Cameras and Photography Explained

My Lightroom comments continue to get a lot of attention, so we’ll continue the conversation one last time.

First up, I want to point out that my dilemma isn’t that Lightroom doesn’t have a lot of features or performance. It’s soley my observation that I’m not sure that Adobe is doing enough to both satisfy existing users and attract new ones for me to continue to recommend it as the go-to choice. 

This centers on something I write about a lot: what user problem is being solved? For Lightroom, that originally was the late Jeff Schewe’s observation that now that serious photographers where taking many more photos, we needed a place to put them, organize them, and process them (when necessary). Lightroom’s genious was that it treated your ingested images as components in a database, but designed the database to operate in ways that would directly solve photographers’ key needs. The database itself was well hidden from the Lightroom user, but the benefits of the data-driven approach were externalized in a UI that was (mostly) what a photographer might want to use. 

The problem with the database approach is two-fold now. For someone new to collecting, maintaining, and processing photographs, Lightroom Classic's a bit much. For someone who’s been using it for a long period of time the size and complexity of the underlying data is starting to feel slow or cumbersome, and deep dives into your material get more difficult if you didn’t get it 100% organized the first time around. That last bit is where some AI-based browser/catalogs are starting to look faster, more modern, and direct.

I’ll give a personal example of how things can start to not work right with Lightroom. When I needed some photos of Chas Glazer for my recent article on his death, I knew immediately where to look for them and just pointed Photo Mechanic at the appropriate folders. A quick scroll and I found what I wanted. Had I been using Lightroom, finding those images of Chas would have more dependent upon me having entered the right keywords and doing the right organization within Lightroom for the database-driven filters to find them quickly. My observation is that not many Lightroom Classic users have been doing enough keywording and organization to quickly pull up exactly what they need, and some of that has to do with the way the program has grown coupled with the way the UI is scattered. 

Lightroom Classic as it stands today is a very good program, but it’s starting to rely too much on the user solving their own problems, and not enough on the program solving the user problems. Frankly, I believe it’s due for a fairly strong overhaul if it’s going to remain the go-to choice for serious photographers. Which is why I asked the question of my readership.

It seems that quite a few of you agree with me that we’ve sort of come to a crossroad with Lightroom Classic, and some of you are clearly taking a different route now. At the same time, a large group of you are fine, but would just like a few refinements here and there. 

For now, I’m leaving my recommendation intact. But, as always, I’ll continue to examine what’s available and try to make rational and justified recommendations as we move forward.

Meanwhile, here’s some additional followup to your comments:

“I now use DxO PhotoLab.” 

Of all the folk that left Lightroom Classic (or are in the middle of leaving it), this was the number one destination. I tend to concur. While PhotoLab has some limits and needs a bit more polish, it’s a really solid product now, and produces consistent, excellent results.

“I’m using DxO PhotoLab for processing, but still use the Lightroom catalog.” 

This brings up an interesting point. As imaging software has gotten better, I’ve found that my processing of an image taken five or more years ago is improved if I just start over. So having Lightroom Classic remember all my choices really isn’t all that useful as time elapses and we process differently. The interesting thing is that if you stop paying for Lightroom Classic, the catalog still works. So if you’re really just leaning on Lightroom for cataloging, paying the monthly tithe isn’t buying you much. 

I think I’m going to have to do a video on this for the upcoming byThom MAX to show you what I mean, and how much you can rely upon an expired subscription version of Lightroom Classic. But that’s for future Thom to deal with, right now current Thom is writing this. 

“Another lock-in might be profiles.” 

For a few users that have been using things like the Lumariver Profile Designer, yes, I can see that. I’d generally say, though, that if you’re running other profiling with Lightroom Classic, that’s a bit of a failure on Adobe’s part. As I wrote recently about color, Adobe’s own color models aren’t optimal for a Nikon user (and maybe not for other brands, too, though I’ve stopped trying to evaluate that). I’ve been harping on that for over a decade. Many of you don’t remember that Nikon had a plug-in for Photoshop which did the demosaic for NEF files early in the digital era, and we got used to Photoshop results matching camera results. Then the “breakup” occurred with D2x, and Adobe went their own way. 

“Sidecars are a problem.”

Yes and no. There’s no clear win on this issue. If you want reversable changes to a file, then data has to be saved in addition to the results. If you save data in the file, this starts to make the file potentially incompatible with other products, as they may not see/use that data. If you save the data outside the file in a sidecar, then you have the problem that the original file and sidecar need to be kept together. The good news here is that .XMP data is now a recognized standard, so perhaps we’ll see better solutions moving forward as more programs learn to use it within a file, and more operating systems learn that they have to manage a pair of files together. 

