Are you overwhelmed and confused by all of the Adobe Lightroom news from last week? Watch a recording of my webinar from last weekend in which I’ll cover and make sense of all the Lightroom news from Adobe:

  • Product naming decisions
  • What to update in your Creative Cloud app (and what not to!)
  • What’s New in Lightroom Classic 7
  • How you can already use Lightroom mobile and web with your Creative Cloud subscription (even without using the new cloud-based Lightroom CC desktop app)
  • What you shouldn’t do in Lightroom mobile if you are using Lightroom Classic
  • Tour of the new cloud-based Lightroom CC app and explanation of how it fits into the “Lightroom ecosystem”
  • Migrating your Lightroom Classic catalog to Lightroom CC
  • Trying Lightroom CC
  • Using Lightroom Classic and CC together

You’ll find that the articles and videos available on my What’s New in Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC resource page cover everything in more detail, but this 50-minute recorded session will hit the highlights and put the news and changes in context for you so that you can figure out what else you really need to watch and read and do from here (if anything).

NOTE 10-26: For answers to questions asked during the webinar, scroll down to below the video.

Downloading This Video

You can watch this 50 minute video below, or you can download it.. (It’s 140 MB.)  To download it, click here and go through the FREE checkout process. Note that this will also subscribe you to my newsletter. (You can unsubscribe at the bottom of any newsletter.)

For best quality, after hitting Play click on the sprocket wheel in the bottom right and choose 720/HD.

Start Times

02:03 Lightroom renamed Lightroom Classic
02:30 Classic 7 update only available to CC subscribers
03:16 Perpetual Lightroom 6 still for sale – what updates it will and won’t get, how to get support for new cameras after 2017
04:50 New cloud-based Lightroom CC
05:04  Naming confusion and implications
05:52  New cloud-based Lightroom CC – easier to use, light on features
06:30  What does it mean that the Lightroom name has been taken and given to a new application?
07:39  Lightroom CC bundled into Creative Cloud Photography Program
08:00  If Lightroom CC is not for you – ignore it and your experience won’t change
08:47  Plans for the rest of this session
09:20  Where to find details on all the releases and video tutorials on my website
10:15  What apps you’ll see in the Creative Cloud application – what to update, how to prevent Classic from removing your old version
12:38  What’s new in Lightroom Classic 7
22:00 What you can do already with Lightroom Mobile and Web as a Creative Cloud subscriber with Classic 7
24:45  Keywords and folders don’t sync from mobile to Classic
25:49  Where to give Adobe feedback
26:36  Lightroom Web (lightroom.adobe.com)
27:12  Tour of the new cloud-based Lightroom CC
37:58  Summary of advantages of LR CC’s cloud-based approach
38:29  Migrating your Classic catalog to CC – prep work you should do first, what will migrate and what won’t
42:05  Subscription plans and prices – CC Photography Plan, Lightroom CC only; cost of additional storage
44:36  Now is the time to give Adobe feedback on any and all of this
45:05  Trying Lightroom CC – turn off Classic syncing, import photos into LR CC, play
46:10  Working with both Lightroom CC and Classic
46:10  Lightroom CC as a travel-only tool
47:26  Having your images in both applications – complexities
49:26 Summary of the news
50:04  Nothing needs to change for you

Questions from the Live Webinar

Do you have to shoot raw+JPEG to take advantage of the Embedded Preview workflow?

No – this is only useful if your camera doesn’t embed fullsize previews and if you plan to zoom in to judge sharpness. Note that you don’t need to import the JPEGs – in Preferences uncheck “Treat raw and JPEG pairs as separate photos.” Watch my video tutorial on the Embedded Preview workflow for more information.

How do I contact Adobe to give feedback on keywords not syncing from mobile to Classic or any other topic?

On this page.

If I want to use LR as I always have, should I stick with LR Classic? Do I need to to hit upgrade?

Yes, stick with Classic. You can hit Update in your Creative Cloud application next to “Lightroom Classic CC” (or you can just keep using one of the old versions – Lightroom 6, CC 2015 or any earlier one.)

I really want to avoid “upgrading” to the new Lightroom CC. Please repeat how I can do that. I am happy with all my photos on an external HD and in my catalog.

Don’t install “Lightroom CC” from the Creative Cloud app – just stick with Lightroom Classic. If you are a CC subscriber, click on Update next to Lightroom Classic CC to get the latest version.

In your estimation once the switch from classic to cc is all and done, how expensive it will be. Now we pay 10 bucks a month but if you add the storage adobe will charge for their service it will become very onerous, don’t you think?

I don’t know where Adobe is going, but generally they don’t make large changes in prices – the CC Photography Plan with Lightroom and Photoshop has been $9.99/mo since 2013. If you have less than 1 TB photos, I think the pricing for LR CC isn’t bad in exchange for getting all your photos and professional tools with you from everywhere – but if you have 6 TB (and therefore have to pay for 10 TB), $100-$110/month is very expensive. Adobe has hinted that they might add “selective syncing” where you can choose to sync just some portion of your photos to the cloud – if they do this, then it would be less cost-prohibitive.

Does anything change regarding taking pictures on a mobile device and syncing full res back to Lightroom Classic?

No, nothing changes in terms of Lightroom Classic syncing to and from Lightroom mobile. However, keywords added in mobile (with the new keywording feature) will not sync to Classic; folders also will not sync.

My main question before going away from the perpetual LR 6 is how to install LR7 w/o deleting LR6

Watch my video tutorial on how to upgrade. (Once you click on Update in the Creative Cloud app, click on Advanced Options and make sure that “Remove Old Versions” is unchecked.

I heard that Classic is missing Photomerge HDR and Panorama. True?

No, this is not true.

I have already installed both CC and Classic Can I un-install CC without incuring any problems?

If you uninstall Lightroom CC and delete your library, all photos will be removed from Lightroom mobile and web as well, except those synced from Lightroom Classic. Be sure that you first allow photos that you imported into mobile or web to fully sync to Classic (have sync turned on) before you do this.

If I have a client who has 60,500 photos in his LR catalog – would you say it is safe for him to update to LIghtroom Classic CC?

Some people are having issues, but most are not. Go ahead and upgrade, and revert back if necessary.

Am I able to update to LR 7 Classic and LR CC — or one or the other. This seems rather confusing.

One or both – but most people will be happier not dealing with the complexities of using both together.

Has Lightroom mobile been replaced with CC?

The Lightroom mobile application for iOS and Android has been renamed to “Lightroom CC” (Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC)

If shoot in raw+JPEG but only import raw will LR use the embedded JPEG for full-size viewing (in the Embedded Previews workflow)?

Yes.

Do we need to sync from collections?

Lightroom Classic users have to continue to choose which collections to sync to the cloud and mobile and web. For Lightroom CC users, all photos (and videos) automatically sync – there is no selective syncing.

I need to get a new computer, would like to switch to Mac from Windows. What will this do to my Lightroom photos? can I switch my subscription to LR classic from Windows to MAC?

Lightroom’s files (and your photo files) are compatible with both, and your subscription includes both. Victoria Bampton has an article on moving to a new computer (at lightroomqueen.com)

It would be nice it Range Mask could be inverted after defining. Possible now or maybe in the future? Not now, but hopefully at some point. I already subscribe to Creative Cloud and paid for a whole year in advance. Will I automatically receive the new release, LR 7?

You can choose to update to Classic version 7 in the Creative Cloud application for no additional charge, assuming your subscription is still active.