Seems Like Every Photographer Is Mad At Adobe And Wants To Drop Lightroom And Photoshop; There Are Some Things You Better Know Before Doing It!

Great Smoky Mountain National Park (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T2, 16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 36.5mm; 7 sec. @ f/11; ISO 200; ND filter used

From what I read around the Internet, there has been a lot of animus growing toward Adobe since a) the announcement of the Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe's cessation of allowing its customer's to "buy" their software with a perpetual licences a couple of years ago, thus forcing users to pay at least $9.99 US per month to use Lightroom CC (LR) and Photoshop CC (PS) and b) now, even more outrage, since Adobe has split Lightroom into two programs by creating Lightroom CC (mainly for mobile devices and cloud storage of your images) and renaming the existing program to Lightroom Classic CC.  An offshoot of attaching the word "Classic" to the old program's name is that speculation is running rampant that this is a sign of Lightroom's demise.  Anger has been especially pronounced since Adobe really didn't go very far in accomplishing its goal (based upon what I read and hear as Lightroom's #1 problem) to speed up Lightroom Classic CC to any great extent.  I have a state of the art computer and it still opens slowly, ingests files slowly, creates previews slowly and reflects edits slowly.  It is a bit faster here and there, but not like I and many others think it should be.

Because if this, there are many photographic editing software manufacturers creating new programs to give Lightroom and Photoshop users viable alternatives to those old stalwarts.  If you are thinking about looking for an alternative, a good blog post to read is the one Mike Johnston, creator, writer, editor and owner of The Online Photographer, posted this past Saturday specifically to generate feedback from his readers as to what opinions they have for alternative software.  If you are unhappy with Adobe, I suggest reading this post which can be found here.  At last check, he has received over a hundred comments from readers with their experience using alternative programs.

If you have been a steady reader of this blog, you know that I have ranted about Lightroom's slowness as well and my desire to find alternatives if Adobe can't find a way to significantly speed up the program.  Couple that with Adobe's lack of enthusiasm for fully fixing its RAW conversion algorithms for demosaicing Fujifilm RAF files, and I'm having a difficult time justifying the monthly fee imposed upon me for this product.

Don't get me wrong, I think in general Lightroom is a marvelous program.  The key words here are "in general."  But Adobe's inability to fix what is wrong with LR, especially after repeatedly posting record corporate profits, sounds to me like disregard for their customer base.  As for Photoshop, no complaints.

If you are contemplating leaving the Adobe ecosystem, there are a few things you must know before you do.  Let me ask you a question.  Do you want to keep all of the editing changes that you made on your image files over the last many, many years when you migrate your images to another program? Do you want to keep all of your keywords?  How about color space, copyright, cropping, etc?  I thought you would.  If you aren't careful, you may find that when you open your image files in another program, all you see is your original RAW or JPEG files as they came out of the camera.  You may not even be able to open PSD files you created in Photoshop if you don't pick the right program.  Let me explain why for the benefit of those who may not know how Lightroom works.  I'm going to go into much more detail than I would normally, just for their benefit as Lightroom can be confusing to some.

First, Lightroom consists of two parts: your images as seen in the program and a "catalog".  You know what your images are, that is a given.  The "catalog" is just a database that points to where your images are on your hard drive so LR can find and display them and it stores all of the changes you have made to your images.  

For those of you with some "age," this works like the old public library system.  You walked into the library looking for a book.  You don't go right to the shelf to find it, you go to a filing cabinet called a "Card Catalog" which has little cards listing every book in the library by title, author, etc.  Most often you looked up the book you wanted to find by title or author and the catalog "pointed" to where on the shelves your book is stored.  Same thing with LR.  The catalog tells the program where your particular image is stored on your hard drive. It also stores what edits you have already made, etc. and then shows that image to you in the program.  Whew!  But people get really confused about how LR and its catalog system works.  The thing to remember is that the catalog is separate from your images.  You will understand why that is important to remember in the next couple of paragraphs.

Second, Lightroom is a non-destructive editing software program.  Unlike Photoshop, which changes the actual pixels and bakes in your changes forever when your edited image is saved¹, Lightroom does not change your original file in any way.  Hence, no "save" command in Lightroom.  I know that baffles people as well.  How does it save my changes, I often hear?  You have to save the changes, don't you?  How does it then work?