“If you keep running Lightroom Classic on the same computer for a decade, it will get slower. OS upgrades demand more resources, you have more files than you did with the slower drives you probably have, and so on.”

Absolutely. The notion that you just buy a computer and use it forever is a false hope. At least if you’re doing more than just Web browsing, email, and other casual uses (which can be done perfectly well on a phone or tablet these days, so I’m not sure why you’re holding onto a computer forever). 

For Mac users, the M1 chips and reliance on SSD changed things. There’s a real line in the sand that happened around 2019, and if you’re on the wrong side of that line, that the “things are getting slower” problem isn’t solely due to Lightroom Classic, it’s a foundational issue you’re facing. Double that if you’re still relying upon hard drives and anything slower than Thunderbolt for external drives. On the Windows side, it isn’t so clear, but I’ve felt that the Wintel platform has been long-in-the-tooth and not keeping up for some time now. 

Security concerns alone—if your computer connects to the Internet then you have security concerns—are starting to force hardware upgrades, as well, as neither Apple nor Microsoft can really afford to keep everything they’ve ever made secure forever. The question I get asked a lot is “how long will my new computer be good for?” The answer is forked: (a) if you’re a casual user not pushing performance boundaries of any kind and bought enough computer to start with, then probably right until your manufacturer no longer supports it with security updates (for Apple that tends to be about seven to ten years); and (b) if you need top-level performance, then you should be upgrading every other generation, which tends to be about every two or three years. So that’s the range: two to ten years, and no more.

The good news is that typically when you update your computer, you’ll get a bit of performance back, even if your Lightroom catalog has grown mammoth. On the Mac side, that’s mostly been due to faster memory and SSD with each generation.

“Picture Window Pro is still available.”

Hmm, yes Picture Window Pro is still available. Jonathan Sachs, the author, was one of the co-founders of Lotus and helped create Lotus 1-2-3, a seminal Windows spreadsheet. While it appears that Jonathan is still maintaining the program, the UI is still very 1990’s (if I recall correctly, Jonathan started his digital photography exploration about the same time as I did in the late 80’s). Nothing overly wrong with that, though this Windows-only program will immediately conjure up visions of Windows 95 when you use it. 

“You avoided any discussion of Lightroom (cloud) versus Lightroom Classic.”

I was hoping you wouldn’t notice ;~). 

Adobe, like all the big tech players, wants to “own you.” Getting you de-centralized—your images stored on the company’s servers, not your computer—is a common technique to do that. I’m not a fan. Some things, yes, belong on centralized servers, but generally not personal data. The supposed benefit for photographers is that all your photos can be shared by all your devices. Almost all the big players here (Apple, Google, Microsoft) neglect to tell you that you can do the same thing locally with a NAS (network attached storage). A NAS does take a bit of geekdom to set up properly for that, so the cloud companies would also say they’re selling your convenience when you lock into their centralized solution. 

I don’t really see Adobe being one of the big players in cloud storage. I don’t think they have the size or the user base to be a winner in that category, though they can certainly build a niche offering that might be profitable for them. Lightroom (not Lightroom Classic) was an attempt to bring the local image handling capabilities to the cloud realm, and across all your devices (phone, tablet, computer). It sort of works, though with a few dissonances to the Classic product that might trip you up. 

I think that Adobe was looking more to the so-called creators as opposed to photographers when Lightroom and the cloud aspects were being fleshed out. But now that Apple is building out their own Creative Suite, I’ve found it simpler and easier to work with that for the role I think Adobe was trying to fill. 

But in general, I kept my discussion centered on Lightroom Classic, because that is what most of my readers have been using and are (sometimes) complaining about.

“Adobe telegraphed the future years ago when they named it Lightroom Classic instead of Desktop. It’s a legacy product from their point of view.”

True that. However it’s a cash cow that’s not being properly milked. Nor is Adobe seemingly trying to grow the herd. A strange metaphor, to be sure, but this is almost exactly my point: Adobe could do better. If they don’t, I can’t see anything other than a slow demise to Lightroom Classic’s user base as more modern and better solutions appear.

