to be honest I was not aware of the two versions of LR until this thread. Thanks for articulating the app category and LR clearly. Now I have to decide what suits me best.
Yikes! Photo Mechanic is one ugly app. I know that shouldnât matter, but I love me some beautiful Mac apps and this isnât one of them.
I agree with other posters that Photos is not ideal. Perhaps I should check out Lightroom again, but I worry about turning over the management of photos to an app that I rent by the month.
I used iPhoto quite a few years ago and ended up getting really frustrated because it seemed to commandeer my photo archive so much that I felt kidnapped by it and hard a hard time getting out of it. Very recently I was considering trying it out again (mostly for sharing ease). I was a little worried that it still had that bad behavior and I couldnât find any evidence about that in my research. This thread finally gave me the answer. Somebody mentioned that Photos still maintains a hidden file structure, and, like the poster, that is unacceptable to me. I have used Lightroom in the past and one of the things I appreciate about that is it simply uses your file structure as it exists on the hard drive. Iâve never used Devonthink, but I hear it discussed here and it sounds like it is also appreciated for the fact that it uses your actual hard drive file structure as opposed to Evernote. Makes me wonder if Photos is kind of like the Evernote of photo management.
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Nope. You can absolutely use Adobe Lightroom Classic, the latest version, with only a free Adobe account. Although I have recently paid for a year of the Photography Plan (for various reasons) I had previously used it for over a year without paying a cent.
I will reiterate, only the Library module will work, but it will work fully so you can import, edit metadata (including the wonderful keyword system which, in my experience, nothing else can match), pick and reject, search and sort, and even export to other formats.
You cannot edit the photos, geolocate them, print them, etc. However, if you have ever paid for full access and now do not, your edits are retained and applied to the exports while using it in this âfree modeâ.
The only downside is it will nag you at each launch and it will use wording that will make you think it wonât work. But it will. They recently forced such free users to commit to a 7 day trial, but once that ended it went back to operating like I have described, only with even stronger language suggesting it wonât work.
This is possible because Adobe have long ago committed to never locking you out of your photos if you stop paying them.
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Why on earth would I use a software for an important task under such conditions?
This is Adobeâs solution for anyone choosing to leave Lightroom Classic, but who may have a huge number of nicely cataloged and edited images already in there. The free version lets you retain all that work you put in for EXISTING images, even if you decide to move to a different solution. I have not seen the wording, but I can imagine they do what they can to make you sign up again (just as any freemium service will).
If you want to manage your photos in a professional grade application, it will cost you the monthly subscription. Because Iâm old and still remember what I spent on film and processing back in the day, I find the subscription to be a great deal.
One huge bonus is that Lightroom features and itâs RAW processing engine keeps getting better with every version. I can go back 10-15 years in my catalog and re-process old files, usually with greatly improved results. Stuff I shot on lower resolution sensors or where I didnât have the focal reach needed for the subject, I can now just choose âEnhanceâ and get a crazy good up-sampled version of that file.
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I get that. Itâs a stopgap so you donât lose your work in the event you (have to) stop paying Adobe for whatever reason. And good on Adobe for providing that safety net!
But I still take exception to the claim by the previous poster that one can use Lightroom Classic, even just the Library module, for free.
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Lightroom is designed to be used end-to-end* as a photography workflow toolâi.e., itâs not just for editing. âLearn Lightroomâ style tutorials almost always start with importing and catalogue management.
Iâm a happy Adobe Photo Plan subscriber, but havenât (yet) opted for their cloud storage plan. (If I were a traveling photographer, I might.)
*Depending on what youâre trying to do with your image you may want to port it into Photoshop somewhere along the way, but you donât need to.
I use Photo Mechanic also. Wasnât aware of the Plus version. I love the batch renaming features.
As a side note, if you are cleaning out your phone before ingest, I love HashPhotos. I try to separate my business photos from personal ones.
You can compare dups and similars, check file names (which iphone doesnât display)and lots of others features. For $5.00 itâs for a lot of functionality for pre sorting.
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How do you compare similars in Hash Photo?
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Have been on and off Lightroom ever since the demise of Aperture and subscription gate. I just do not like Adobe software, it just feels wrong after Aperture. Have used several other options - ApolloOne was pretty good. Now going to give ACDSee Mac 8 a go.
I think this is my photo equivalent of searching for the perfect notes appâŚ
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Put your photos up on one of their included (âfreeâ) portfolio websites and youâll be âsavingâ money. Itâs tough to get a website for ten bucks a month, let alone Lightroom and PhotoShop, too.
Nope, still using photos but itâs not ideal. Would like something better but havenât seen nothing yet. Compelling feature of Photos is iCloud sync. I can show all my photos on my phone or iPad. No app that Iâve seen does that as well. Not a fan of Adobe so Lightroom is out.
I donât do a lot of photo editing. Coming from the film world I try to get the image right when taking the photo. My edits are usually cropping and exposure/lighting adjustments.
Photos imports the pictures from my Sony mirrorless just fine.
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In my experience, having lots of RAM makes all the difference when it comes to Lightroom, even when your photos are stored on a spinning disk, as mine are (a gigantic external hard drive).
I havenât used it yet, but have been considering migrating from iCloud Photos to self-hosting Photo Prism on a Raspberry Pi. Obvious cons: more hassle to set up, no mobile apps yet. But the feature set is intriguing enough for me to consider putting up with the cons.
Click on the 3 dots in the lower left corner. Click on the broom icon. The drop down list includes a choice for Find Similar Photos.
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Thatâs a valid point I should have addressed earlier. I already have a Pi set up, and learning to use the Pi for various other projects is actually part of my goal, so PhotoPrism is a viable option given my existing setup. Synology is clearly easier to recommend, generally speaking.
You might want to look at Mylio - it does cross-device sync very well and is free for up to 25K images
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Iâve found that the new Photos app for Synology isnât that great at all, I donât hold much stock in it. Itâs enabled, but only in part because I ended up falling for hype and buying a far higher spec NAS than I really needed, so itâs not impacting any performance.
Try it. The Library module is fully functional including importing new photos.
I do not know the process to start using it for a person new to Adobe, but having been a paying Lightroom user previously, I eventually removed my credit card from the account and stopped using it. Then I moved on to newer Macs and never installed anything Adobe until someone told me this free use was possible. I do not recall but I guess I went for the 7 day trial and then said no thanks to paying. Which would be how a new user would get it I think.
For over a year after that point I imported every new (DSLR) photo, added keywords, saved those to the (DNG) files and then processed them in other software. And did not pay a cent to Adobe in that time.
You can disbelieve me if you wish, but I did do it. I could point you to discussions about it in other forums.
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