Lightroom Classic future

[digitaldog]

Now why on Earth do I need every large raw file I capture in the Cloud instead of locally on my massive hard drive? Ditto with the rendered images. And all the previews (smart and otherwise)?
The time will come when uploading and downloading to and from the cloud will be as fast, and as inexpensive to do as I can today on a fixed drive? And when I want multiple local backups, backups made unattended at night, every night, from the cloud?

[fdisilvestro]

And when I want multiple local backups, backups made unattended at night, every night, from the cloud?

A hybrid cloud configuration will be a great option for this. Many corporations, including financial institutions, are using similar approaches to handle large volumes of sensitive & critical data.

[kers]

Now why on Earth do I need every large raw file I capture in the Cloud instead of locally on my massive hard drive? Ditto with the rendered images. And all the previews (smart and otherwise)?
The time will come when uploading and downloading to and from the cloud will be as fast, and as inexpensive to do as I can today on a fixed drive? And when I want multiple local backups, backups made unattended at night, every night, from the cloud?

+1 i like to have my work and information local. Never needed a 'cloud' and if i do need some i have my own. I don't need adobe for that.
I use 'little Snitch' on my mac and it is interesting to see just how much information goes out of your computer to the internet without any notification.
I like to control that part. I believe in decentralizing storage of information. So the opposite of a Cloud.
The word Cloud is well chosen- you don't see a thing what is going on.
Apart from that i work with images that take many GB's.. a lot of it is half baked rubbish... I am sure everybody is pleased i do not send it over the internet all the time...

[Alan Goldhammer]

The last thing I want is a different cloud storage program.  Every vendor wants to provide this service to you.  Right now all of my wife's and my stuff is backed up on Amazon Web Service which is pretty low cost.  I have MSFT Office 365 but don't use the web service at all.  I only use Google web storage for my phone but it gets transferred to my home PC and eventually to Amazon.

[rdonson]

Now why on Earth do I need every large raw file I capture in the Cloud instead of locally on my massive hard drive? Ditto with the rendered images. And all the previews (smart and otherwise)?
The time will come when uploading and downloading to and from the cloud will be as fast, and as inexpensive to do as I can today on a fixed drive? And when I want multiple local backups, backups made unattended at night, every night, from the cloud?

Perhaps some day in the future when the pandemic is a fading memory we'll all have inexpensive GB internet connections and Cloud storage will make more sense to me.  Like Andrew, I'm not there yet. 

I have 3 Drobo DAS boxes with capacities of 16 TB, 16 TB and 64 TB and I have my photography work on all three for even more redundancy.  I'm happy with that arrangement for me.  YMMV. 

[fdisilvestro]

I believe in decentralizing storage of information. So the opposite of a Cloud.

Nothing farther from the truth

[fdisilvestro]

"Many immigrants able to save money keep their savings under the mattress because they distrust financial institutions"

Book: Parish Ministry in a Hispanic Community by Charles W. Dahm

[uimike]

Kind of sensationalistic stuff that I really really dislike. Adobe has its flaws (for those who remember, would you rather have Quark?) but they have been very very good to me, I don't at all complain about the monthly subscription. In the _many_ years I've been an Adobe customer (15 different products? + fonts) I have always liked the products. Sure, nothing is peerfect. But I can't imagine they'll leave me hanging. Even if I have to pay a bit to update Classic every once in a while, or even if I have to go to CC, I suppose local storage will always be an option, and maybe there will be a path for those like me. But I am not willing to throw everything out because some guy is yelling that in 3 years I'll be in dire straits. How does he know?

Disgruntled in California

Mike

[kers]

Nothing farther from the truth

I should have said   "I believe in decentralizing storage of personal information. So the opposite of a Cloud."
I am a big fan of Wikipedia.

and please react with more than 5words- or maybe you think it is enough to explain what you think.

[fdisilvestro]

Apologies if my message was not clear. I'm not thinking of a specific implementation (i.e. Adobe Cloud) but about what is available as "Cloud" and is being used today at corporate level. You can choose how centralized or decentralized your data will be stored and replicated.
 
I agree that today's solutions at personal level (and affordable to the common user) are very limited and look like behind a "black wall" where you don't have a clue of what is going on.

Also, the legal framework has to evolve to prevent things like a provider that disappears overnight or clarify topics such as inheritance of assets.

We are still in the infancy of "Cloud", but it has the potential to evolve to something really useful where the benefits will outperform the current drawbacks.