——————

And with that, I’m going to put a stake in the ground and say that we’ve surveyed the property thoroughly, and this is where we land. Not that I won’t again cover Adobe or its products in the future. It’s that I’ve resolved for the moment to continue recommending Lightroom Classic. If I change my mind on that, I’ll pull up the stake and we’ll do another survey…

FWIW, this was one of the pending things I needed to work through as I rewrite my Web site, so thanks for the help. As I’ve noted before, I’m going through everything on byThom (other than the news) and rewriting it. I want the new site when it appears to be current, even better considered and written than before, and accurate to my thoughts today, not yesterday. 

Well, that story woke you up!

My comments about Adobe possibly missing a step with Lightroom provoked quite a few of you to send me an email. Indeed, more so than any other article this year, and by a fair margin. As such, it’s worth dipping into your comments and questions and doing a follow up. 

It seems a lot of you agreed with my basic contention that Adobe isn’t exactly innovating with Lightroom any more (though they do keep adding features to it, but usually after they do it for Photoshop/ACR). For instance, the following was a fairly common reaction I received:

“I’m a serious enthusiast with a library of nearly 80k images from the past 15+ years and maintaining that library is a huge priority for me. I'm still burned many years later from Apple abruptly ending Aperture. I switched to Lightroom Classic mostly because I thought it was least likely to have an Aperture-style ending. My plan has been to basically accept the "catalog lock in" you describe even as its obvious Lightroom Classic is not Adobe's focus or preferred path forward.”

A lot of you got to Lightroom as an escape from Apple’s abandonment of Aperture (bad move, Apple). You weren’t locked into Aperture’s catalog as it turned out, as several ways to migrate to Adobe quickly appeared, and that’s how many of you got to Lightroom Classic in the first place; it was the best alternative to what you were doing when what you were doing went away.

“I started to think that Adobe was finally putting some work into Lightroom Classic as the newer updates have been appreciated. The AI masking in particular and the duplicate tools and culling is appreciated (I haven't tried them yet, so maybe they suck).  But my biggest problem now is how to get rid of all the crap photos I have that the iPhones in my household take and that cameras with insane burst rates leave you with. Seems like your point is that Classic is getting these last and almost begrudgingly, but its also true that editing photos today in Classic gives me better results in much less time than when we were in Africa 10 years ago. Maybe there are other tools that are better but as a hobbyist I don't have time to try them all. Recently I have been using Excire in conjunction with Lightroom. The AI search is excellent. With over 300k photos in my catalog I can just say "show me pictures of Louie riding his red jeep" and get what I am looking for. And I can do it without uploading my collection to some cloud.“

This exposes one of the reasons why I haven’t yet stopped recommending Lightroom Classic, but also why I am pondering whether I should. Yes, Adobe is still updating the program, and we sometimes get new useful features, but as you point out with Excire, we now have a number of products that apply AI against a set of images better than Adobe does at the cataloging level. It was the catalog that was Lightroom’s big win for photo enthusiasts and pros, but now it is lagging what is possible, and by quite some margin, I’d suggest. The question is becoming “if you want to catalog and search your images, is there a better starting place?” Raw converters and photo editors can be called by any catalog program, after all, so if your primary workflow sits inside the catalog, then Lightroom has fallen far behind. 

“A lot of what keeps me on Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, and I suspect a lot of others, is that the other tools aren’t substantially better. Enough so to make it worth the effort of relearning a whole new system, building a new workflow, and tools that may or may not work with whatever I would move to.”

I’d agree with that assessment, with an exception, thus my original article. Note my Excire comments, above. The one tool that has gotten substantial better with other software is non-filter, non-structure finding of images in a “catalog.” Adobe’s features beyond that are minimal and nascent, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve seen clearly better from multiple products now. 

“I continue using Lightroom Classic. I've used Lightroom and nothing else since 2011. It's what I know, it's where my catalogs are, and my needs are comparatively minimal. Having said that, I think it runs much more slowly now as compared to five years ago. I don't use any of the cloud-based aspects of Adobe; everything is local for me. I get the sense that there's nothing I can do to make it run faster. I know all the basic methods and it runs the same either way.”

Comments like this one were very common among the responses: (a) used Lightroom Classic for a long time; (b) don’t want to use cloud; and (c) seems to run slower now.

Running slower isn’t something I can specifically help with at the moment. I don’t use Lightroom’s cataloging except for a few small tasks (workshops, finished JPEG gallery). Nothing I do would tend to slow down Lightroom because I’m only dealing with a small number of files, and many of those are small themselves. But slowness does seem like a common complaint, so it’s perhaps something I should look into for my reader base.

