Why New Photographers Should Not Adopt Adobe Lightroom Classic

6FPS V3#7 - Photography and More
A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach
July 12, 2021

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

We moved into this house in Silicon Valley in 1994, and bought it off the estate in 1997, which means we have over 25 years of not needing to stick everything in boxes and ask ourselves "do we really need this?"

And that's been life recently.

I swear to god, there are times when I think my next hobby will be marshmallow sculpture. I've been moving around lots of boxes of books recently.

As I write this, I'm two weeks from the movers showing up and as you can see above, Laurie and the cats have moved north and are starting to settle in. If you were wondering how you move cats 13 hours north, let's just call it the What the Hell is Going on Express. Tatiana sees her vet on the 14th and then will experience the drive the next day. I'll then return, and on the 21st the movers arrive. By the end of July, they should have delivered everything, and we'll be living in a huge pile of boxes unable to find anything...

Between now and then it's going to be crazy. After that... Well, we have bunches of new furniture to buy and have delivered, and unpacking, and...

I don't really want to think about that right now...

I do think I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Milestones

A few significant (to me) milestones have happened since last issue I wanted to mention:

I get on the scale every morning, and then I sit down at my computer and write the number down, along with my glucose readings. A few days before this issue is released to you, the scale reported to me the number "335". That is still a large number -- my long term goal is around 260, but it means I've finally hit the 80 pound point in my weight loss, and it's the least I've weighed in at least 20 years. Weight loss is a long, slow grind, and while I didn't gain weight during the 2020 pandemic year, my loss was trivial -- but it seems back on track and it's nice to see progress again.

Also, on July 5, I turned 63. And on that day, I ended my volunteer commitments to Santa Clara Valley Audubon, which ended 5 years of volunteer work for them. Doing so allowed me to finally, after months of waiting, exit Facebook. If you look for me there, you'll see a good-bye note, and I no longer look at or monitor the service. In a couple of months, I'll go back in and delete the account completely. This has been a goal for over a year, but took me a while to untangle the pieces I'd promised I'd take care of for others, but now, I'm no longer on Facebook and supporting what I consider to be a toxic company by spending any time on their sites.

I also ended my time working on the South Bay Birds and handed the keys to the new admin team, something we've been working on for about 18 months. It's now "owned" by Santa Clara Audubon, which gives it a chance to survive beyond any one person being willing to take care of it, and will remain a viable resource for local birders for a long time now. But this means that for the first time in -- 30 years? more? I am committed to any time or projects for any group or organization. It feels weird to not be contributing to other organizations, since I've been doing it kind of forever (my view: writing checks to groups I care about is good, sweat equity is awesome).

I currently don't have any plans to dive back into volunteer work, either. Once I'm settled in up in Washington, I might reconsider if I find an interesting situation, but for the foreseeable future, I am planning to focus on doing things for myself, like learning how to bird an entirely new region, and setting up my woodshop. Once that's done -- I have some ideas, but we'll see where it goes.

I'll also note that this newsletter now has more than 200 subscribers; it's been growing slowly since I started it, which is nice because it seems people find it worth reading, and I expect slow growth because I don't market or advertise it. My announcement I was leaving Facebook did get some people to subscribe (thank you!) and last month's piece on Apple got picked up and share a lot, which generated a bunch of new subscriptions (thank you!). For people here expecting more Apple content -- I don't write about Mama Fruit much any more, but I hope you find what I do here interesting. But I also expect some of them to drop off after an issue or two once they realize I really don't talk about Apple a lot....

But to all the new subscribers, welcome. And I'm always interested in feedback on what works here, what doesn't, and what you'd like to see me write about.

New Address

There is a new address for my public things (like domain registrations and disclosing on web sites):

Chuq Von Rospach
2916 NW Bucklin Hill Rd #119
Silverdale, WA 98383

This is, of course, a box at a UPS store, so if you stop by for a visit, you'll find the guest room really really tiny. So, probably don't?

What's New from Chuq?

  • I am hoping writing will return soon. It's been crazy time.

Why New Photographers Should Not Adopt Adobe Lightroom Classic

I've been chewing on this idea for two weeks now and I'm still not sure I know how to explain it well, but let's see what happens. While I am fully committed to Adobe Lightroom and have no plan to change that, I found myself recommending to someone just making the leap from Apple's Photos App to evaluate a number of tools, but not to become a Lightroom user.

There are some really good digital darkroom tools out there these days. That wasn't true for many years when it was Adobe Lightroom and... not so good stuff. Then Adobe shifted to the subscription model, and a number of groups saw a market opportunity to exploit, and we've seen some really interesting packages appear. I've taken a deep look at Luminar, and while I ultimately decided it wasn't what I wanted, I'm really impressed with the quality of their processing and I strongly recommend to people they evaluate it. Capture Oneis another package a lot of photographers love -- I, personally, am not a fan of the interface, but the tool capabilities are stellar. Another is DXO Photo Lab. Afinity has built some really good competitors to Adobe that includes Affinity Photo (and I have personally adopted Affinity Designer instead of Illustrator and Affinity Publisher instead of InDesign).

