Adobe Announces Cloud-Based Lightroom CC

JRPhotos

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Jan 19, 2014
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miketcool said:
If Adobe wants to stay competitive they will need everyone to move their high quality photos online. Such a vast personal library allows them to develop cutting edge technology for searching, cataloguing, and manipulating photos. The techniques we employed 10 years ago to touch up a photo will be available by simple finger taps and sliders.

The industry is about to take a tremendous leap forward in a way that will put many people out of business if they do not change.
Gee, ok. thanks for that un-helpful Adobe PR there.

I wonder how many others will be looking at Capture One more seriously now? I know that I am.
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
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Mt Spokane Photography said:
I am definitely interested in the cloud version where I can directly upload images to the cloud as soon as they are captured. Just how this would work today is a question for me, I'm not using wi-fi because it eats up batteries, but I do have a eye-fi card that might be able to upload to the cloud indirectly

The question is is LR CC is the only way to upload and access the photos, or not. It doesn't look a kind of DropBox/OneDrive/GDrive generic storage, it looks more like Google Photos. Probably Adobe will make something available for direct uploads, but I guess it will imply a proprietary app or API.

There are also other interesting questions, for example if Adobe is running its own infrastructure, or is leaning on another one (i.e. AWS) - which leads to another - in which country and thereby jurisdiction the photos are stored, and thereby who could access it - and let's see what the US Supreme Court will rule about the DoJ asking MS to lend emails stored on its Irish servers. For professional photographers, especially photojournalists but not only, it's not something of secondary importance.

I would have liked to see Adobe spilt LR in "Lightroom Cloud", and "Lightroom Professional", the latter with higher-end features. But it looks Adobe feels its competitors are not Corel or PhaseOne or Affinity - but Google, Facebook and Amazon.

This could mean a big shift in products designs.
 
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stevelee

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Jul 6, 2017
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JRPhotos said:
I'm not considered the next generation of photographers? Really?

I'm certainly not considered the next generation of anything. I'm from a previous generation of photographers.

I can't even see the point in my using Lightroom. The whole database kind of approach of LR or even Apple Photos doesn't fit how my mind works. I know Scott Kelby considers us Bridge + Photoshop users to be old fogeys.

My subscription is going up something like $3/month, so that is hardly motivation enough to drop it. I could probably do OK with the $9/month subscription, but I still use InDesign and Illustrator on occasion and would miss them. And when I get frustrated with trying to deal with color in FCP X, I will break out Premiere, even though I'm not good at using it otherwise.
 
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Talys

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Mt Spokane Photography said:
I use and edit my photos in multiple locations, its a headache since the catalog cannot be shared on my NAS. Its a hassle to keep the latest version available in multiple places, so I am definitely interested in the cloud version where I can directly upload images to the cloud as soon as they are captured. Just how this would work today is a question for me, I'm not using wi-fi because it eats up batteries, but I do have a eye-fi card that might be able to upload to the cloud indirectly, I'm sure that solutions will be available. I have my NAS units disconnected from any internet connections due to security concerns, I'm not smart enough to make and keep them secure.

How much storage do you need?

One option might be to tell lightroom to save changes in a sidecar (XMP) file instead of the catalogue, and then use a cloud service like OneDrive.

Then you can also have the best of both worlds; the CC version of lightroom, from that list... looks totally messed up, uselessly gimped. It's missing some really important features, like Split Toning... Compare View... Secondary Screen... max zoom 2:1... NO RENAME PHOTOS....

I mean really? Why can't you rename photos?!

Also, I hate collections/albums. I use folders, because I have hundreds and hundreds of folders meticulously organized in hierarchy, like, wildlife/birds/waterfowl/bufflehead/2017-10-18. I would hate to stuff buffleheads in a collection, because there is no hierarchical way to organize albums. Plus, I have some photos of subjects I rarely take grouped in broader groups (like bugs/misc or unidentified) as opposed to subjects that I take a ton of and have it sub-sorted, like heron or eagles.
 