“It’s also plug-in lock.” 

Those that use services and push files from Lightroom said this, and perhaps that’s true. However, the number of people locked this way is far lower than the number who believe they’re locked into Lightroom’s Catalog. 

“For context, my history starts with the Lightroom betas, even before 1.0. Over the years Lightroom got better in some ways, and worse in others. Eventually I felt the ‘bad’ outweighed the ‘good’ and ditched it for Capture One, followed by DxO PhotoLab. But now I’m back on Lightroom. Why? It isn’t that Lightroom has magically improved. It is because Lightroom is the only software (of the major commercial photo editors) that supports HDR editing in the Develop module. Capture One doesn’t have it, nor does DxO. By “HDR” I don’t mean the fake tone mapping or combining over- and under-exposed photos that has been around for decades.

I edit photos mainly for visual use, not print, so HDR has real benefit. Granted, this is a rather niche use case, as one needs an HDR-capable monitor to appreciate it (such as the Apple Pro Display HDR or the current Studio Display XDR or one of the M-series MacBook Pros with mini-LED screens). But such displays are becoming more common, and not just from Apple. So as much as I would prefer to use some alternative to Lightroom, it has one “superpower” over the others: native HDR editing.”

An interesting perspective, for sure. I’m sure Greg Benz would agree with you. The only problem here is that still photography continues to lag in terms of display. HDR is standardized and ubiquitous in the video world, from capture to display. The problem still photography has is that HDR hasn’t yet really been standardized from capture to display. Yet. At the point that happens—I hope it happens—I’m pretty sure every surviving photo software tool will rush to add HDR. And then we’ll be right back to discussing the Catalog Lock-In problem. 

“I don’t feel that Lightroom Classic is being enshitified more so than any other old large program (Excel and Word being the poster children).”

Don’t get me started on Microsoft. Talk about failures, Word data files are still 32-bit restrained. What engineer in Redmond never made it to the 21st century? 

I’m fully with Doctorow on this one: companies that want to still have customers should stop dumping on them. I believe it’s way more than possible to both do your customer a service as well as make a reasonable or better profit. The reason that isn’t always happening has to do with greed at the top. The incentives for top management now have nothing to do with product or customers. 

Over my career I’ve watched a lot of companies forget that customers buy products. If you’re going to take people to the outhouse, you should not expect them to come back. And when they don’t, your business suddenly doesn’t look so good, and you’ll end up starting one form of death spiral unless someone at the top gets wise. And to that last bit:

“For what it's worth, and not public knowledge per se, we happen to have a friend who is high up at Adobe. The company knows it has a problem and people are on board trying to turn the ship.”

Okay, great. But battleships are difficult to turn. There was a time when Lightroom was more a versatile destroyer and much nimbler. It will be interesting to see what Adobe does with the Topaz Labs acquisition. I’d hope that they’d add Topaz-derived sharpening to Photoshop and Lightroom, as the sharpening capabilities of both programs are long-in-the-tooth. 

“Is there a best practice or methodology for being more catalog agnostic?”

Simple answer: make sure that your data files are organized in a well-considered and well-named folder structure, and that your images are well-named, as well. Do not allow any product, including Lightroom Classic to just place and name things automatically or even semi-automatically. Even if you’re using a cataloging product, the minute you acquiesce to just letting it do what it wants, you lose control, and when you lose control, your options without that catalog product become quite problematic and limited. Your images should all be in a master folder, separated into some sub-folder system within that folder (year, place, event, subject, etc.), and every folder and every photo needs to have a name that’s searchable. DSC_0001 is not searchable. That master images folder needs to be backed up, both onsite and offsite, if you wish to truly make sure your images are always recoverable.

One problem here is that “edits” for files can live either in the file or outside the file in a sidecar .XMP file. This is one of the “lock-in” aspects of Lightroom Classic that keeps people in that system. Any transition to another product has to deal with this, and it’s not pretty.

I used to have a couple specific articles about this, but I’m currently in the process of completely rewriting the Learn section of bythom, and this question is on my to-do list to answer more fully, so stand by.

“Isn’t almost all the metadata added to my images—by myself religiously (I wish!) with Bridge, or by my camera and RAW processor(s)—pretty much standardized, in some cases by Adobe themselves, and indexed by macOS and Windows file systems? I thought that if I wasn’t too lazy and would try and master Spotlight on my Mac I could search and filter my images via the macOS file system.  Combined with a personal naming system, that largely eliminated my desire for a vendor specific catalog (Lightroom).”

