Adobe ditches the desktop and moves Lightroom CC into the cloud

Oct 18, 2017 by John Aldred 36 Comments

So, the accidental leak from Adobe a couple of months ago over “Nimbus” is now here. And it seems that rather than being a cloud companion to Lightroom, it is a Lightroom replacement. Adobe have today announced that Lightroom CC is now an entirely cloud based application. The desktop based Lightroom that we’ve come to know and love (or loath) is now “Lightroom Classic”.

Lightroom’s been around for over a decade now. With the increasing mobile based world around us, shifting the whole thing over to the cloud seems to make a lot of sense, although you’ll have to pony up a bit more cash if you want the online storage to be able to fully utilise it.

Comparing the two, it’s an extremely cut down version of Lightroom – at least as far as the user interface goes. This seems to echo what we all expected the Lightroom companion “Nimbus” to be. Now it seems that Nimbus is the full on replacement.

Lightroom Classic isn’t going away, and Adobe aren’t completely abandoning it. A whole slew of new updates to Lightroom Classic are set for release, which include new colour range and luminance masking features. Lightroom classic will remain focused on a “traditional desktop-first” workflow, prioritising local storage and file control.

This video goes through the differences between the new Lightroom CC, and the newly renamed Lightroom Classic to see which workflow best suits your needs.

There’s three photography-specific plans available that include the new Lightroom CC.

$9.99/mo – The plan that many have been using for a long time which includes Lightroom CC, Lighroom for mobile and web, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC, Adobe Spark, Adobe Portfolio, and 20GB of storage.
$19.99/mo – For this, you get 1TB of storage space. Everything else seems to be identical to the $9.99/mo plan with one exception. You get Lightroom CC, Lightroom for mobile and web, Photoshop CC, Adobe spark and Adobe Portfolio. Did you spot the omission? Yes, that’s right, it doesn’t mention Lightroom Classic.
$9.99/mo – This is a new Lightroom CC only plan. For those who only use Lightroom, but not Photoshop, you get 1TB of space, Lightroom CC, Lightroom for mobile and web, Adobe Spark and Adobe Portfolio.

If you don’t need a desktop photography solution, a Lightroom Mobile plan for iOS and Android is also available with 100GB of space for $4.99/mo.

You can find out more information over on the Adobe website.

For me, I think I can say with some confidence that Lightroom Classic is still the way for me.

About John Aldred

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

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Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.