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Ok so I could pay 10 bucks extra each month to have 1TB of storage in the cloud...

or i could use those 120 bucks a year to buy a 4TB hard drive to store my photos locally, not restricted through download speeds or connectivity issues
well, ok now I'm worried about hard drive failure, maybe 2x2TB in a Raid 1 would be better

let's go to year 2
still paying an extra 10 bucks a month for the same 1TB of storage on Adobe's servers, not an extra TB still the same 1TB I probably filled up a long time ago...

meanwhile i could buy the same storage I bought last year and not have to wait for my pics to down/upload

I really don't get this plan.

Those 20GB that come with my already existing plan on the other hand are nice. I could see some usage for that, maybe. When I am on location and need to back up a card or to quickly transfer it to someone in the studio so they can start retouching. Then deleting the photos afterwards.
 
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Don Haines

Beware of cats with laser eyes!
Jun 4, 2012
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Orangutan said:
AJ said:
Now in an increasingly mobile-centric world, and with major improvements in smartphone cameras, Lightroom is transforming digital photography again.

It seems that Adobe doesn't really understand their audience.
The mobile stuff is probably to appeal to a newer audience. "Classic" is for heavy lifting.

Or ... this is just a bs justification and it's all about the money, money, money

Of course it is, I don't pretend anything else. That's how corporations work, I just hoped that there were enough of us "perpetual" holdouts that Adobe would relent. It's OK, I'll keep going with LR6, then move to something else. I have no need to be shackled to their cloud.

hmmmm.......
The computer that I use for editing and storage is not allowed to be hooked up to a network.... bye bye lightroom at work.....
 
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digigal

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Aug 26, 2014
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The direction Adobe is going in is becoming less and less useful to me. Most of my photography is wildlife done in remote areas of the world where electricity is only available occasionally so you can guess what my access to the "cloud" is! Because of the slowness of LR, I already use PhotoMechanics for downloading and culling my photos in the field and during my recent 3 weeks in Madagascar I switched from LR to Canon's DPP for converting all my RAW files. I must say that, although I like all the options of LR, DPP does a MUCH better job of noise reduction, shadow detail handling, etc. of the Canon files. I then exported the files as TIFFs to LR with all the original Metadata saved for further adjustment. If I were more fluent in PS, I would have used it instead of LR but at this point I can still do things faster in LR than PS. I can see ultimately just eliminating LR from my workflow. Of course, I will be wedded to Canon in order to do this so I have to watch how things are headed in their mirrorless/lens future, etc.
Catherine
 
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it's too freaking different. I know LR sucked but this is too simple and lacking lots of options from before. The interface is better at first glance. I like the new editing tools and finally no modules to switch. I can't find the second monitor option or a way to color code selected photos or view options for the grid...
:eek: I am not migrating yet. I can't afford to waste time or make mistakes. It's just too different from before. They should have warned us...
 
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Lightroom 6 will do the job at least until I get a new camera. Already starting to look at using Affinity photo for some mobile work on the ipad pro usually while I'm far away from any internet... may need to see if the desktop version is going to be a good long term replacement. So far Darktable is not quite what I am looking for but it could get there as well. Cost wise, Lightroom has cost me about $130 every 3 years or so and I can still use the old versions from backups if I need to. Never liked the idea of monthly payments on anything (down to just phone, hydro and insurance which don't have an alternative). Cloud based storage is pretty much useless to me, way too slow....I'm not really that happy with local disk speeds and am looking at SSDs to speed up loading RAW files form both the 5Ds and A7RII although I'm assuming that the new CC is can still use local disks.
There is one thing that I might have liked about the new lightroom and that would be being able to have one database/library of changes that I can use on both my Mac and PC laptop easily and connect the external drives to whichever one I am working on at the time.
 
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Jul 28, 2015
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Is it just me or are there pretty strong parallels between what Adobe is doing and how Canon develops its cameras? So many of the criticisms are more about 'what I want to see' or 'what I am comfortable with' dressed up as 'Adobe are making a big mistake'. I am pretty sure Adobe know their customer base extremely well and are changing their model in line with what they think is the progression of the curve - in fact probably ahead of it.
I also recall many gloom-and-doom comments (which still persist in ignorance of facts) about how the CC model itself works yet many people actually went to the CC model quite happily.

I am not saying it suits how I want to work but I am sure they have solid reasons for doing so and many people (especially multi-platform users, of which I am not one) will think it is great.
 