Uh, maybe? That certainly is the expectation. The devil is in the details, though. The .XMP extension stands for Extendable Metadata Platform. It’s now an ISO standard (16684-1:2012). However, the standard is simply a standard for putting things into metadata, not specific required metadata. This is where the issues begin, and the big question becomes does the software you’re currently using understand the things that were put in the .XMP file?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Moreover, there’s also the case of converting a file to a different format, as .XMP data goes in different places with different types of files when it gets internalized. So, if you save a file to PNG, .XMP data needs to go into a specific spot: an iTXt block with the XML:com.adobe.xmp keyword. Yeah, getting kinda techie here. Some programs do the right thing, some don’t. 

As to your specific Spotlight question I had to resort to some deep AI research to get a somewhat reliable answer, and that explains my “maybe” response. Moreover, Spotlight is scheduled to change in macOS Golden Gate, so the answer may change. Specifically, Spotlight looks within files, but cannot associate files. It will find keywords, description, authors, copyright, in your image files for instance. If your metadata is in a sidecar file (xxxxxxxx.XMP), yes Spotlight will find text in the metadata, however, it can’t associate that with the actual image file.

As a side benefit, my AI also provided a way to sync keywords to finder tags for NEF files, so if you’re geeky and trust your AI, you might try that.

“To further enforce your theory that Adobe may have missed a turn or two, look at their stock price over the last year or two. Investors seem to be aware also that the company is faltering.”

From an investor’s point of view the issue has been growth: where does additional revenue and profit come from? Adobe’s in a tricky place, as for the most part they have gobbled up all the folk that can afford their product. But they can’t really raise prices easily, as that would likely trigger defections. The best way for Adobe to grow is via additional products, and you see them trying to do that with Firefly and now the Topaz acquisition. Perhaps at the corporate level Adobe has some growth room (pricing and products), but for the individual user I think they’ve hit the ceiling for now. But that makes it even more important to keep those individuals tithing, and lack of updates that add things those users want fixed or added can result in a slow leak on the subscription side. 

“I started using Nitro Photos since I can use the finder/file system and have the same organization I’ve used since 2009 with Lightroom Classic.” 

Nitro Photo is the work of the original manager of the Apple Aperture project (as is Raw Power). It is somewhat akin to the way Aperture worked many moons ago. For macOS users, it’s definitely a possibility. On the Windows side, ACDSee is probably a product some should look at (though the developing module isn’t as refined as Adobe’s).

“On the comparisons of noise reduction and sharpening tools: does Dx0 do a better job than Lightroom Classic?”

Uh, maybe? We have lots of different noise and sharpening tools these days. Can I make an argument for one over another? Yes, though this constantly changes with updates. I’d make the same argument with NR as I do with monitor profiles: using any tool gets you 90%+ of the way to what you can do, and you probably can’t really see or justify the other 10%-. Adobe, DxO, onOne, et.al., now all have reasonable NR tools that use AI. My contention would be: pick one and use it. Don’t deep end into trying to find the “best.” 

“Two problems arise for me in the next year. I need to upgrade to Windows 11 (which means a new machine) or change OS to Linux. Noise reduction on Linux is not state of the art, though DaVinci Resolve 21 for stills is a possibility. Plus I’d need a program to ingest raw images and import only the new photos. Any suggestions?”

Probably “bite the bullet” (buy a new machine with Windows 11). I’ll have to admit I’m not a Linux gear head. One of things you have to accept if you’re going to Linux is that it is not a system that commercial software developers target, as the Linux community is mostly Open Source and free advocates. Thus, great new idea and innovative software tends to happen in macOS and Windows environments, plus your choices are broader and deeper on the commercial OS's. 

I’m sure that some Linux fans will jump in and tell me all about the great free options that are available, but in my experience, those tend to be geeky, less feature-packed, and slower in performance than the macOS and Windows commercial “equivalents”. I put “equivalents” in quotes because, other than perhaps DaVinci Resolve, there aren’t many actual truly equivalent products on the Linux platform. 

The problem with buying a new machine is that you’d now be paying the AI tax (memory and storage costs are rising). Perhaps you can still find machines at the older prices that are acceptable, but those will all be going away soon to be replaced by ones with higher list prices. 

“What is your recommended raw catalog and editing software that does not have a subscription payment scheme?”

There really isn’t one. And that’s sort of my point about catalog lock-in: once you’re using catalogs to manage an image collection, you’re stuck in that ecosystem. It’s very difficult to escape.

