Lightroom does what it does very well. Yet, in some regards, it is less capable than some of its rivals despite costing far more. However, for your money, you get perpetual updates, one terabyte worth of storage, and seamless integration with Adobe’s cloud, enabling you to liberate your photo library from your computer and make it accessible to almost any computer, tablet, or smartphone. Jump to Conclusion | Try Lightroom for free
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Table of Contents
- What is Lightroom
- Lightroom vs Lightroom Classic
- How much does Lightroom cost?
- Free Lightroom Trial
- What does Lightroom do
- Lightroom Key Features
- What’s missing in Lightroom
- What is Lightroom like to use
- Alternatives to Lightroom
- Conclusion
- About the Author
What is Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is a subscription-based photo studio for Windows PCs and Mac OS. It combines top-tier photo management and editing with seamless cloud integration, enabling you to access your photo library from a swarm of computers and smart devices.
Regarding photo management, Lightroom’s reliable face recognition system allows you to order and retrieve images by the people who appear in them. Meanwhile, you can use its object recognition-powered search system to browse for images containing common photographic elements such as Sky, Bird, Mountain, and so on.
As for photo editing, newcomers and anyone in a rush can leverage Lightroom’s vast collection of attractive presets for quick one-click results. Alternatively, you can set your own white balance, tone curves, and exposure or use Lightroom’s contemporary editing features, such as automatic AI masking, lens blur, and an AI erase brush.
Yet Lightroom’s key attribute is its seamless integration with the cloud, which allows you to untether your photo library from your computer and access it via other computers, tablets, and smartphones. This liberates your photos from your PC and makes sharing photos with your family, friends, and clients a breeze. Moreover, the included cloud storage acts as an off-site backup, thus preserving your photo collection in case of a local disk failure.
However, Lightroom’s most significant selling point is also its greatest weakness. Specifically, Lightroom is subscription-only, and while it represents excellent value for some, others prefer to own their software outright.
Lightroom vs Lightroom Classic
Your subscription includes both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, which are similar in editing photos. Specifically, both combine traditional adjustments with modern perks.
Thus, the primary difference between Lightroom and Lightroom Classic is the absence of Cloud integration. In other words, Lightroom Classic operates entirely as it did before Adobe rolled out Creative Cloud. As a consequence, Lightroom Classic lacks Lightroom’s cloud backups, automatic people and keyword tagging, remote editing, and image distribution capabilities.
Moreover, I consider Lightroom Classic’s interface somewhat ugly, dated, and complex without merit. Given that Lightroom Classic is also subscription-based, I would sooner leverage the advantages of said subscription and take advantage of Lightroom’s Cloud technology. Either way, you get both, but I recommend you use Lightroom over Lightroom Classic.
How much does Lightroom cost?
A Lightroom subscription costs US$11.99 monthly and includes 1TB of Cloud storage. Alternatively, subscribe to the photography package and receive Lightroom, Photoshop, and 1TB of cloud storage for US$19.99.
This makes Lightroom a good buy so long as you value its inclusive 1TB of Cloud storage and its derived benefits. However, if you do not care about the cloud, you can buy similarly capable alternatives such as ON1 Photo Raw and ACDSee Professional outright for less than US$100.
Check Lightroom Prices for the latest up-to-date pricing in your region.
Free Lightroom Trial
You can try Lightroom for free for seven days. While you must set up your payment method, you will not be charged so long as you end your subscription before the trial ends. Fortunately, ending your Lightroom trial is easy. To do so, return to your Adobe account, access My Plans, and click Cancel.
Try Adobe Lightroom Now – For Free.
What does Lightroom do
Photo Management
Adobe Lightroom is a top-tier photo management application. Specifically, you can rate your photos, assign your images to albums, and tag your pictures with keywords. You can also geotag your images, but only by copying and pasting coordinates from a third-party application such as Google Maps.
Lightroom has face recognition, meaning you can browse photos of those who appear in them. You begin by manually tagging a person with their name, and then Lightroom crawls your collection, tagging photos featuring that person. However, you should note that Lightroom’s Face Recognition only works with the photos you’ve synced with the cloud – not those stored exclusively on your local disk.