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Mikehit said:
So many of the criticisms are more about 'what I want to see' or 'what I am comfortable with' dressed up as 'Adobe are making a big mistake'. I am pretty sure Adobe know their customer base extremely well and are changing their model in line with what they think is the progression of the curve - in fact probably ahead of it.

Can you cite examples? Most of the criticisms I've read seem not to be directed at the existence of the cloud features, but the absence of perpetual/standalone features. Adobe's financial success demonstrates that it's a good business move; however, I wonder if they could have done this if they did not have, effectively, a monopoly among professionals. The subscription model is fine for people who make their living on it, but not so good for us amateurs.
 
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Mikehit said:
Is it just me or are there pretty strong parallels between what Adobe is doing and how Canon develops its cameras? ...snip...

Only if Canon:
Made 2 cameras, a Pro and a Pro-er model
Which do not function unless constantly connected
Many of the buttons will change functionality every 5 months
And you must make monthly payments to keep it functional

payments = (MSRP cost of new camera, in dollars)/(length of update period, in months)*(service markup, unitless)
with service markup > 1

Incoming rant, feel free to ignore.

In the old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Adobe (or AutoDESK, or Microsoft, or pick a current software as a service company) would do a periodic, expensive version update. In order to get their clients to update the software, they would have to think of something new, exciting or at the very least useful to a large part of their user base. If the new version had no benefit for you or your organization, it would be skipped. That was immediate, solid (i.e. monetary) feedback to the software company that perhaps this isn't what our users want.

Now with the subscription model, you still end up paying for that periodic update, broken up into monthly payments, but now the software company doesn't have to give much, if any consideration to what their users want or need. Feedback is now soft and financially delayed, "The users are revolting. So? The users have always been revolting." They have you captive. If I was cynical, and I am, Adobe can now puppet whatever new feature they come up with as "The features our users DEMAND", with users = marketing department.

Bang out an update full of shovelware, you don't need and/or want it?
To bad. You have to install it.

Change the interface and workflow, possibly dramatically?
Too bad, suck it up. This is our program, our house, our rules. You don't own it.

Jack up the monthly price for 'reasons'?
Too bad, give us our money. If you don't like it, the door is over there, and by the way, we have all your work right here, and you can't access it any longer.

The subscription model makes perfect business sense, mainly from Adobe's perspective, for tax, budgeting and other considerations. Especially if you ignore the fact that you will pay more in the long run for software that you use, while exposing your work to new, trending and exciting modes of failure that you have little or no control to resolve or mitigate.

I do photography for a hobby, but with a vast majority of my photos going to support the work that I do. (photographs of things broken, overall layout of sites, spatial orientation for the guys doing the on site work etc.) Which means I have until I decide to get a new camera to find a replacement for Lightroom. I find that annoying since I'm used to the way Lightroom operates.

If my job was directly photography related, I imagine I would be in some elevated state of seething rage. Not only would my job depend on the usual skill set (Customer relations, photographic skill, resource management etc.) but now with the added worry of:

will Big Brother Internet Connection play nice while I'm on this deadline?
will Uncle Adobe demand more money this month?
will Uncle Adobe's lackeys botch an auto update, and bork 1000's of hours of my work?
or decide to depreciate a feature that I need to use?
or change their policy (which I have no say in) to terms that benefit their own financial endeavors?
will their security keep my financial information from very active prying eyes?
(an increasingly common failure mode, so what's it matter if there is one more weak point?)

If my job or company depended on photography, I think I'd be looking for the exit off the Adobe train.

/end rant
 
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Talys

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photomachine said:
Ok so I could pay 10 bucks extra each month to have 1TB of storage in the cloud...

or i could use those 120 bucks a year to buy a 4TB hard drive to store my photos locally, not restricted through download speeds or connectivity issues
well, ok now I'm worried about hard drive failure, maybe 2x2TB in a Raid 1 would be better

let's go to year 2
still paying an extra 10 bucks a month for the same 1TB of storage on Adobe's servers, not an extra TB still the same 1TB I probably filled up a long time ago...

meanwhile i could buy the same storage I bought last year and not have to wait for my pics to down/upload

I really don't get this plan.

Those 20GB that come with my already existing plan on the other hand are nice. I could see some usage for that, maybe. When I am on location and need to back up a card or to quickly transfer it to someone in the studio so they can start retouching. Then deleting the photos afterwards.