So a new photographer thinking of making that leap from a consumer processing tool like Photos to raw processing and a "prosumer" or pro-caliber digital darkroom system has really good options that did not exist when I made the commitment to Lightroom.

The subscription pricing model Adobe adopted is not a reason I'm suggesting you consider alternatives. I believe it's the fairest way to price software for both user and developer -- if the developer holds up their side of the bargain by continuing to invest in and enhance the software. Adobe has, by any way you want to look at it, met expectations there. I do realize a number of you disagree strongly with the idea of software subscriptions, and that's fine, we can agree to disagree.

The reason I have come to believe new users shouldn't adopt Lightroom revolves around the word "classic". A few years ago, Adobe brought out it's cloud-based version of Lightroom, and renamed the desktop version "Lightroom Classic". The path forward for Adobe is clear: at some point they will feel that their Cloud Lightroom can support all Lightroom users as well as the Classic app does, and they will start encouraging all of us Classic users to migrate. That will be followed by "encouragement", followed by the app being end of lifed, forcing the migration.

When will this happen? I don't know, and Adobe has carefully avoiding setting dates or saying this will happen, but it seems really clear to me this will happen. In a year? in three? In five? No idea, but I do wish Adobe would clarify their road maps.

And to me -- for a new user -- this is a problem. You are going to spend time learning a new tool, and yet it's one that it seems has a limited shelf life. Does it make sense to invest learning it?

To me, no, it doesn't. If you are going to invest time learning a tool, it should be one you can easily see yourself using five or more years from now; and I can't say I see a future for Adobe Lightroom Classic where I'm comfortable telling you that'll be the case.

Because of this, my advice to users thinking of making the jump to a RAW capable digital darkroom tool is now "do not start with Adobe Lightroom Classic". Consider the alternatives instead.

Now, I have to note I consider Adobe's Lightroom app is one to consider. There is a lot to like about it. I think for many users making the leap past the Photos app Luminar will feel comfortable while adding a lot more power to your toolbox. Capture One would be my suggestion if you want to get seriously nerdy with your photos (but increasingly, the capabilities of these tools means that's fully optional unless you want to).

There are three reasons I've stuck with Lightroom Classic to date:

First, I know it quite well and I've built a lot of workflow habits with it, so it's comfortable and I can work with photos quickly and easily. There's a lot of muscle memory built up, and every time I evaluate an alternative tool -- including the Cloud-based Lightroom -- I can't convince myself it's worth the effort to re-invent all my processes and habits. This not only includes processing of the image itself, but things like importation and organization as well as automated publishing out to various systems and web sites.

Second, I have many years of metadata -- keywords, GPS info, etc ad nauseum -- built up through Lightroom's capabilities. I have yet to find an alternative, including Adobe's new system, that handles this as well as classic, much less allows me a painless and easy migration of the information. So I worry that any migration will cause me to lose data, or have to fight to migrate it completely and cleanly.

And third, I have thousands of images processed; if I had to leave Lightroom forever, I could, by exporting everything as a TIFF to capture the processed image, and then import both the TIFF and the RAW into the new system, but... I think you can see this is going to create work for me over time, and be, well, less than elegant.

So personally, the challenges of doing the migration has always made me decide to stick with Lightroom. But the fact that I am working happily in Lightroom is a terrible reason for me to recommend you start using it.

And that's why I'm now suggesting new users to consider other tools, and not decide that Lightroom Classic is the tool they should use, even though so many other photographers use it. Adobe Lightroom Classic is not the future, and so if you're not already a serious user of it, you really need to consider the other tools instead.

Your goal should be to find a tool to use, learn and master for the long term, not adopt in one you're likely going to have to leave in a few years because it's clearly Adobe's past and present, and not its future.

For Your Consideration

Birds and Birding

Photography

Health and Fitness

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Recomendations

The Dragon Waiting: As some of you probably know, when John M Ford died, his estate had -- challenges -- and his works all went out of print because of that. due to the work of some smart people (especially Beth Meacham at Tor) they finally got things sorted out and permission to bring it back into print, and a couple of months ago, his best known work, The Dragon Waiting, was re-issued. I finished it last night, and -- oh my god is it good. 

It is a historical fantasy set around the time of Edward IV, and has the feel of a classic Arthurian mythical re-tell. It definitely will push buttons of Arthurian fans and epic fantasy fans. It has some strong magic elements, and it has -- vampires? yes, vampires. And other stuff. Many of the characters are real from history -- but adapted into this amazingly complex and interesting version of the world. One of the characters, I believe, is never stated as such but felt to me that he was implied to be Arthur's Merlin. It has some really good strong female characters as well, and a lot of complex characterization. 

Incredibly good, and strongly recommented.

About 6FPS and Chuq

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@mac.com).

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

Some links in this newsletter may point to products at Amazon; these are affiliate links and if you use them to buy a product, I get a small cut of the sale. This doesn't make me rich, but it does help pay my web site bills. If you use the link to buy something, thank you. If you prefer not to, that's perfectly okay, also.