It is almost hard to imagine now, but not so long ago mobile phones did not exist, and we wrote love letters and then waited a week for a reply. Long story short, a great deal has changed.
The world is getting faster, data streams are growing, and if you take photography at least somewhat seriously, you naturally want to work with a RAW/DNG file. You do not want to keep connecting your camera to a computer to transfer your photos. You want to view and edit them anywhere, immediately.
We are all familiar with the desktop version of Lightroom, now called Lightroom Classic CC . This desktop application lets you store and edit photos. Among other things, you can also see where you have been on a map and create smart albums. It is a highly capable program for professionals and beginners alike. Over the years, Lightroom has also become somewhat more complex and acquired modules that may not be relevant to everyone.
Adobe therefore made a brilliant move by releasing a new version of Lightroom. I would have preferred Adobe to keep the Lightroom CC name for the Classic version and call the new Lightroom ‘Connected,’ because that is exactly what Lightroom CC became—and how!
Uploading and Sharing
One of the first appealing features is the cloud. We can hardly imagine email, calendars, and contacts not traveling with us from device to device. Likewise, few people do not use Dropbox, OneDrive, or a similar service.
It is wonderful to put presets from your favorite editor in the cloud and continue working on your laptop with the same presets you use on your desktop. This has become second nature to us. Ideally, you would also have your entire archive with you on location and be able to see and edit the photos you take immediately. In 2018, that felt as though it should have been standard.
Adobe had previously released an app called Lightroom Mobile. It was a very useful way to bring photos from your phone into Lightroom, but the workflow had some limitations. Lightroom Mobile was a separate program and a clear addition rather than a true integration.
At the time, closer integration with Lightroom Classic CC seemed like a welcome future step—for example, by offering both offline and online modes...
Lightroom CC does make it possible to edit and share photos and view your archive on every device you use. Whether the images come from your phone or your mirrorless camera, everything enters the same library. All your material is available on every device through a simple yet highly capable interface. You can make basic edits, but healing/cloning, local adjustments, full-screen previews, and presets are available too. There is now no excuse for posting photos online without making them look polished. The entire workflow is not only fast but, above all, extremely easy.
In some situations, the internet connection can be a drawback with Lightroom CC. If you want to edit and share photos across all your devices, they must be in the cloud. Most people have a good internet provider and can send phone photos to the cloud quickly, but synchronization may take longer in rural areas. With a solid connection, Lightroom CC is a fantastic solution that we would certainly use for a mobile workflow. If you need to upload 30TB of photos, you are better off using Classic CC alongside it, but that is not the volume Lightroom CC targets.
Easy and Immediate
Anyone interested in photography would be doing themselves a disservice by not looking at Lightroom CC. Its convenience suits virtually every beginner, hobbyist—in short, anyone without an exceptionally large data stream.
And how do you find that one photo in your library? Adobe naturally considered that too. Lightroom CC uses Sensei technology, which lets you search your catalog with keywords. Sensei can recognize certain objects and situations in photos, and the results are impressive. Does that mean you never need to add keywords yourself? In principle, it is still advisable to add your own keywords to truly important photos, but Sensei can already find about 90 percent of them.
At the time, closer integration with Lightroom Classic CC seemed like a welcome future step, for example with both offline and online modes. Lightroom Classic CC already had a mobile sync option, so why were Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC not connected?
An Adobe Creative Cloud membership keeps you up to date with new apps and updates for a modest monthly fee. Adobe also includes either 1TB or 20 GB of storage from the start. That is more than enough for most people. If you need more, expanding it is straightforward.
Lightroom CC represented the future for anyone who wanted a connected workflow. Keep in mind that this review covered the product at the beginning of that journey. No program is perfect immediately. Lightroom CC still had room to grow, but even in its first generation it was already an excellent hub between devices. The future could only improve it.
Text: Frank Doorhof
