Let’s start by saying I love adobe. I use their products and am more than satisfied with the features for what I do.

Lightroom mobile is a cool idea for shooting images on my phone and editing while traveling.

I however never expected what happened today. Let’s assume you’ve read the news. Adobe is releasing a new Lightroom cc and rebranded the original Lightroom cc as classic.

Now I’ve thought about this a lot the last few hours and let’s put these thoughts in a blog post so you guys can also she’s some insights.

1. Lightroom classic

I think this is a huge mistake.

When I see this my first conclusion is, This Lightroom is end of the line. So let’s start using the new one. Especially because the new Lightroom is now called cc (the name of the now classic) in other words Adobe gives you the suggestion that classic is not to be used anymore and you should switch to cc. Logical because classic was first cc.

Better would have been too call Lightroom classic. Lightroom pro and cc just cc. This is actually what it is in my opinion.

2. Lightroom cc

Ok let’s go.

First off cloud storage.

When we are home we will very soon have fiber with a speed of 100/100. This translates to app 10mbs. A normal fast USB drive will give you 125mbs so working on cloud files will be very slow.

At the moment we now actually have 12 down and 0.7 up. Meaning uploading I’ve raw file will take ages.

In the studio we have a das and Nas system so why would we need cloud storage which will hit performance a lot. And you only have 1 TB storage. At the moment I have more than 25tb in my catalogue. So 1 TB is not even covering one year.

Now when traveling Lightroom cc would be awesome. Imagine shooting a full day and in the hotel downloading your card straight to the cloud. Now you don’t have to worry about HDD space or loosing files. Plus you can edit on your mobile, tablet or laptop on the go without thinking about it. Absolutely awesome. And added bonus ……when you’re home everything is nicely there. You can download it and put it in Lightroom classic (I still prefer pro) and you’re done.

This would work like a charm and 1 TB would be more than enough for most people during a 2-3 week trip.

However there is one thing that actually makes the whole experience useless. And that’s exactly what makes it so cool to start with……..internet speeds.

Lets say I stay with friends day 1-3 and they have fiber. Downloading(uploading actually) a 16gb shooting day would take at least 1-2 hours and than you have to start editing compared to downloading the card in 3-5 minutes and starting right away.

And what if I want to edit my 40 selects in alien skin exposure for tinting and and store them in Tiff 16 bits. This means first downloading them and after editing uploading the 16 bits Tiff’s again. But hey we are on fiber, so just lets upload it during the night.

However after visiting this friend we move to our hotel. And here we have the standard hotel internet experience. It sucks. I’m happy if we actually can watch some YouTube or Netflix. But most of the time hotels top out at 5/2 and often loose connections. So what happens now with the images I want to continue working on…. This will be an unworkable situation. So it’s still necessary to keep my original files local.

And how about when traveling with the RV and using internet tethered via our phones ?? Internet at home is often ok but in most cases not build to upload 20-30gb every day. Unless you have a very fast fiber connection.

Now let’s look at Lightroom classic.

Here we have all the files local and I can even work without internet. PLUS we have a link with Lightroom mobile. Meaning I can always choose to sync the catalogue to all my devices. So I can also work in the cloud with classic

I know the idea is like this.

Lightroom classic is local based and has the option to upload to the cloud.

Lightroom cc is purely based on cloud.

For me personally it would probably mean I will never use the new lightroom cc. I have too many files and download/upload speeds are nowhere near what we need for a good workflow. So classic is the way to go and combine it with mobile.

Ok so why cc?

I think it’s actually a genius move from Adobe. Just a horrible way to market/name it.

Lightroom cc is awesome for my parents. They shoot jpg and love to edit images but are terrified of Lightroom because it’s way too complicated. They don’t shoot a lot and the files are small. They do also own an iPad and iPhone and will love working and browsing their images on all devices and never worry about backups anymore. And 1tb will last them a LONG time.

So in conclusion

I think the new Lightroom cc is a genius product but by labeling Lightroom cc as classic Adobe unnecessary creates a lot of problems and confusion.

We pros are used to using Lightroom cc and now cc is a very simplified cloud based version while our workhorse where we spend years of years on keywords, presets, automations etc. Is now called classic which (I can’t help it) gives me the idea it’s a dead end program. If they would have just labeled it Lightroom pro I think it would be much clearer.

At the moment I’m excited for the new Lightroom cc and will be playing with it and probably record some videos for it. However using it myself will not happen due to internet limits on the road and even at home. But Adobe does open a whole new market with this new Lightroom and the more people subscribe the more Adobe can innovate and that’s a good thing.

What’s your opinion?