The plan makes sense for people who use lightroom but not photoshop, since it's no more expensive than LR+PS.

Now, I'm not sure how many people would pay for $10 for LR without PS, but... :D

The CC version (versus classic/folders) is missing way too many features to be useful, IMHO.
 
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Talys

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Orangutan said:
Mikehit said:
So many of the criticisms are more about 'what I want to see' or 'what I am comfortable with' dressed up as 'Adobe are making a big mistake'. I am pretty sure Adobe know their customer base extremely well and are changing their model in line with what they think is the progression of the curve - in fact probably ahead of it.

Can you cite examples? Most of the criticisms I've read seem not to be directed at the existence of the cloud features, but the absence of perpetual/standalone features. Adobe's financial success demonstrates that it's a good business move; however, I wonder if they could have done this if they did not have, effectively, a monopoly among professionals. The subscription model is fine for people who make their living on it, but not so good for us amateurs.

It is definitely a good business move, because Photoshop went from being the most pirated piece of software to something that a lot of people are ok to pay. I even know plenty of professionals that pirated Photoshop because they couldn't afford it, before $10/mo.

There are WAY more Photoshop users than Lightroom users. I think that many (if not most) LR users use at least a bit of Photoshop, whereas there are tons of graphics artists that could give a rat's fart about Lightroom.

There are tons and tons of alternatives to Photoshop, and I've tried an awful lot of them, but it doesn't matter if you like PaintShop Pro or GiMP -- or for that matter CoreDraw instead of Illustrator, or Publisher instead of inDesign-- you must have Photoshop if you're a graphics pro, because people want you to send them PSDs, AIs, IND's and EPS's. If you send them something else, they look at you like you're a crazy person.

It's like trying to conduct business with Apple or Google docs or spreadsheets instead of Word/Excel files. People will actually pick different vendors because they think you're weird, cheap, or worse, broke. It ain't worth it.

I actually am not crazy about Lightroom. I don't like the whole catalogue, and prefer the way DPP does it (where it's all file system). However, DPP can be a lot slower, and is often inferior at RAW processing. The one thing I do have to give LR is that their hardware support is pretty quick - they add in new cameras and lenses faster than just about any other company I'm aware of.

But I don't think LR is perfect, and I do believe that there is space on the market for an alternative to it, if someone wrote a great alternative. The problem with most RAW processors is that they're really cruddy at the whole organization/preview thing. And, LR is pretty darn good at printing and large batches.
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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I spend a hour reading the LR Queens intro manual, and playing with LR CC. From what I see, its just another step of improving LR mobile, I have no intention of uploading TB of my images online. It is a good way to sync images taken with a smart phone to my pc, and I can deal with RAW images on my smart phone as well.

I could not figure out how to delete or remove images that are uploaded to the cloud, I'd want the ability to remove them from the cloud.

One thing that seems to be missing is any discussion of security. Is everyone supposed to believe that images on the cloud are secure and won't be lost or compromised? There are some serious issues to be considered with the CC version.

Meanwhile, the classic version continues to be great, the CC version did not cost anything, and I still don't have any kind of a work flow that lets me automatically sync images to the cloud as I take them for backup purposes, and later transfer them to my NAS and remove them from the cloud. I don't have a lot of time to fool with trying to figure this out, but it doesn't look obvious right now.
 
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Mt Spokane Photography said:
One thing that seems to be missing is any discussion of security. Is everyone supposed to believe that images on the cloud are secure and won't be lost or compromised? There are some serious issues to be considered with the CC version.

This is an important point: depending on the subjects and subject matter of your images, as well as any contractual language, you may put yourself at legal risk by storing your images using any cloud service.
 
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Orangutan said:
Mt Spokane Photography said:
One thing that seems to be missing is any discussion of security. Is everyone supposed to believe that images on the cloud are secure and won't be lost or compromised? There are some serious issues to be considered with the CC version.

This is an important point: depending on the subjects and subject matter of your images, as well as any contractual language, you may put yourself at legal risk by storing your images using any cloud service.

Absolutely. This change assumes that we have control of all the rights of the photos that we have in Lightroom, where some users will have complicated contractual obligations covering different sets of photos, where they can be stored, and who can access that data.
 
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