You can also browse your images by the photographic elements that appear in them. For example, you can search for all photos featuring Birds or Mountains. While this feature falls short of being 100% accurate, it is undoubtedly reliable enough to be helpful. Like Face Recognition, this feature only works on your cloud-hosted images.
Presets
Adobe Lightroom includes a vast collection of presets to process your photo with a single click. Furthermore, Lightroom analyzes your photo and recommends which presets may best suit your image.
Once you’ve chosen a preset, you can drag a slider to tame or enhance its impact. You can also save the sum of your own edits as new presets, meaning you won’t have to repeat your best work.
Photo Editing
Adobe Lightroom delivers a highly responsive traditional photo editing experience featuring classic adjustments such as white balance, tone curves, clarity, exposure, sharpening, etc. Lightroom also features built-in profiles to correct optical distortion automatically on a wide range of lenses.
In addition, Lightroom includes a range of contemporary features. For example, you can use AI Masking to automatically select your photo’s sky, subject, or background. Meanwhile, Lightroom’s AI Denoise is one of the best AI noise reduction software applications I have tested.
Moreover, you can enlarge your photos with Adobe’s AI-powered upscaler, Super Resolution, blur backgrounds with lens blur, and remove unwanted photographic elements using the Generative AI erase brush. Lightroom also features panorama stitching and an HDR merge tool. Overall, Lightroom is a highly competent photo editing application packed with well-implemented tools.
Creative Cloud
Lightroom is seamlessly integrated with Adobe’s Creative Cloud, enabling you to view and edit photos on almost any device with an internet connection. This liberates your pictures from your computer and makes sharing your images with others a breeze.
While editing your photos with your PC/Mac’s installed copy of Lightroom produces the best experience, you may find it convenient to edit your images remotely using the Lightroom for Mobile app or even your favorite web browser. However, this can be a latency-rich experience if your internet connection isn’t up to standard.
Lightroom Key Features
AI Denoise Noise Reduction
Lightroom comes equipped with one of the best denoisers I have tested. Unlike traditional noise reduction, which blurs away noise and detail, AI denoise removes noise while enhancing detail, producing vastly superior images as a result.
However, Lightroom Denoise falls slightly short of the best noise reduction software I have tested regarding absolute image quality. Moreover, it lacks adjustment and is slower to run, making it less optimal for denoising large batches of photos. But for clearing up the occasional image, Lightroom Denoise is more than good enough.
Super Resolution
Adobe Lightroom’s Super Resolution uses AI to add new detail as it upscales images, resulting in better-quality photo enlargements. However, Super Resolution does fall short of being the best AI upscaler. First, it is limited to 200% upscales unless you can endure a simple but laborious workflow. More critically, Super Resolution is less capable of upscaling intricate scenes and less able to preserve natural features and skin tones.
Nevertheless, Super Resolution is significantly better than traditional image enlargement techniques, and its inclusion here feels generous. But if you’re serious about upscaling, consider supplementing Lightroom with Gigapixel or Topaz Photo AI. Read my Gigapixel Review for more information.
AI Masking
Adobe Lightroom’s Object Recognition can automatically detect and mask People, Subjects, skies, and Backgrounds, enabling you to perform localized editing without the burden of brushing on a mask manually.
Overall, I’ve found Lightroom’s object recognition to be at least as good as the best I’ve used. In other words, how well it works depends on the complexity of the photo. If the mask is imperfect, you can always fine-tune it with manual brushing or apply a mask based on luminance or color range.
Web Edit
With Web Edit, you can browse and edit your cloud-synced photographs using common web browsers and the Lightroom app for iOS and Android. While the quality of the editing experience depends on a decent internet connection, it’s a great feature when you’re away from home.
Editing aside, you can also share your albums with family, friends, and clients, allowing them to view, like, comment on, and download your pictures, depending on the permissions you’ve set. Moreover, these features are supremely well executed, organic, and superior to similar features in rival products.
AI Erase Brush
You can use Lightroom’s AI erase brush to remove unwanted elements from your photo. Meanwhile, the generative AI fills the void, making it appear that the element was never there.
