Warning: really long post...
The good news
Lightroom 6 (perpetual) will satisfy my needs for many years, particularly since Adobe has promised to release Nikon D850 support later this month. I don’t expect to purchase an unsupported camera for some time, and Windows 10 isn’t slated to suddenly change. I’ve got time.
What’s wrong with Lightroom – even Classic?
Not a damn thing. It’s a great program, integrating ingest, DAM, processing, exporting, and printing in one simple, easy to use application. I know some have complained about performance or have claimed that other RAW processors offer better image quality. I have not found any of these to be an issue for me. Lightroom has some warts, but it’s at least as good if not better than any alternative applications currently available…for my needs.
Then why exit? Just suck it up!
Let’s get one thing out of the way. The subscription fee does not bother me. Indeed, it’s amazingly inexpensive for what’s offered. I know some do consider it important, illustrating their point with all sorts of calculations. For me, the 10 USD per month is not a problem. Heck, I just spent $5000 on a new camera body, grip, and lens. That’s a lot of ten-dollar months.
If it isn’t cost that going to cause me to end my subscription, what would? I can only speculate, but I’m not feeling the Adobe love right now.
As Thom Hogan and, I think, Jeff Schewe have pointed out, photographers like me (and I think many other LuLa readers) are not a major component of Adobe’s customer base. If we all discontinued the use of Adobe’s products, we’d have a tiny impact on Adobe’s bottom line. Adobe is not here to serve us; their duty is to their shareholders, which they satisfy by producing applications that generate income. It’s because we like the product that they get that income.
What I fear is that in the future Adobe may either discontinue Lightroom Classic or make such modifications to the program that it would become, for me, unusable. Oh, I’m sure they will support Classic “indefinitely.” I don’t trust their definition of that word.
If you think that Adobe wouldn’t do such a thing, harken back to the great import dialog crisis. To their credit, Adobe rolled back that change fairly quickly, but if some other change proves as unpopular, yet better serves a larger customer base, would they roll back? I don’t think so. I think Adobe is looking to get a piece of the cloud-based pie: the Instagram, smartphone, connected customer and their work. If a feature added to serve those new customers conflicted with something a desktop using, unconnected-camera owning, old fart like me uses, then I don’t think my view would win. I’d think they’d follow the money, as they should.
I also dread the new names, “Classic” and “Lightroom CC,” the latter of which took over the previous name for the subscription version of LR 6. It’s as though Adobe is expecting the new “CC” to take on the role of primary Lightroom application, while “Classic” will be maintained for compatibility.
So what if your subscription ends?
At least currently, if I subscribe and my subscription ends, then my raw and JPEGs will still be spinning on my drive. I will still be able to access my catalog, print, and export from those image files. What would I lose?
Of course, I’d lose the ability to modify previously processed images; this is understood. What I’d really lose is the ability to apply anything I’d learned or done to anything new. I couldn’t add new images to the catalog, so I’d end up either redoing everything or maintaining two different systems for DAM. It’d almost be like two epochs, BSE and ASE (Before Subscription Ended and After Subscription Ended).
If I migrate from Lightroom now, I’ll still face that same messy problem. All I’ve done is move the transition to an earlier date, with one exception: by doing so now, while I still have a perpetually licensed version of Lightroom, I avoid losing functionality in the future. I understand that LR Classic updates the catalog, making it incompatible with LR6. This is the same behavior as previous major releases have done. So long as I don’t upgrade, I can continue to use LR 6 for many years, even after I’ve migrated to a different workflow. If I go subscription, I don’t have this backout.
So what am I going to do?
I’ve come to the conclusion that one of Lightroom’s primary strengths, the integration of ingest, DAM, etc., is also a weakness. With LR, I can’t realistically keep one part and ignore the rest. If I want to print, the image has to be in the catalog. If I want to add something to the catalog, it has to be supported by the develop module. With LR I get all or none.
For this reason I’ve decided that I’m better off using separate applications to handle the major divisions of my workflow. I know this means that I’m going to be paying more money and that there’ll be frustrations getting it all to work together, but I honestly don’t see a better way forwards.
For example, I’m leaning towards using Photo Mechanic to do ingest. I know very well it’s not a DAM, but it does offer a configurable way to ingest and store image files. It also allows some simple, and in some cases automated, methods of initial DAM work such as keywording, etc. From my very initial look, it writes standard XMP sidecars.
There are a number of DAM solutions at various price points and capabilities. I’m a bit leery of open source solutions because I am concerned about future support. Some open source software is very, very good, but in time interest wains and it becomes stuck in the past. Of course there’s no way I’m going to look at Cantos Cumulus, at a mere $30,000 per license, but I am taking a look at Media One SE. I’m still trying to figure out how well it integrates with Capture One. I don’t want to get stuck using Capture One’s DAM, even if I use CO’s raw processor. That’d put me back into the one application to rule them all prison.
There’re a number of raw processors, and almost every raw processor allows JPEG and TIFF exporting, which would allow me to provide cooked files to my clients and permit processing by Photoshop, Affinity, or other raster editors as necessary.
So far I’ve just looked at QImage Ultimate for printing, and it looks as though it will be satisfactory. But there are other alternatives to explore, including high priced RIPs.
If anyone has suggestions, I’d be more than interested in learning of your experiences.