You can run classic on Catalina. I see no need to switch and in fact would not. Mixing the 2 is fraught with issues. The web LR is not nearly as powerful as Classic is.
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Have you had a look at Darktable? itās an open source ācloneā of Lightroom from what I understand of it.
Iām a big proponent of Open Source SW and I tried REALLY hard to use Darktable for all the reasons I use Open Source whenever I can. In the end it was just not full featured enough particularly in the cataloging and metadata creation and editing. If you can fit in its limits it can be a good choice but for my 2 main applications, large Historical Society archive and a much bigger personal archive of both digital native and scanned items it just fell apart. YMMV
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Itās not one Iāve used or intend to, personally I subscribe to the Adobe photographers package which Iām happy with and have no motivation to move from, at the moment.
Thought Iād suggest it for @Alevyinroc as he wouldnāt get enough use out of LR to justify itās price tag, which is fair as over the course of time that adds up significantly!
When did you last look at Darktable @OogieM? Version 3 was released late last year and skimming the release notes, among other improvements; performance and tagging seems to have been upgraded.
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Itās good for a free app, but it doesnāt match Lightroom when processing images, often losing detail in images compared to Lightroom.
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Rev 3 did improve but not nearly to the ability of LightRoom. I look at it about once a year just in case but so far itās still way behind what Lightroom can do.
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Dropbox syncs tags between macs fine, just not with ios.
I am also very happy with my Adobe Photographers Plan. I run LR Classic, and it does everything I need. The catalog holds 20 years worth of photos, and the processing capabilities are top notch.
Bonus features of the subscription is that you also get access to the iOS versions of Lr & Ps, the very useful Adobe Spark Post, the Adobe Font Libraries for both desktop and iOS etc.
For users choosing to stay current with Adobe versions, I believe Lr and Ps have never been this affordable. An upgrade from Lr 3 to 4 was about $200/- if I recall correctly. No Ps or anything else included.
If youāre not satisfied with Lightroomās handling of Fuji x-trans RAW files but otherwise like using Lightroom, you may want to consider Iridient X-Transformer. Itās a utility that uses Iridient Developerās RAW processing alogrithms to convert Fuji RAF images to Adobeās DNG format. A license costs $36. (A license to the full Iridient Developer app costs $100.)
You might also want to take a look at Thomas Fitzgeraldās Workflow and Settings For Processing Fuji X-Trans images in Lightroom ebook. It costs ā¬5.69 (about $6.50).
PS - I subscribe to Adobeās Photography plan and like it. There are some things only Lightroom can do and some things only Photoshop can do, and I like having ready access to both. I ONLY use Lightroom Classic on my Mac. I do use Lightroom mobile to take RAW images on my iPhone.
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No. LR and any proper photo management software uses EXIF/IPTC, which are open standards. So, you are not stuck in any application and/or operating system. And I can even create Finder/Spotlight searches to show photos that match certain criteria. Likeā¦from a certain camera.
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Itās not a āplaceā, the keywords are storen in the files themselves or as carrier files (XMP).
Just a noteā¦ you can use the library features of Lightroom for free. I got very used to and dependent on LR keywords (I have huge hierarchies) and was not finding anything else able to match up.
Then I discovered you can run Lightroom using a free Adobe account. As Iāve read it, only the Develop and Map modules are disabled. As I only wanted the keywords, itās working great for me. I import (copy to folders) my photos and keyword them to within an inch of their lives in LR, then I switch to DxO PhotoLab for processing.
You can also use Adobe Bridge for free if thatās suitable for your purposes ā the keyword management is not quite as good, but itās a pretty capable file manager.
Itās always worth to give a look at on1 and Exposure features pack to see if theyāre fit for your workflow. They both have trial periods afaik and are not subscription based.
They are less powerful or feature complete than LR (and way less than LR/PS combo), but they might do the job.
No they arenāt they follow the industry standards for EXIF metadata.
Plus with LR you get full non-destructive editing, something severely lacking in almost every other package.
You are both right, depending on your settings in Lightroom.
From the Adobe forums:
In Lightroom, you can ask the keywords (aka tags) to be written to the photo files themselves (or in the case of RAW photos, to a sidecar xmp file), by selecting the command Metadata->Save Metadata to File. There is also an option that causes Lightroom to automatically write the metadata to the files (or sidecar .xmp files in the case of RAW).
Then there is the distinction between Lightroom metadata, an EXIF Keyword and a macOS file system tag, but letās not go there 
Thereās also pixave http://www.littlehj.com/mac/
I havenāt personally used it, but have wondered if other people have and how it rates against the rest?
Thereās a caveat to the caveat in that passage, too. It suggests it wonāt write keywords to RAW files, bit it will write them to DNG RAW files. I rely on this fact to use Lightroom to add my keywords, then different software to process and export. The keywords end up in my final JPEGs because LR happily writes them into EXIF in the DNG files when I ask it to.
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