratch area for transferring images between mobile devices and the main LR catalog stored on your main workstations / harddrive(s) where all your images are located. Anyone shooting RAW will recognize you couldn't even keep 1000 RAW files into that 20GB space. At 20GB, that scratch isn't even large enough to transfer a 32GB card of RAW. You can 'buy' even more overpriced cloud storage from Adobe, but you'd be better served just skipping this scratch area completely, especially for the RAW shooter. Just copy your images from camera to the Classic catalog when you get home, or use a thumbdrive from your laptop into your main desktop workstation. Nothing about that 20GB is intended to be cloud-based long-term / permanent storage.

Our OP may have received an email from Adobe simply as a prior user, maybe with images in the cloud, possibly not; their email just appeared on a list of prior users with cloud storage allocated to their discontinued account.