SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

That’s hardly any!

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

2K photos is not really a big deal.

Learning LR was easy. For me. But there are a lot of people who really don't get it.

But it really sounds like you are only using LR as an editor. LR is a pretty good editor, but there are others out there that are equal or better. The real question is how much do you edit your photos? If you do extensive editing, I think LR/PS is the best solution. If all you do is crop, adjust brightness/contrast, simple things like that, there are many other editors that will fill the bill. Even free ones.

Your camera manufacturer will have a free program you could use for editing. Many people like IrfanView or FastStone, two free image viewers with some editing capabilities, but they are Windows only programs. There are probably similar things for the Mac. None of those programs has the organizing abilities of Lightroom, but I get the impression that you don't use that part of Lightroom (I can jump to conclusions, so correct me if I'm wrong).

maxlieberman Loc: 19027

Your pictures remain on your hard drive. When you load Elements, you can easily import them. You might lose any tags, ratings, etc.

wapiti Loc: round rock, texas

AikenMooney Loc: SouthCarolina

Adobe released LR beta for Apple in Jan 06. I started using beta for Windows in summer of 06 so 15 years is possible.
I was changing camera systems at that time & decided to give it a try. I went to East Africa in Aug 06 with new Nikon cameras & new beta LR software. Yes it did crash a few times but it did work. I still have 565 NEF files from that trip. I then put my ORF files from 2 trips in 2005 in LR & processed them & were better than the Oly software at that time. Still using LR today with about 80,000 images. Amazing how I can process those images in the latest ver & have a much better image. I love LR & some hate it. Just personal choice. I do think that a lot of the people that don't like it have never bothered to learn the file system.

neillaubenthal

Elements is not Lightroom…it's essentially a lower end of Photoshop. Lightroom is for cataloging, sorting, and keywording images…and also for a lot of post processing.

If you don't need an image library master and have photos separated into folders in some manner that makes sense to you…and no need to assign keywords so that you can say find all gorilla images quickly…then LR isn't really necessary.

However…it's a pretty cheap subscription and gives you both LR and PS. If you want a manager that isn't subscription based…ON1 has one…but their asset management stuff is pretty lame IMO and I don't believe they do keywords and all the management things nearly as well (if at all) as LR does.

Steve Perry over at backcountrygallery.com has an excellent video course on the Library module of LR…and the Development module seems fairly self explanatory to learn…at least to me.

cahale Loc: San Angelo, TX

Yes, but the question is; do I want Adobe to own me, or do I want to own Adobe?

b top gun

I was happy and satisfied with the version of Lightroom (pre version 6) I bought before Adobe began their subscription service. All was OK until I got a D850; my version of Lightroom was unable to open the RAW files, not that it bothered me too much since the D850 regularly kicked out JPEGs greater than 20mb per image file. I balked at signing up for the Lightroom subscription. Alas, Nikon introduced NX Studio and it does pretty much everything I would need to edit any of my RAW files from even my D850.

Margar Loc: Mass

Thank you

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

Your photos are not "in" Lightroom. LR only creates a catalogue that points to the photos on your hard drive or whatever storage you pointed LR to.

PhotogHobbyist Loc: Bradford, PA

I believe LightRoom is around $10 a month. At that rate over 15 years you have paid out almost enough to buy a brand new full frame camera. If you have never used LR for postprocessing and don't intend to process your images, why do you need any program for processing? There are several free programs that will download and organize your photos for you.

If you are deciding to process photos, Photoshop Elements is an excellent program but it does have a learning curve that can be rather steep. In that regard there are numerous tutorials online that can be helpful not to mention some printed books for the various versions. Also, the cost for it is relatively low, and one edition will serve you well for a few years, saving you a significant amount of money. If you watch online, the current year's version is often offered at a discount around the holidays. Good luck in whatever decision you make.

Margar Loc: Mass

Just want to load, crop, enhance brightness, etc….nothing more
Would like to stop the $10.00/month, but not wanting to loose any pix from over the many years.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Repeat, your pictures are NOT stored in LR. They are in files on your hard drive such as the "Pictures" folder in Windows.

All that is in LR is a link to the picture location on your hard drive, a low resolution thumbnail of the picture and the lrcat file of any edits your did to the picture.
If you stop the subscription that will all stay and be accessible but you will not be able to update or use LR to import or edit any new pictures. Only to look at export or print those done before the subscription ended.
But whatever new software you get will still be able to access the out of camera files on your drive and you can then edit them in the new software.

You can get Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 from Amazon for $59.99 right now. That is $40 off msrp which is an indicator they are about to release the 2022 version. That is also the version where you get it on disc for future reinstalls or installation on a new computer(sign out nd remove from the old computer before putting it on a new one). You are allowed to have it on two computers at once. In the old days they worded it as you could put it on your desktop and laptop for use.

Margar Loc: Mass

Thank you

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

You are welcome