Lightroom v6.7 perpetual - where to go from here (don’t want subscription Adobe CC)

[plummerl]

Unfortunately you cannot :-(

That is one of the major issues with Adobe.
Part of their business behavior is to aggressively push forward with marketing their current and future products and COMPLETELY abandoning past paying customers who simply liked to pay a single license fee for a software suit.

As a user of the last Lightroom 6 perpetual version before CC Adobe has made it IMPOSSIBLE to obtain the last issued update or full installer download.

I am on an outdated build as the integrated update manager does not recognize the later 6.14 version and insists that I am on the latest version.

NOWHERE on the Adobe site is it still possible to obtain the updates or complete installers.
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I'm not sure what you're talking about. I own the last LR6 perpetual, now using the CC versions. I just went on Adobe, signed into my account and looked at Plans / Order history.

My last order for LR6 was April, 2015, a 6.0 upgrade. Using the "Downloads and serial numbers" link, I can download either the WIN or MAC versions (full installer) and my serial number is listed. The two download files are labeled "Photoshop Lightroom 6" but these are actually the full install versions for 6.14. WIN version is 1.1GB, the MAC version is 1.2GB.

I guess I'm not really understanding what it is you are after. I have LR6.14 on a laptop and use CC on two desktops.

 

[jarski]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I own the last LR6 perpetual, now using the CC versions. I just went on Adobe, signed into my account and looked at Plans / Order history.

My last order for LR6 was April, 2015, a 6.0 upgrade. Using the "Downloads and serial numbers" link, I can download either the WIN or MAC versions (full installer) and my serial number is listed. The two download files are labeled "Photoshop Lightroom 6" but these are actually the full install versions for 6.14. WIN version is 1.1GB, the MAC version is 1.2GB.

I guess I'm not really understanding what it is you are after. I have LR6.14 on a laptop and use CC on two desktops.

yes exactly. this is how to download the full installer of latest LR 6.14, which works everywhere except latest Mac OS Catalina.

personally am planning to switch Windows, when it comes to photo cataloging and raw editing in future. currently still using a Mac for that.

 

[brbo]

Part of what I do for a living in a internet connectivity hostile environment here is to keep software that works running. Adobe CC sounds like a nightmare to deal with.
I understand fully that the general NA and European citizen has zero experience with the horror people have to deal with in countries that run a strong and ever changing internet censorship in terms of complete loss of productivity, being off the grid literally for weeks at a time.

Adobe Creative Cloud actually needs a couple of seconds of internet connection every 30 days. If you opt for yearly subscription then you have additional 99 days of offline use. Do your internet blackouts last almost half a year at times?

Is there no way to LOCK Adobe software and prevent auto updates at least until YOU are ready to install and possibly trouble shoot at YOUR leisure ?

Of course there is. I was NEVER even prompted that a new version was available let alone auto-updated to a new version. I manually run Adobe Creative Cloud application once in a while to see if there are new versions available.

 

[ruby.monkey]

Give darktable a try. It's a very capable open-source management and editing tool for Windows, OSX, and linux.

 

[FranZ]

I moved to Capture One and never looked back. Is an expensive product with a rather steep learning curve.
In the end I can do anything I could with LR.
If you want to go the Open Source route, you can try Dark Table indeed (just released a new version). The GIMP and/or Raw Therapee.

 

[nightfly]

I've been using Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS 6 standalones for awhile. Eventually I will succumb to the subscription model I'm sure but since i'm still on Sierra with no plans to upgrade, I'm good till I'm forced to buy a new Mac. Maybe they'll be a good alternative by then.

I've dabbled in Capture 1 but never dedicated the time to really learn it. I actually think it looks better for some of my RAWs but the interface is more difficult for me to use and I end up going back to Lightroom out of laziness.

Up till the most recent 16 inch MacBook Pro, I was thinking my next machine might be something running Linux, but Apple seems to have fixed the most egregious problems with the new 16 inch so they might keep me for another few years.

 

[Out to Lunch]

Instead of articulating the moaning and grinding of teeth, lets look at the alternatives.... Some have mentioned Capture One, Darktable and ACDSee Pro. Any others?

 

[ndnik]

There's also On1, Luminar, RawTherapee, and Exposure X5.

 

[Godfrey]

I just went through the first four videos in the On1 Photo RAW 2020 Foundations webinar. They make clearer a number of details about the On1 toolset.

So far, I'm finding On1 to be learnable and usable. There are various things that Lightroom has that On1 does not ... like the slide show and the templated print module with complex printing capabilities ... which might get in my way if I can't find sensible other ways to achieve certain output products. Basic import/render/export seems to be quite decent.

G

 

[willie_901]

i respectfully disagree with this statement. having lived behind the great firewall of china for some years, i happen to know what it means when out of a sudden, certain internet connections fail. sometimes for days. sometimes for weeks. sometimes for good.

no. i sincerely doubt, that cloud is reliable. especiaĺly in some regions of this world.