While Lightroom’s AI erase brush is capable of truly stunning results, it can also fail to perform what appears to be a trivial deletion. However, this criticism is common to every AI erase brush I’ve tested, and I consider Lightroom’s erase tool more reliable than most. Nonetheless, Generative AI Erase is a welcome addition to Lightroom and will improve over time.
Lens Blur
With Lightroom’s Len Blur, you apply background and/or foreground blur to your photo. This is useful for applying background blur to portraits; however, you can use Lens Blur on any image. This is done by selecting the sharp point of your image and the depth of field. After this, you can adjust the blur severity and choose from five bokeh styles ranging from smooth to busy.
Adding blur greatly diminishes photographic clutter and draws one’s eye to the in-focus subject, and Lightroom’s Lens Blur is one of the best blur tools I have used. However, it would be even better if I could adjust the warmth of the blur and brighten the specular highlights.
HDR Merge
With Lightroom’s HDR Merge tool, you can merge images captured using different exposures and create a single high dynamic range photo. Moreover, Lightroom’s auto-align feature will do what it can to ensure your image stack is aligned. Meanwhile, a deghosting feature works to prevent artifacts caused by moving subjects.
Overall, HDR Merge is effective, straightforward to use, and produces attractive results. However, it lacks the in-depth adjustments you’ll find in specialized HDR applications such as Aurora HDR.
What’s missing in Lightroom
Lightroom lacks a portrait enhancement tool, which has become commonplace in rival products such as Luninar Neo, ACDSee, and ON1 Photo Raw. I’d also like a blur-correcting sharpening tool similar to Topaz Sharpen AI and ON1’s Tack Sharp. It’s a shame there is no integrated map view for geotagging. Instead, you must copy and paste coordinates from a third-party map provider like Google.
However, Lightroom has most of what you need. If you wish to expand into layer-based editing and graphic design, consider the Lightroom + Photoshop package. Check Prices
What is Lightroom like to use
Lightroom’s attractive and well-presented user interface is concise, responsive, and a pleasure to use. While its feature set is relatively modest, each feature feels useful, well implemented, and mature.
Due to its more traditional feature set, editing photos in Lightroom requires expertise and a familiarity with concepts such as Exposure, White Balance, and Tone Curves. Yet, newcomers and anyone in a rush can rely upon Lightroom’s vast preset collection to produce excellent results with almost no skill.
Lightroom’s performance is generally excellent. It reacts to your inputs in real time for a smooth and pleasant user experience. More computationally expensive features such as Lens Blur, AI Masking, and AI Denoise take longer but never feel unreasonably slow. Meanwhile, performance while editing photos via your web browser is entirely determined by your internet connection speed.
Yet, I do have some minor gripes. For instance, the unnecessary separation of keywords, info, and photo activity into different tabs increases mouse mileage, and I’d rather have an inbuilt map view for geotagging. I’d also like to stack my favorite adjustments into a single list.
Remember, performance and user experience can be subjective. Therefore, I recommend you try Lightroom for yourself. Download Now.
Alternatives to Lightroom
Lightroom vs ACDSee Professional
ACDSee Professional offers the closest approximation of Lightroom’s feature set. Specifically, it includes contemporary photo management tools such as Face Recognition, Object Recognition search, and a mobile app for trading photos between your computer and smartphone.
Furthermore, ACDSee Professional’s photo editing mode is superior to Lightroom’s, though Lightroom has much better noise reduction and presets. Critically, you can buy and own ACDSee Professional outright for under US$100, equivalent to just nine months’ worth of Lightroom.
However, when you subscribe to Lightroom, you get its Cloud features and 1TB of storage. While ACDSee also offers Cloud-powered subscriptions, Lightroom offers superior cloud functionality and is a better overall value.
Therefore, ACDSee Professional is a compelling subscription-free alternative to anyone disinterested in Lightroom’s Cloud-powered feature set. However, if you want the Cloud, Lightroom does it better.
Read my ACDSee Professional Review for more information.
Lightroom vs ON1 Photo Raw
While Lightroom’s face recognition-powered photo management tops ON1 Photo Raw’s, Photo Raw’s gigantic feature set makes it the most capable photo editing studio.
