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0 pointsrobenkleene5y ago0 comments

For the record, I don't think Adobe is ever moving away from Lightroom Classic. I think the naming is a bit of a mirage, or more specifically a way to push consumers towards a more valuable (charge for cloud storage), less demanding (objectively less capable), product. A customer paying for Classic and CC, and only using CC is a better customer for Adobe.

But the problem is Adobe Lightroom CC has effectively zero penetration with professional photographers. If I had to summarize the pro market opinion of CC, it would be contempt. Here's an example: This article (https://petapixel.com/2020/01/02///why-im-sticking-with-ligh...), about choosing Classic over CC, has about 100 comments, the maximum allowed, most panning CC. Of those 100, it's easy to find the single positive comment about CC: it's at the bottom, with the most downvotes.

The problem is the whole basis of CC (cloud storage) is antithetical to how professional photographers work (thousands of large photos per shoot). Adobe can't grow CC into eventually supporting this market because it can't support offline storage, because the whole reason CC exists is to have a product that's cloud only...

So I think Adobe will effectively be supporting Classic forever. Here's an example: Adobe has committed to native support for Classic on Apple Silicon (https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/macos-big-sur-c...).

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snowwrestler5y ago

I wonder how long Adobe is going to care about professional photographers for Lightroom. That sounds crazy, I know, but I would bet that the percentage of Lightroom users who are actual working pros is tiny and shrinking. At some point it will be more profitable for Adobe to abandon that tiny and demanding customer group to some other company and focus on prosumers with Lightroom CC.

Pros who need Photoshop will still need Adobe. There is nothing remotely close to replacing Photoshop. And AFAIK, every Lightroom competitor ships with an “open this file in Photoshop” button.

Apple did this with Final Cut. After years of being proud that Real Hollywood Films were edited with Final Cut, they gave up Hollywood and pivoted the product firmly toward prosumers. It has not hurt Apple at all, and probably saved them some money and heartache along the way.

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