You’re also not going to like my answer to your question: there isn’t a perfect alternative, thus my current dilemma on whether to recommend Lightroom still. Basically, if you want “really good” software, it has to be profitable for the software developer. The old model of selling updates has long had economic problems, as it means most of a company’s income comes in spurts, and development cycles aren’t as predictable as you think, so a company can go a long period without reasonable income. Subscriptions give a software developmer a known, stable source of cash. My only issue with Adobe’s subscriptions is what happens when you stop paying; most other developers have a better policy on this.

But to fully answer your question: you’d have to give up on catalogs and just go to a fast browser, such as FastRawViewer. That implies that your images aren’t scattered all over the place and are well organized in folders (though AI is changing this). You could then process selected images from the browser with several alternatives, such as Affinity or your company’s free raw converter. Be prepared for slower performance and missing features when you go to the free products. 

Adobe’s history with imaging dates far back, and I remember using the original Photoshop alpha version back in the late 1980’s with a Barneyscan (I believe it was Photoshop version 0.65 that was labeled as the Barneyscan application I was using). Photoshop had at its core the mission to compose and edit image data at the pixel level, something that has been expanded on ad finitum ever since. 

Perhaps Creative Suite diverted Photoshop a bit, as we ended up with features that helped support things like drawing and text, but the core pixel-pushing abilities have pretty much continuously been tweaked, refined, added to, and given more performance through all 27 major variants of Photoshop. If you ignore the “graphic designer flotsam” that’s been added, Photoshop remains a pretty wicked advanced photo editing platform.

The subject of my headline, though, is not Photoshop, but Lightroom. A product I also have deep roots with, as I was involved in a lot of the early discussion and was a beta tester for a brief time before Adobe ratcheted their non-disclosure to the point where they could control what was written about the product. 

While Photoshop’s origin was “what can I do with these pixels?”, Lightroom’s was actually a Jeff Schewe idea, which essentially was “what can I do with all these photos I’m generating?”. While pixels are a part of that at some level, the real problem that Lightroom set out to solve was one that both early digital professionals and hobbyists had: they were suddenly generating thousands of images, and had no way to manage them. 

And thus the Library (catalog) was formed. 

Curiously, Lightroom started veering from Photoshop from the get go: Adobe acquired Pixmantec’s RawShooter to use for the Develop module instead of Photoshop’s then current engine (we’ve gone through many iterations of that, and now both Photoshop and Lightroom use the generically named “Version 6 (current)” process for raw conversion). 

However, up through Lightroom 6.x (2015), the program was still pretty recognizable as the original idea augmented and refined. You worked from your Library, occassionally dipping into something else. Your Library was local, and both pros and hobbyists alike basically used Lightroom as their photo command center (even those of us that still used Photoshop for raw conversion and editing). 

In 2017, something that had been brewing for several years suddenly raised its head: Adobe no longer saw “photography pros and enthusiasts” as their ultimate market for Lightroom. The Creative Cloud was not only Adobe’s attempt at re-centralizing all visual data (i.e. “it lives on our servers”), but also that Adobe saw themselves competing in the world’s casual photographer competition, along with Apple (iCloud Photos) and Google (and I suppose Meta via Facebook and Instagram). 

Much of the past ten years have thus been attempts by Adobe to bring Lightroom CC (the Lightroom for “everyone”) up to the same feature set as Lightroom Classic (the traditional pro and enthusiast product). Adobe continues to try to push everyone, including frazzled Classic users, to use the Creative Cloud instead of their own storage. (I should point out it's unclear how much Adobe was using user cloud-ed images in its AI efforts.) 

What this has done is open up the competitive gates. CaptureOne, DxO, and OnOne now have “libraries” of some sort for the primary functions Lightroom has. Heck, Apple Photos is now getting close to equivalent with Lightroom Classic, given the lastest macOS Golden Gate changes. 

In essence, Lightroom Classic has pretty much taken a back seat to Creative Cloud and Photoshop, which is where Adobe has concentrated their new efforts. Sure, Lightroom Classic typically gets the latest and greatest Photoshop add-on with a later release, but I’m not seeing Adobe driving that product for their long-term enthusiast/pro customer particularly well. When was the last time that image export was really improved?

In fact, what Adobe is doing with Lightroom Classic is pretty close to what Cory Doctorow calls Enshitification (intentional platform decay). Basically, Adobe is counting on the fact that you built a huge library of images using their product to keep you around while they milk you for short-term profits. 