LR Classic (non-mobile OS X an Windows versions) only requirers Cloud usage for one thing. Every 30 days (monthly subscribers) or every 99 days (annual subscribers) you must log into the Adobe Creative Cloud app to authentically your account. If you update the LR Classic version this counts as a log-in.

All other forms of Creative Cloud usage are 100% optional. I happen to turn them off. This is not because of security or access concerns but because I find the image syncing options to be inconvenient and confusing. Otherwise, Lightroom Classic does not rely in any way on Adobe Cloud access to function. All the executable code resides locally on your computer.

If your internet connection "fails for good", then Adobe CC access will be the least of your problems. However, I agree that any location with unreliable internet connectivity could be an issue. That said, the login into Adobe CC requires a very low data transfer rate. All you have to do is display the app login page and enter your credentials. This means even an extremely slow connection will suffice for monthly or 100 day validations. In locations where internet access is erratic, logging into the Adobe CC app whenever access happens to be available would eliminate concerns unless outages were less than 30 or 100 days long.

None of this addresses using a subscription licensing model as opposed to a one-time per new version licensing model. The reason to reject LR Classic is subjective disapproval of the subscription model. This is a reasonable position for people who do not purchase new cameras regularly and do not value access to improved Adobe rendering algorithms and new post-production rendering tools. Otherwise the per year cost is similar to paying for version updates via an one-time per new version license. And you have complete access to Photoshop at no additional cost

 

[willie_901]

Since you value LR's DAM tools I think you have three options.

1. Switch to Windows and use your existing 32 bit license.

2. Switch to LR Classic via the Adobe Creative Cloud app for OS X and use the 64 bit version.

3. Use two different versions of OS X on the same machine. One version would be 32 bit OS X 10.14 (Mojave) or lower and the other would be 64 bit OS X 10.15 (Catalina) for everything else. There are several strategies to set up your existing Mac to boot into either 10.14 or 10.15 (but not both simultaneously).

For those who want to use OS X 10.15 and abandon single use liscensced LR Classic, I suggest looking at Pixelmater or Pixelmater Pro. As far as I know Pixelmater does not support DAM. I am not familiar will how to efficiently and effectively switch from LR Classic to Pixelmator.

 

[Barry Kirsten]

There has been a similar discussion to this over on LFPF and one of the alternatives to Adobe software that has had some favourable comments is Affinity Photo: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ I've looked into it and think this is the way I'll go, having recently ditched Adobe CC for the second time.

 

[PRJ]

Capture One is the obvious choice. They have an import tool that will save all or nearly all of your Lightroom tagging and such. Make sure you follow the directions. The color of Capture One is better than Lightroom, and I dont' even think it is close frankly. It is just a much better program for editing.

I am running both these days as a transition. Digital files go straight into Capture One with the intent that my next computer will be free from the A empire.

I've tried others, but they fall short.

 

[Godfrey]

There has been a similar discussion to this over on LFPF and one of the alternatives to Adobe software that has had some favourable comments is Affinity Photo: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ I've looked into it and think this is the way I'll go, having recently ditched Adobe CC for the second time.

Affinity Photo is a good Photoshop-like app. It works well, although like Photoshop it's more of a 'Swiss army knife' pixel/graphics editor rather than being a parametric editor/DAM like LR.

One of the useful things, to me, about Affinity Photo is that it runs on both macOS and iPadOS. I bought it a little over a year ago and use it occasionally: It produces very nice results but is a bit complex to learn (again, like Photoshop). There's also a very nice help/workflow book available for Affinity Photo.

G

 

[SaveKodak]

Just a quick reminder of the pre-subscription model:

LR was about $150-200 and was updated in a major way every 2 years or less.

PS was IIRC about $600-700 dollars and was updated every 2-3 years in a major way. (Most simply pirated it, some got it at EDU discounts).

So at the low end if you wanted both you'd be looking at a $750 dollar investment, but if you were ok with LR that was fine too, as it does most things. Except you're still shelling out $150-200 every couple years.

So over a 24mo period you're paying about $8.33 per month.

Compare that to now and you can get both LR and PS (and LRCC, and Portfolio, and a small suite of other apps you may find useful) for $9.99 a month.

So while I understand that subscription bloat in this day and age rubs folks the wrong way, you do have to accept that Adobe drastically cut prices and increased the bang/buck ratio. They also basically halted significant piracy over night. Pure amateurs, working pros, and everyone in between now as access to their tools for less than the cost of a couple of pints of beer.

Now you might say that you never intend to upgrade the software, and maybe you won't. But 2 years is a long time in computer terms. Eventually something will happen that will force an upgrade, and you'll be shelling out again.

Given that software is by nature ephemeral and ethereal, my $.02 is to just pay the $9.99 and move on with your work. Or build a darkroom. I did both!

 

[wintoid]

I have the same problem, but I care less about the DAM features than you.

I switched to Capture One a month or two ago, and have had some fairly serious problems with the types of operations I want to achieve, mostly related to the fact I shoot black and white film.

Firstly, Capture One is unable to edit the monochrome TIFF files I normally produce. I have had to switch to producing RGB TIFF files in order to edit the files in Capture One. Pathetic! Now my files are 3 times the size.

