Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic CC, Lightroom Mobile CC?

[welly]

So things seemed to have moved on since I last used Lightroom (5). Now we have three versions of Lightroom. I have a vague understanding of what the different between the two desktop versions are but am struggling in how to best use the combination of the three, if I should be.

I've got an Adobe CC photographer's subscription so I get 20gb data, Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC. I understand that Lightroom CC is pretty much entirely cloud based and you don't host the images locally. Lightroom Classic CC is basically like the old/pre-CC version and stores images on your local hard drive. 20Gb is ample at this point for me, having no digital photography data on my laptop but I suspect I'll soon fill that with my D800E. So I'm partly erring on the side of Lightroom CC rather than Classic CC as my Macbook has fairly limited disk space. Other than where image data is stored, is there any significant different between CC and Classic CC? Editing and library tools function basically the same?

Finally, where does Lightroom CC Mobile fit into the equation? Because I do use it a lot. Would I be right in thinking it'll store images locally on my mobile phone but sync to my Lightroom CC cloud storage?

Thanks all!

 

[welly]

Just did a bit of further reading here https://photographylife.com/lightroom-classic-vs-lightroom-cc and that's answered a few/most of my questions. It seems that LR CC is missing a whole bunch of features although mainly organisational features to be fair, the editing seems to be the same. So I'm swaying back towards Lightroom Classic CC rather than the new LR CC. I would like to take advantage of being able to store my images in my LR cloud storage (apparently I have 120Gb not 20Gb!). I'd be surprised if I can't do this but not sure where to configure LR Classic to do so.

 

[ecoleman]

Lightroom CC Classic is the old desktop version. With this app you can setup certain folders to sync to the cloud. This will sync a preview to the cloud which enables you to edit the images via Lightroom Mobile CC. Any edits are synced back to your desktop again. The image is still stored on your PC as it is just a small preview that is sent to the cloud.

Lightroom CC is a desktop version but images and edits etc are all stored in the cloud enabling you to edit any image anywhere on a desktop or tablet (using Lightroom Mobile). The cloud based version is getting improvements all the time but as yet it is not as powerful as Classic.

Lightroom Mobile is Lightroom CC but for tablet

 

[ecoleman]

Just did a bit of further reading here https://photographylife.com/lightroom-classic-vs-lightroom-cc and that's answered a few/most of my questions. It seems that LR CC is missing a whole bunch of features although mainly organisational features to be fair, the editing seems to be the same. So I'm swaying back towards Lightroom Classic CC rather than the new LR CC. I would like to take advantage of being able to store my images in my LR cloud storage (apparently I have 120Gb not 20Gb!). I'd be surprised if I can't do this but not sure where to configure LR Classic to do so.

You can't with Classic. You can sync collections but this only uploads a preview of the image and not the entire image.

 

[welly]

You can't with Classic. You can sync collections but this only uploads a preview of the image and not the entire image.

That's pretty annoying. Looks like LR Classic and an external hard drive then.

 

[mark.roper]

You can use both with a bit of setting up, but I tried that and found it impractical for my use.

CC will store images locally if you tell it to, as well as upload them to the cloud, so I find that useful because it ensures I have 2 copies of each image without having to do anything other than import them into CC.

You can configure Classic to synch with your cloud library and it'll then download all the images you just uploaded and put them somewhere else on your hard drive, so 1 copy in the cloud, 2 on your PC, but in different places, and each image gets uploaded and downloaded, twice the bandwidth required.

I decided therefore not to bother with Classic, as 1 copy locally + cloud was enough, and it was time consuming uploading and downloading loads of images. However, I can only recommend that approach if CC provides all the functionality you require, because it currently provides considerably less than Classic, though I guess Adobe will continue to develop it going forward. Personally there's nothing Classic can do, for me, that CC can't, so I don't need Classic, but that's throwing away a shed-load of functionality that I'm sure many, or most, people wouldn't want to.

AFAIK the mobile version is effectively CC for mobile devices, so it takes it's images from the cloud. I don't use any of the mobile versions, but being in the cloud is extremely useful for me as I have 2 PC's and a Mac and all my images are effectively on all my devices without me needing to do anything to make it so.

I suspect this article explains how to do all this :- https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/h...atures.html?origref=https://www.google.co.uk/

 

[welly]

You can use both with a bit of setting up, but I tried that and found it impractical for my use.

CC will store images locally if you tell it to, as well as upload them to the cloud, so I find that useful because it ensures I have 2 copies of each image without having to do anything other than import them into CC.

You can configure Classic to synch with your cloud library and it'll then download all the images you just uploaded and put them somewhere else on your hard drive, so 1 copy in the cloud, 2 on your PC, but in different places, and each image gets uploaded and downloaded, twice the bandwidth required.

I decided therefore not to bother with Classic, as 1 copy locally + cloud was enough, and it was time consuming uploading and downloading loads of images. However, I can only recommend that approach if CC provides all the functionality you require, because it currently provides considerably less than Classic, though I guess Adobe will continue to develop it going forward. Personally there's nothing Classic can do, for me, that CC can't, so I don't need Classic, but that's throwing away a shed-load of functionality that I'm sure many, or most, people wouldn't want to.

AFAIK the mobile version is effectively CC for mobile devices, so it takes it's images from the cloud. I don't use any of the mobile versions, but being in the cloud is extremely useful for me as I have 2 PC's and a Mac and all my images are effectively on all my devices without me needing to do anything to make it so.

I suspect this article explains how to do all this :- https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/lightroom-mobile-desktop-features.html?origref=https://www.google.co.uk/

Thanks very much, some useful info there. I might start with LR CC and see how I get on with it, if no good I'll go back to LR Classic. Cheers!

 

[Stephen L]

Might be wandering slightly off-topic, but I wouldn't like to store my images solely on someone else's server (I hate the term "cloud"!). Your internet connection can go down, possibly for several weeks (I have experienced this due to a local line failure), the remote hosting company could go broke (not unheard of), and not everyone or everywhere has decent upload and download speeds (except if you live in a 3rd world country, which is often better than the UK).