I’ll be clear: I long ago gave up on Lightroom (either version). It is now more complex to do simple things, has marginal overall performance on large image collections or processes, and feels more and more like a “lock in” as opposed to a thriving, evolving, and useful application. It simply doesn’t feel worth a constant tithe to me. 

I’ll also note: while I’ve been consistent in my always pursuing de-centralization for 50 years now (I own my data and I keep it current and available to me with my own facilities), the computer world wobbles between centralization and de-centralization cycles. The whole Cloud/AI thing is an attempt by people with way more money than you looking to make even more money from you if you’ll just agree to their centralization of your data. 

For the 100% casual, ocassionally-take-a-few-photos user, centralization using Apple iCloud or Google Drive makes sense, as it gives them access on all devices at (virtually) all times. But that really only makes sense on Apple or Google clouds, as pretty much all the others start increasing the effort for less benefit to the casual user.

For pros and serious photo enthusiasts I’d argue that the “centeralized cloud option” doesn’t tend to make a lot of sense. It increases complexities without bringing much in the way of benefit, and I’m pretty sure you’ll get bit in the butt at some point in time in the future. You’re better off managing your images yourself, and using the best tool at any given time to do that. 

And that brings me back to the headline. Lightroom Classic stopped “turning” in the right direction some time ago. It has instead turned more into a bloatware and performance sinkhole, and even those two things lag the market now. It’s really the “catalog lock-in” that keeps many of you using Lightroom Classic. 

Interestingly, if I type “migrate Lightroom catalog to another application” in DuckDuckGo search, I get a long list of how to move my Lightroom catalog to another computer that also uses Lightroom. That means that the search engines are locking you in, too. Interestingly, Claude took some time to answer the question, but finally came back with a correct answer: CaptureOne has built-in Lightroom catalog import (with restrictions).

At this point, I’m considering dropping Lightroom from my recommended macOS applications. Maybe not quite today, but it feels like “Real Soon Now.” 

So what do you think? Is Adobe still on course and getting Lightroom turned all the right directions? Or do you find yourself off-course now, and wondering what to do next?

I’ve previously written about imitation (e.g. Two Approaches to Photography), but a recent question asked in the Photography section of Reddit caught my interest and is a really good one: “When you look at a photographer you love [and try to imitate them] what are you actually trying to replicate?”

We don’t ask ourselves enough questions about the photography side of photography, and that question is a pretty basic one that deserves an answer. 

For me, trying to replicate something someone else is doing is always an attempt to understand what decisions were made and to consider why they were made the way they were. I’m not trying to duplicate another photographer’s style or look, but instead am trying to understand how they might have developed it. Sometimes just the process of discovery reveals something that I either needed to know or at least contemplate.

At WPPI (the big annual Wedding and Portrait photographers conference) a huge number of the training, seminars, and talks there center around lighting. The difference between a Joe McNally and Annie Liebowitz image may start with that. From there, the two also have differing styles in how they “plan” their images as well as how they interact with and “control” their subjects. Understanding those differences helps me think about what I might want to do when I take a portrait and why. [disclosure: I don’t consider myself as currently having a particular portrait style I pursue; thus my interest in what others are doing, and why.]

As a creative artist, I look for ways to put my stamp on how the final image looks. In other words, I’m not trying to replicate a particular look to be able to use that for myself, I’m attempting to understand how the photographer came to create that look. 

It’s tough to photograph if you can’t “see”, but exactly what is it that you’re “seeing”? It’s rare I run into someone that is constantly asking themselves that question, yet I believe that it’s one of the primary things that help distinguish your work from that of others. If you’re not trying to create your own unique work, what exactly is it that you’re pursuing photography for?

When I watch a McNally or other well-known photographer work, I’m asking myself a series of questions. One is “why is he or she making that choice?” and another is “would I make the same choice; if so why, and if not, why not?” This is one reason why at conferences such as WPPI I spend most of my time watching other photographers work, as opposed to sitting in lectures that say “do this, then that, then this.” I’m confident that I could teach useful things at WPPI myself, but note what I wrote above: I don’t consider that I have an established portrait style. Thus any demonstration or talk I might give would either be oriented to the technical aspects of something, or simply be improvised theater.

I’m always looking for what problems a photographer faced—e.g. a bad background—how they evaluated that, and then what decisions they made about it. I’m also always looking for the “why” in demonstrations as opposed to the “what.” The gear they’re using isn’t generally relevant, but how they use the gear is. 

