Adobe Lightroom, as well as the rest of the company’s tools, could be cataloged as a standard within the creative industry. It is an application with many years of development, power, and everything that professionals or advanced users need in their day-to-day, offering an assortment of tools with which to restore and enhance your images quickly and easily, with filters, labeling, geolocation, and much more. In this article, I will talk about how to get adobe Lightroom for free.
How to get Adobe Lightroom safely
Lightroom is one of the best options when it comes to organizing and editing photos. If you want to start using Adobe Lightroom to improve your workflow, you must choose one of the different plans offered by Adobe. As Lightroom is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, you can download the full suite of applications. Different plans are available which include different extras as well as 24/7 customer support.
The plans offered by Adobe to be able to use Adobe Lightroom are the following:
Option 1. Lightroom Plan
In this plan, you get the basics: Adobe Lightroom, 1TB of cloud storage, your portfolio website, and some social media tools. This plan is for those who wish to use Lightroom only.
There are two different payment methods:
- Annual plan, with a monthly payment of $9.99/mo.
- Annual plan (prepaid) of $119.88/yr.
Option 2. Photography Plan (20 GB)
This is one of the most downloaded plans by people who want to use Adobe Lightroom, as the Photography Plan not only includes Adobe Lightroom, it also comes with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, the complete package for editing and organizing your photos. It comes in 2 versions, which vary only in their storage capacity in the cloud, one of 20 GB and one of 1 Tb.
If you choose the photo plan with 20 GB of cloud storage, the following payment methods are available:
- Annual plan, with a monthly payment of $9.99/mo.
- Annual plan (prepaid) for $119.88 /yr.
Option 3. All Apps Plan
The all-inclusive plan. Here you can enjoy all the applications offered by Adobe in its Creative Cloud, including photo and video editing programs, special effects, illustration, and 3D, among others. In addition, you have the extras: 100GB of cloud storage, Adobe Portfolio, Adobe Fonts, and Adobe Spark.
The price of this plan is
- Annual plan, with a monthly payment of $52.99/mo.
- Annual plan (prepaid) for $599.88 /yr.
- Monthly plan for $79.49/mo.
Option 4. Lightroom Discount for students and teachers
Do you want Lightroom discount? If you are a teacher or student of any level, you can access a discount from Adobe programs. The “Students and teachers” discount is aimed at the entire student and teacher community, offering a reduced price to encourage the teaching and learning of Creative Cloud programs.
Just log in to Adobe and pass the tests to prove you’re a student or a teacher. After that, Adobe gives you a 60% discount on its All Apps Plan, with which you can enjoy all Adobe applications at a reduced cost.
You can choose between the following forms of payment:
- Annual plan, with a monthly payment of $19.99/mo.
- Annual plan (prepaid) of $239.88/yr.
This way you can buy Lightroom or any other program of Adobe Creative Cloud, but if you still don’t want to pay for the program, I will teach you the method to use Adobe Lightroom for free.
How to get Adobe Lightroom free trial
Adobe offers the public a way to use any of its programs for free: a free trial. This trial is the best way to get Adobe Lightroom or any of the more than 20 applications available in the Creative Cloud, for free. The only thing you have to do to get it is to go to Adobe’s website and follow the following instructions.
First, go to the Lightroom website and point to the top of the screen. There you will find a button called “Free trial”. Just click here to start the plan selection and download process.
After clicking on the button, you will face a new window with different options:
- Lightroom: The first plan is the one I mentioned earlier. It includes only Lightroom, 1Tb of cloud storage, your own portfolio website, and social media tools.
- Photography plan: The ideal plan for photographers in their 2 presentations, is 20GB and 1TB of storage, respectively. Includes Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, your own portfolio website, and social media tools.
- Creative Cloud All Apps: Includes all Creative Cloud applications, 100GB of cloud storage, portfolio website, and premium fonts.
Under each plan is the “Start free trial” button. Depending on the plan you choose, press the corresponding button.
Start your Lightroom free trial
After clicking the button, the page will change again; this time, it will include several fields to fill with information. On this page, you must enter all the information requested, including your personal details and your Adobe ID account. In order to use the free trial, you need to have an Adobe ID account, so the page gives you the option to create your account right there, quickly and for free. After entering your account, verify that your details are typed correctly, and then press the “Start free trial” button at the bottom.
After this, the download process of your trial version will begin. Once downloaded and installed, you can start using Adobe Lightroom for free for the next 7 days, which starts running from the first moment you launch the program. Try to make the most of the program, since the only limitation is time, not the times you use it.
Lightroom for free | No piracy
Piracy is a serious problem, but mostly for users, since many pirate download sites are infected with viruses, have a hacker pending on who downloads their apps, or simply provide an incomplete program. I’ll tell you about some of the problems you can go through using pirated software:
- Malware/viruses: One of the main causes of virus infection is the download and installation of pirated software. On most of the websites where you can download pirate programs, the download is complemented with different viruses, and the viruses can also pretend to be the program.
- Zero updates: Generally these pirate programs have limited or no access to the Internet, to avoid being discovered as pirated software. This also makes it impossible to update them, so you will be left behind in functions and features.
- No help from Adobe: Adobe technical support works 24/7 and is one of the easiest ways to resolve any questions or problems with any of the Creative Cloud programs. This support only works for people who have an Adobe ID subscribed to one of the plans, so with a pirate program, you won’t be able to access it.
- Malfunctioning: the hacking that makes the program run for free damages part of the program’s code, limiting some functions and even making others unavailable.
- It’s illegal: Piracy is an expensive crime, so avoid downloading and installing pirated software if you don’t want to pay high bail.
Adobe Lightroom free alternatives
If Lightroom doesn’t meet your expectations or you want to try other programs before you know which one to keep, I’ll show you some excellent Lightroom alternatives:
Darktable
Darktable is a powerful editor well known among Linux users but forgotten by the rest, although it is worth stopping by and getting to know it because in terms of options it is very complete and its performance is very satisfactory. And best of all, it is not only compatible with Linux, but also with Windows and Mac.
If you compare it to Lightroom, you may not find as many tutorials or guides on how to do things with Darktable, but there are still many more than you can imagine.
Luminar
Luminar Neo is a photo editor that in its third version has added a key aspect, long demanded by many users: the photo cataloger. Considering the possibility of using different workspaces, filters, AI options to automatically retouch images, and a whole range of tools, the Skylum application is quite complete.
Adapting to its interface is as simple as adjusting it to Adobe Lightroom. I dare say even a little more, thanks to that you can choose the tools you want to have insight. Depending on whether you’re editing a landscape photo, portrait, etc. you can choose whether you want to see some or all of the tools offered by this professional workspace.
In addition, there is another important feature: Luminar 3 is able to read a folder structure to generate a catalog within the application and is continuously synchronized. That is to say, if you delete a photo in the file explorer, it affects the catalog, and the same if you do it the other way around. So, Luminar 3 is as satisfying for those who like a photographic catalog in the app as it is for those who prefer a folder structure to organize everything.
Adobe Lightroom for free | FAQ
Yes, it is.
Yes, this program is a full version and has the same photo editing features as the most recent Lightroom release.
You can get it on Apple App Store or Google Play Market.
Unfortunately, this is not an option. Adobe products, including Lightroom, are now only available with a Creative Cloud membership. Each user can create their own personal subscription, which may include Lightroom or other apps.
Subscriptions range from personal plans for photographers and institutions to subscriptions for students, teachers, individuals, and enterprises.