Secondly, the spot/heal capability in Capture One is not really up to the job of dealing with my negs. I've had to buy an additional program (Affinity) and use that to edit the files to remove hairs and dust from my negatives.

I frequently think about how great Lightroom is/was, but if I was to subscribe it would be through gritted teeth, so I'm going to persevere with Capture One. It's making me think about giving up film, to be honest.

On the bright side, images from my digital Leica seem to look better out of C1 than Lightroom.

 

[Bobbo]

LR was about $150-200 and was updated in a major way every 2 years or less.

PS was IIRC about $600-700 dollars and was updated every 2-3 years in a major way. (Most simply pirated it, some got it at EDU discounts).

So at the low end if you wanted both you'd be looking at a $750 dollar investment, but if you were ok with LR that was fine too, as it does most things. Except you're still shelling out $150-200 every couple years.

So over a 24mo period you're paying about $8.33 per month.

Compare that to now and you can get both LR and PS (and LRCC, and Portfolio, and a small suite of other apps you may find useful) for $9.99 a month.

As often as I was upgrading Lightroom, plus having Photoshop that isn't pirated (and would also need regular updating), I made the switch after 5.0 and haven't looked back. Financially it made sense despite me kicking and screaming at the beginning -- but it's worked very well. Still haven't tried the new Lightroom CC, preferring Classic.

 

[Tom R]

I have the same problem, but I care less about the DAM features than you.

I switched to Capture One a month or two ago, and have had some fairly serious problems with the types of operations I want to achieve, mostly related to the fact I shoot black and white film.

Firstly, Capture One is unable to edit the monochrome TIFF files I normally produce. I have had to switch to producing RGB TIFF files in order to edit the files in Capture One. Pathetic! Now my files are 3 times the size.

Secondly, the spot/heal capability in Capture One is not really up to the job of dealing with my negs. I've had to buy an additional program (Affinity) and use that to edit the files to remove hairs and dust from my negatives.

I frequently think about how great Lightroom is/was, but if I was to subscribe it would be through gritted teeth, so I'm going to persevere with Capture One. It's making me think about giving up film, to be honest.

On the bright side, images from my digital Leica seem to look better out of C1 than Lightroom.

Yeah ... I stopped using the standalone version of LR about six months ago in anticipation of the eventual upgrade to the new MAC OS that will likely complain about that, and other software.

Presently, I scan all of my panchromatic negatives to 16-bit Greyscale for a variety of reasons, but I use Capture One for handling digital content that is produced by a Leica M 8.2. I also use Capture One to process any scans of color negatives. To handle both scans and DNGs I use Photo Mechanic as my front end. This is excellent software if you care about the consistency of your metadata, and is much preferred to Capture One's metadata handling.

I have been experimenting with Affinity for processing the DNG files and while it works, its overall color quality is somewhat lacking out of the box when compared to Capture One. I can achieve acceptable results, but it takes more time. One final advantage that I find with Affinity is its Soft Proofing capabilities which are helpful if you're preparing work for distribution to clients with ICC profiles, such as printers.

 

[Godfrey]

Minor note:
Lightroom major updates after initial purchase never cost me more than US$80 every 12 to 18 months. Only one had serious, serious bugs on release, to the point where they withdrew it and re-released it. I started using Lightroom at the first Public Beta in 2006.

---
So, I've been through all of the foundation course videos for On1 Photo RAW 2020. The software impresses me in many ways, but irritates me in others. The courseware is not particularly good ... It has little sense, to me, of building on the fundamentals and expanding your understanding of 1) how the app operates and 2) how to use it effectively in a good workflow ... It's too much "Oh and you can do this this way and it's really cool" rather than "here's what this does, and after you do that try this or that to get to the next step..."

The toolset is scattered (literally) all around the UI and not organized in flow or order of use at all. I have spent a lot of time trying to remember which edge of the window to look at to find the next tool I need to use. Etc.

The long and the short of it is that I think it's a decent app but I'm not thrilled with the UI, the tutorials, or the workflow at all at this point. It's not by any means intuitive or simple to get a simple task done; it seems to make very different tasks a bit easier if you're willing to forgo actually understanding the details and just slap a "style" on then tweak that until you get something you like. But that's not the way I tend to work. I develop my own 'styles' from first rendering principles.

The long and the short of it is that while I don't think it was wasted money, it's not getting the job I need done. Time to move on to the next contender and see whether it does me better.

Meanwhile, I actually have a couple of projects that need to be done now. I guess I can use Lightroom Classic for a couple of months and see whether it still works the way I expect.

I actually enjoy the challenge of this, but there comes a point where I just want to my work done and stop futzing about with awkward tools. LR did that for me for a very long time.

G

 

[Barry Kirsten]

I've been spending time with Darktable recently as a potential replacement for Lightroom. As others have pointed out, its learning curve is steep, but I've recently found an excellent series of more than 50 YouTube videos which reduces the learning pain: https://www.youtube.com/user/audio2u/videos I believe that Darktable is an excellent replacement for LR, and the best thing is that it's open source.