I should also point out that, even if you establish a look, styles change over time, and so should what you do. Because I’m mostly a sports and wildlife photographer, I try to accomplish that by making time in any session to pursue “new ideas.” I believe I’ve written this before, but I have several “series” of photos I’ve been working on over time that take one specific idea to an extreme. I’ll capture my usual work, but I’ll constantly be pushing and prodding aspects of it to see if I can find “a new angle” or add to one of my existing series.

Which brings us back to the question that started this article: if you’re trying to replicate something, do you know why? In painting, for instance, it’s a common practice to try to replicate famous works by famous artists. This is done not to create a copy of the painting, but rather to learn how brush strokes, layering, color palettes, and more all work together in creating something.

It’s common practice in photography to ask for EXIF data for an image (e.g. focal length, shutter speed, aperture, ISO). As many of you know I hesitate to do that, because when I’ve gone into Socratic mode and asked everyone what knowledge that gains them, their answers are dramatically vague. Moreover, those photographic attributes should be pretty obvious from the photo itself. 

It’s a little different if you’re looking at something such as a slow shutter speed and wondering exactly what the value was as well as understand how fast the subject was moving. Those two things—shutter speed and subject motion speed—get pretty nuanced, so maybe there’s something useful in learning the shutter speed a photo was taken at. But only if you also understand the subject motion. 1/15 of a second works different for a runner across the scene than a car moving diagonally versus a small bird flying almost at you. If you’re asking for a shutter speed, you should also be asking yourself “why did that shutter speed work (or didn’t work)?” (Similar things apply to apertures. But knowing the ISO value doesn’t really help you.)

So what questions are you really asking about photographs you like (or don’t like)? The first question, of course, is whether you like a photo or not, but that should immediately lead you down a path of questioning what is and isn’t working, and why. 

Before moving on, I should also point out that you won’t (shouldn’t) like all photos you see, even if they might be good ones. You don’t like every motion picture you go to (even if it won awards) or your favorite musician’s latest release. 

A photo “works for you” (you like it), or it doesn’t (you don’t like it). No professional photographer I know expects that every image they take will be adored by others. We work hard to make our work stand out and be appreciated, but it’s a fool that thinks that they create greatness every time they press a button. 

At workshops I teach that you press that button—the shutter release—because you were attracted to something. (If you’re pressing the shutter release for any other reason, are you just leaving things to chance?) Do you know what that is and why you were attracted to it? The first time that my Africa students see a lion close up, their attraction is “lion.” Great. Now that you have a photo of lion, what next? You’re certainly not done, so what are you thinking about in how to improve your images that contain lions?

I also teach that you should always press the shutter release, even if your camera might not be set right or if you don’t know why you’re pressing the release. Our subconcious brains are telling us something, and if that’s “press the button, dummy” then don’t be a dummy: press the button! However, that should immediately trigger some further critical thinking. Do you understand why you pressed the shutter release? 

In the days of film there was a special “lag” we didn’t talk about much: the time before you pressed the shutter release while you considered whether it was economically wise to press the button. That’s both because every photo cost you money (film and developing, maybe printing), but also because we had a limited number of frames (24 or 36, typically) before we had to take the camera out of commission for a period of time while we rewound the film, pulled it from the camera and put it somewhere safe (and maybe labeled it), put in another roll, and started the process of it being loaded for use. 90% chance that pressing the shutter release doesn’t net a useful photo? Then you probably didn’t press the button. 90% change that it would be a useful photo? You almost certainly pressed the button. But there was always a short lag before you did because your brain needed to calculate the odds. 

With digital, of course, we don’t have that economical calculation to do: just press the button if you feel you should press the button. However, that can cost you time downstream, where you have to sort out the hits from the misses. Most of us working the sideline in sports press (and often hold) the button, then during the time between plays immediately evaluate whether or not we got what we needed. If not, we press delete and get ready for the next play. While I hate TV timeouts when watching sports, on the sidelines they’re revered, as you get some time to review what you’ve just been doing.

The journalistic questions (who, what, when, where, why, how?) are useful ones for a photographer, too. For example: Was when you pressed the shutter release correct? Do you know why you took the photo? How can the photo be improved? 

Since we started this discussion with people trying replicate what a photographer did, it’s important you ask the questions just presented two ways. Why did you take the photo? Why did the original photographer take the photo you’re trying to replicate? You’re not doing yourself (or the original photographer) any justice if you don’t consider things both from your viewpoint and theirs.