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It’s been a while since I last reviewed Adobe Lightroom, and as always with Adobe, many features have been added and a host of others have been improved, so let’s take a look at Lightroom 9.2 and see what it’s all about.
But before we do, I need to point out that there are two versions of Lightroom: Lightroom, and Lightroom Classic.
Lightroom is a simpler, more user friendly version, whereas Classic is aimed at the professional user or someone demanding a higher degree of control, who prefers to store their media on their local hard drives. I’ll be primarily covering the Classic side of things here.
Adobe Lightroom Classic: Pricing & plans
- Three subscription options
- No perpetual license
- Additional AI credits available
As with most of Adobe’s professional software, Lightroom Classic is subscription-only – and here, there are three options available.
Grab Adobe’s entire portfolio with Creative Cloud Pro for US$70 a month. Alongside Lightroom, this unlocks other popular apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, the works.
For a less expensive, photo-focused subscription plan, there’s the Photography bundle. This brings together both versions of Lightroom as well as Photoshop for $20 a month. Alternatively, you could just limit yourself to Lightroom and Lightroom Classic for $12 a month.
These are monthly costs, based on a year-long contract. They also come with Generative Credits, from 250 a month for the cheapest option to 4,000 for the high end plan. Those credits don’t roll on: if you don’t use them in a month, they don’t get added to your next allotment the following month.
If you’re really into generative AI creation, Adobe has add-on plans to suit your appetite, from an additional 2,000 credits for $10 a month, to 50,000 for $200 a month.
Adobe Lightroom Classic: What is it?
- Very well designed app
- Easy to organize, alter, and share your work
Let’s start with the basics: what is Lightroom Classic?
Quite simply, it has the dual purpose of storing and cataloging your photos, while also allowing you to make alterations to them and prepare them to share with others. Any change is non-destructive, so the original photos are never altered, and you can go back to the source to make additional tweaks without ever suffering from quality degradation.
I feel the interface is very well designed – and interacting with interfaces is what I do most of the time! You have seven different sections, all accessible through a large menu bar, top right. By default, you’re in ‘Library’, which is where you can see all the photos you’ve imported and worked on.
You can actually do a fair amount of work there, such as rotating an image, adding tags, a star rating, keywords, and even perform some light colour correction. But if you want to get fully immersed in image manipulation, then ‘Develop’ is the place to be.
This is where you get to apply in-depth colour correction, cropping, remove red-eye, correct for lens distortion, completely remove an object from a scene, and mask specific sections to fine tune which part of an image to alter – among many others. You’ll find the tools at your disposal are quite extensive.
But Lightroom Classic goes beyond that. You have the ‘Map’ section where you can see all the photos you took in a specific location (and alter a shot’s metadata should you need to), there’s a section dedicated to designing a ‘Book’, or creating a ‘Slideshow’, ‘Print’ selected photos, or upload them to the ‘Web’. Although, truth be told, this is something consumer software like Apple’s Photos offers too.
All in all, Lightroom Classic makes it easy to organise your shots, make them look their best with a wide range of tools, and share them in numerous ways. But what does its latest release bring to the table? Let’s find out.
Adobe Lightroom Classic: What’s new?
- New AI features can save time
- But I found results vary in quality
- And it’s not like you get your credits back if you’re not happy
While the general workflow remains unchanged from previous versions, the big new features are primarily AI-based. This will delight some, and send shivers down the backs of others.
The most useful application of AI is ‘Assisted Culling’. Currently in Beta (Adobe calls it ‘Early Access’), it’s designed to accelerate the photo selection process upon import, by automatically filtering out blurry, closed-eye, misfired images, and more. You’re given a few sliders to determine the intensity of the cull, and can choose which options to filter for. After a few seconds (depending on how many images you’re importing and your computer’s capabilities), the results are ready to be reviewed.
I found the process works very well, identifying with ease any issues it’s designed to look for, and if it made a mistake, you can alter the decision shot by shot. This makes looking through a series of very similar photos a much quicker process (and if you don’t like a machine doing that kind of work for you, you can always disable the feature). As an added bonus, this AI tool is free… Unlike Lightroom Classic’s new ‘Generate using Firefly’ options.
Now why would we want Generative AI in Lightroom? Well, if you’re not well-versed in Photoshop, then it’s a quick way for somewhat clever algorithms to perform relatively complex actions for you… but I admit having a few issues with such technology.
As an example, I asked AI to colorize a black and white photo of my brother and I when I was just a baby. It should’ve been a simple process, and indeed the colours used do look good. However, it added an object on top of a chest of drawers, and changed my brother’s face. In another shot, it cleaned up a tray. Although I can appreciate the virtual maid having tidied up, it’s not what I had asked for. Plus if you’re not satisfied, you don’t get your generated credits back.
To be fair, other results were better, and Firefly didn’t alter the faces of other ancient family members of mine – even my great great grandmother was faithfully updated. The resolution of the resulting version can be set up to a maximum of 2K. Great for older images that have lower resolutions, but not so good for more modern shots.
If you have credits to burn, you can bring a photo to life by turning it into a video. I found this a bit disturbing, although others around me loved it. And it must be said, Firefly did an impressive job of bringing my long-gone relative to life (Dr Frankenstein would be proud).
Adobe Lightroom Classic: Classic vs Lightroom
- Lightroom is much simpler
- Generative Upscale tool is better than Classic’s gen AI features
Before finishing up, I wanted to quickly dip into the simpler Lightroom, as there’s a feature there that’s worth mentioning: ‘Generative Upscale’.
It’s worth mentioning as this AI-based upscaling isn’t actually done by Adobe but in partnership with Topaz Gigapixel instead, and unlike the Firefly option we explored above, you don’t leave Lightroom when using it, which is a definite plus.
The feature not only tells you how many credits you’ll need, but also how many you have left – a useful addition which is sorely missed in Classic’s Firefly. The downside though is, as with Firefly, you have no control over the process. You get what you get, whether you’re happy with it or not.
Overall, Lightroom Classic is a very good image management and manipulation tool, and its new AI-based additions will no doubt please some, but aside from the useful Assisted Culling feature, you have next to no control over the output of AI.
Should I buy?
Buy it if…
You’re looking for a high-end, easy to use and feature rich image management tool, and appreciate the growing proliferation of AI tools within it.
Don’t buy it if…
You don’t like subscriptions, and having more and more AI in your software irks you, not to mention that you have to pay extra for those tools.
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