[ButchM]

I'm not concerned that Lr Classic will cease to exist three years hence, but I am surprised that Adobe hasn't moved to develop what comes next. After a decade and a half of maturity, offering something more than Lr CC as the next generation of solutions for photographers and their need for DAM and RAW image processing tools would do more to bolster customer confidence. One would hope they have learned a lesson that you can't simply add on to the same app basic foundation for decades on end and not avoid bloat and endless conflicts of code like that have done with Photoshop and other offerings since the early days at Adobe.

[digitaldog]

Yeah, that 30 year old Photoshop sure isn't what it used to be  .... Thankfully not!

[Rand47]

If everything goes "Cloud Based" there will be a significant amount of rural American who will be disadvantaged.  I spend a good deal of time in the Blue Ridge where the FCC currently thinks of 2Mbps download/upload speeds as sufficient.  A pox on Ajit Pai at the FCC.

Not only this, but working remotely is an issue Adobe already “backed up” on earlier, by allowing LR/PS to work without checking-in to the mother-ship for an extended period of time.  So, it if goes 100% cloud based, you might have a hard time doing any editing in remote places.  Can’t edit, can’t store . . . no bueno.   And you don’t need to be in the middle of Africa or the Outback of Australia for this to be a serious issue.  A few days dry camping in the Alabama Hills west of Lone Pine will suffice.

Rand

[ButchM]

Yeah, that 30 year old Photoshop sure isn't what it used to be  .... Thankfully not!

I didn't say that I thought Photoshop and Lightroom were not as useful as days gone by or that I desired to argue with the Digital Dog over semantics once more ... I was simply offering that there is considerable dead weight, duplication and outright cruft in the code that we call Photoshop and hoped that game plan wouldn't be the future for Lightroom Classic as well.

Heck, there are plenty of apps now for mobile devices that can achieve many of the tasks photographers desire with a far smaller footprint and much more modest use of resources. I'm not saying those apps are totally on par with Ps ... only that their code base and footprint can achieve more with less effort by comparison.

I don't think it's too much to ask for a solution that is leaner, meaner and more efficient to take us into the next 3 or more decades. Maybe it's time to re-think the database structure for Lightroom since much has changed in technology since it was first written. Or should it take several more decades to reach that point?

[digitaldog]

Some of us are working on the next big thing from Adobe.
Some are just speculating. 
I hope it’s not too much to ask for them to wait.

[JWB]

. . . Heck, there are plenty of apps now for mobile devices that can achieve many of the tasks photographers desire with a far smaller footprint and much more modest use of resources. I'm not saying those apps are totally on par with Ps ... only that their code base and footprint can achieve more with less effort by comparison.

I don't think it's too much to ask for a solution that is leaner, meaner and more efficient to take us into the next 3 or more decades. . . .

Is this what Lightroom CC is supposed to be? My impression is that it is "leaner, meaner" than Lightroom Classic and rewritten from the ground up.

I don't use Lightroom CC on my Mac because it lacks many features from Lightroom Classic that I find valuable, viz. printing, book creation, snapshots, virtual copies, and access to cheap storage. However, I very much enjoy using Lightroom CC on my iPad Pro and iPhone.

I look forward to seeing what Adobe has in store for us next.

[John Hollenberg]

@ I'd like to see:
Focus stacking (maybe not possible in the parametric realm but it could manufacture TIFFs or DNGs),

You can get this now with Helicon Focus Pro.  Does an amazing job and returns a RAW file to Lightroom if you send it raw files.  Not cheap, but outstanding quality and flexibility.

[digitaldog]

You can get this now with Helicon Focus Pro.  Does an amazing job and returns a RAW file to Lightroom if you send it raw files.

Linear DNG; so not as raw as the original raw and in reality, not a raw. 
https://www.heliconsoft.com/raw-in-dng-out/

[John Hollenberg]

Linear DNG; so not as raw as the original raw and in reality, not a raw. 
https://www.heliconsoft.com/raw-in-dng-out/

OK, partially cooked.    Thanks for the clarification.

[kers]

You can get this now with Helicon Focus Pro.  Does an amazing job and returns a RAW file to Lightroom if you send it raw files.  Not cheap, but outstanding quality and flexibility.

Just found out it is now blazin fast on new hardware: it uses the GPU and the CPU; only a few seconds to stack 10  46MP images.
(You have to go in the preferences to tune it)