Specifically, ON1 Photo Raw includes AI Sharpening, spectacular AI Noise Reduction, AI Upscaling, HDR, Focus Stacking, Time Lapse, Remote camera tethering, Object recognition-powered masking, Panorama stitching, Sky Replacement, and Portrait enhancement. Moreover, ON1 Photo Raw is a layer-based editor that enables you to stack and blend your adjustments to create compound effects beyond the reach of non-layer-based applications such as Lightroom.
Yet, despite its vast feature set, you can own ON1 Photo Raw outright for a one-time payment of US$100. This makes it more affordable than a year’s worth of Lightroom, making it a compelling subscription-free alternative for those who don’t need Lightroom’s cloud-powered benefits.
However, ON1 Photo Raw does have its issues. Specifically, its interface is text-heavy and unwelcoming compared to Lightroom’s minimalist affair, and because of its extensive feature set, it takes more time to learn. Yet, if you persist, ON1 Photo Raw will be able to produce results Lightroom cannot.
ON1 also offers subscriptions and inclusive cloud storage. However, Lightroom’s cloud-powered feature set is better integrated and superior overall. But, ON1 Photo Raw is cheaper and more capable if you don’t need the cloud.
Read my ON1 Photo Raw Review for more information.
Lightroom vs Luminar Neo
Lightroom and Luminar Neo take different approaches to photo editing. Whereas Lightroom is a near-perfect example of a traditional photo editor, Luminar Neo is an effects-orientated photo editor loaded with tools such as Golden Hour Glow, Foliage Enhancer, and Sky Enhance AI. As a result, you don’t need to know anything about photo editing to edit your photos with Luminar Neo.
Yet, Luminar Neo takes things further with its compound AI features, such as Sky AI sky replacement, Portrait Bokeh AI background blur, and Relight AI. While Luminar Neo has far more features than Lightroom, some feel less developed than others.
Luminar Neo’s photo management is much improved thanks to the inclusion of Smart Seach, an object recognition-powered search that enables you to find photos featuring specific elements. For example, you might search for all images featuring birds, mountains, and architecture. However, Lightroom does this better, adds Face Recognition, and seamlessly uses the cloud to liberate your photo collection from your computer.
Ultimately, Luminar Neo is the more capable photo editor, and you can own it outright for about the same amount of money as a single year’s worth of Lightroom. Therefore, if you don’t care about the cloud and are looking for the easiest route to a well-processed image, Luminar Neo is well worth a try.
Read my Luminar Neo Review for more information
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Conclusion
Adobe Lightroom is an outstanding photo editing application that does what it does very well. However, it is not as capable as some of its rivals and often costs much more.
For instance, at US$11.99 a month, Lightroom costs more yearly than you’d spend buying ON1 Photo Raw or ACDSee Professional outright. Moreover, both applications have advantages over Lightroom. For example, ON1 Photo Raw has effects layers, enabling it to produce compound results beyond Lightroom’s reach.
Yet, Lightroom is capable enough for most, and its well-presented, concise, and highly responsive interface is a joy to use. It may have fewer features than some, but those it has are well-executed and very useful. And then there’s the cloud.
Lightroom is comparatively expensive because its subscription includes perpetual updates and 1TB of cloud storage. While other vendors offer similar cloud-powered deals, none are as functional or seamlessly integrated. Specifically, Lightroom succeeds in untethering your photo collection from your computer and making it available to the Internet of Things.
This makes it a breeze to share your images and albums with family, friends, and clients and enables you to edit them via popular web browsers and smart devices. While you may balk at the additional cost, it’s worth remembering that storage always costs, whether you’re buying cloud storage or hard disks.
Nonetheless, if you don’t need cloud storage or its benefits, Lightroom becomes a hard sell. For instance, ACDSee Professional features a similar feature set and is yours to keep for a one-time payment of US$99. However, Lightroom is an outstanding choice if you’re looking to combine top-tier photo management, capable photo editing, cloud storage, and the benefits it brings. Try Lightroom Now
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PER MONTH. INCLUDES 1TB STORAGE
About the Author
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