Adobe Lightroom Review

This comprehensive Adobe Lightroom Review will assist you in determining whether the world’s most popular photo editing software is still worth paying for in 2022. Because I assume professionals are already using it, this is primarily a Lightroom review for beginners, amateurs, and enthusiast photographers.

Adobe Lightroom Overview

The Lightroom software has two versions. The most recent version, known as Lightroom CC, is made to appear and function identically on desktop and mobile devices, with your assets being stored and accessed via the cloud. In a separate review, we’ll examine the newest, more organized version of Lightroom CC in further detail. Using a desktop Mac or PC, the older Lightroom Classic is intended to help you organize, edit, and share your digital photos. You can use this Adobe Lightroom Review to determine whether Adobe Lightroom Classic is necessary for editing and organizing your photos.

Normally, Lightroom Classic is purchased as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography Plan(opens in new tab), which also includes Photoshop CC for a combined monthly subscription cost of $9.99. The entire All Apps subscription also includes it, which you may purchase.

Professional photographers have long used Lightroom Classic as their preferred program. Adobe has prudently chosen to support the original version and continue to add new features to it because it has been a part of their workflow for such a long time. Professional photographers will find numerous tools and features in Lightroom Classic, which is also a digital darkroom, beneficial, such as the capability to create personalized contact sheets that they can share with clients. The new, more efficient Lightroom CC does not provide this kind of professional sharing feature. In fact, Lightroom CC has done away with many of Lightroom Classic’s advanced sharing features (such as the ability to build Contact sheets) in order to concentrate on image editing.

The capacity of Lightroom Classic to manage your assets is one of its main advantages. If you’ve been taking pictures for a while, you can have thousands of digital pictures spread out across several external hard drives. A photograph’s disk, any keywords used, and any picture alterations are all information that Lightroom Classic’s catalog file is aware of. This allows you to browse preview thumbnails of thousands of photos without having to plug in all of your external disks.

Your photos will be immediately editable in Lightroom Classic’s collection if an external drive is already attached. You can click on a thumbnail if you need to edit a specific picture that’s on an unconnected hard disk. To continue working on your image, plug in the appropriate hard drive after using the icon to locate its storage location. A different option is to import pictures as Smart Previews, which will let you edit a picture even if its external drive is not connected to your computer.

Lightroom interface

By dividing its workspace into seven tabbed sections, Lightroom Classic makes it possible for you to concentrate on particular tasks.

After importing and organizing files in the Library module, you can adjust color, tone, and composition in the Develop module. Using the Map module, you may see geo-tagged images on a map (which is handy for viewing files sourced on a smartphone or GPS-equipped camera but not so valuable if you shoot on an old DSLR.)

With the help of partner publishers like Blurb, you can organize and publish your photos as picture books (or even magazines) using the Book module.

You can showcase your photos as a movie with text and transitions using the Slideshow module. To advertise your work, for instance, on social media sites, you can add slideshow characteristics like borders and copyright information.

You can print Triptychs for your wall or Contact Sheets for clients using the layout templates that are abundant in the Print module. You can add your work to templates in the Web module to create all the photos and HTML files required to display your images in an online gallery (though you will need access to a web server).

Lightroom key features

The most important modules for most people are Library and Develop. You can import photographs from a source (such as a memory card) and save them to a designated location using the Library module. To make them more accessible in the future, you can batch keyword shots during the import process. You have the option to create Smart Previews of each shot while importing. Even if the external storage drive for your images isn’t attached to your PC, Smart Previews let you make modifications to your photos. After that, you can share the edited shot in its full resolution by connecting the relevant source drive. Smart Previews are a highly handy feature, but they do take up extra room in the library on your PC. You can use this Adobe Lightroom Review to determine whether the Adobe Lightroom feature is necessary for editing and organizing your photos.

To expedite this time-consuming but necessary procedure, you can keep adding keywords to imported pictures within the Library module and use keyword sets (like Wedding Photography). Without leaving the Library module, you can adjust color and tone (or test out various white balance settings) with the Quick Develop window. Additionally, you may set up a Smart Collection in the Library module to automatically gather images with a certain set of attributes, or you can construct themed collections (or albums) of pictures. The ability to set up Smart Collections to gather photographs based on a variety of criteria, such as images taken with a specific Aperture that are more or less than a given value, makes them effective tools for managing your assets.

With a wealth of potent tools at your disposal, the Develop module in Lightroom Classic is like a digital lab where you can fine-tune your raw files. Lens profiles that offset lens distortion and lessen artifacts like color noise and chromatic aberration can be applied here. In order to support a variety of Camera Raw files from the most recent camera models (complete with profiles for the wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses), Adobe regularly updates Lightroom via the Creative Cloud.

Adobe Lightroom Review | Editing videos

Contrary to popular belief, Lightroom cannot be used to join, divide, or overlay video recordings. You can simply trim the beginning and end of a single video clip in Lightroom (as in Photoshop), but you can also make any lighting and color tweaks, as well as presets, including AI Recommended and Premium, presets.

Be aware that several tools, such as Texture, Clarity, and Dehaze, are not available for video footage. Additionally, you don’t get any corrections for geometry or optics, sharpening, or noise reduction in the detail settings. The Masking and Healing tools are also inaccessible.

The Crop and Rotate tool, which is now called Crop and Rotate in accordance with the current context, is where you go to trim a clip. The video can be rotated as well as flipped from top to bottom or left to right. However, you do not receive the auto-leveling tool that you can use with photos.

Where do you get Adobe Lightroom Classic, what does it cost?

Lightroom Classic CC is no longer available for purchase separately from Adobe under a standard “perpetual” license. The best deal for photographers is the normal Photography Plan, which costs £9.98/$9.99 per month and includes Photoshop, Lightroom Classic CC, and Lightroom CC, or the Photography Plan with 1TB, which costs £19.97/$19.98 per month and adds 1TB of cloud storage. You won’t require this if you choose Lightroom Classic, but you will if you choose Lightroom CC (and you may have to get more storage in the future as your library grows).

Adobe Lightroom Review: Final thoughts

Photographers who need to import and save files created on camera memory cards should use Lightroom Classic. The more recent version of Lightroom might be more appropriate for your needs if you create your still images on a mobile device and upload them to the cloud. Fortunately, the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan includes access to both editions. With the help of Lightroom Classic’s robust selection of tools for selective raw altering, you can make flawless prints, and the program’s various modules offer a variety of methods to showcase your work.

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If you would like to learn more about Adobe software check out our articles:

How to get Adobe Lightroom for free

How to get Adobe Photoshop for free

Adobe Lightroom Alternatives

Lightroom CC vs Lightroom Classic

Lightroom vs Photoshop