When you edit your image files in LR, it doesn't actually change anything on the original file.  It issues a set of "instructions" to your LR Catalog file (has a ".lrcat" extension) so that when you view the file it only appears to have been changed.  It is like using one of those old overhead projectors in which you are viewing a piece of paper with text, place a piece of clear acetate over the paper, then make some annotations with a marker.  When you look at the paper with the text on the overhead projector's screen, it appears it has been changed but in reality, that clear acetate is where the changes have been made.  The original paper with text has not been changed.  It only looks like it has.  Same with LR.  The changes you see to your image in reality are only a set of instructions and those instructions may only be saved in said ".lrcat" file, unless you have one particular box checked in your catalog preferences dialog box.  The changes you made are only "baked in" when you "export" an image out of LR.  When you export, LR creates a JPEG/Tiff, PNG, etc., and the changes you made are applied to that exported image only.  The originals are not modified in any way.  You always have your original, out of the camera, files.  Clear as mud?

If you change software programs, you want those changes you made in Lightroom to come to your new program with your individual image files.  Typically, those changes are ONLY stored in the LR catalog, not within the image files themselves.  You can facilitate this (if you already don't have your catalog preferences set this way) by checking the box in the menu item (in Windows) within the "Edit>LR Catalog Settings>Metadata" to "Automatically write changes into XMP."  (MAC is slightly different) XMP, called sidecar files, stands for Extensible Metadata Platform.  It is a very small file that sits along side each image file on your computer hard drive and carries all of the changes made by an editing program, LR in this case.

No XMP file coming along with your image files to your new program, no editing or other changes retained.  You have to make sure all of those changes that may only stored in the LR catalog file have been written to XMP files.  That check box will do that, however....

If you have not had this setting checked all along, you can go back and create sidecar files for all of your existing images.  You can select the files you want the metadata written out to an XMP sidecar file under the "Metadata>Save Metatdata To File" menu item.  As far as I know, you could choose all the photos in your catalog if you haven't saved your metadata to XMP files in the past.  Again, if you don't save the metadata to these XMP sidecar files, then the only place that your edits exist is in the LR catalog, which won't be coming to your new program.  Hence, all the work you have done on your images is lost.

There are some things that are not written to sidecar files and cannot migrate with your image files.  For example, if you "flag" your picks.  Flags, I understand, are not written to the XMP files.  Same with Collections, Smart Collections and Presets.  Colors you apply in the Library module aren't kept as well.  If you have "stacked" photos, that is not kept, to the best of my knowledge.  

What I don't know is how LR presets and Profiles (found under the Calibration Tab in the Develop menu) such as Fujifilm's Film Simulations, Nikon's or Canon's camera profiles, etc. are handled.  Are they lost?  Can your new program apply them from the metadata?  I just don't know.

As far as I understand, the following information will be retained in the XMP file besides your edits: author’s name, resolution, color space, copyright, and keywords, as well as image height, width, file format, and the time and date the image was taken.  I believe "star" ratings are written to the XMP files so if you have only flags designating certain picks, you may want to globally change those to stars.  This list is not comprehensive, but it is what I was able to find upon doing a little online research.  

If any reader knows a) that I am mistaken or b) what additional metadata will be preserved, please write a comment as my intention is to always provide the most accurate and complete information to you.  I will immediately come back and correct anything you find in error.

Finally, I haven't read of any other photo editing software manufacturer whose program can fully utilize Lightroom's catalog as is.  However.....MacPhun (now called SkyLum) says that in 2018 they will be adding a database digital asset management feature (DAM) to their LR competitor program, Luminar, that will be compatible with LR's catalog.  If that is the case, that gives them a leg up on their competition as that seems it would become the best of both worlds.  If they do and the DAM is designed as it should, the transition should be seamless.

This is an associated topic that should be of interest to all of you who are contemplating leaving the Creative Cloud ecosystem as well.

If you cancel your Lightroom subscription, it is my understanding that you can still keep Lightroom on you computer and it will retain minimal functionality.  By minimal, LR will retain your catalog and all of your edits and metadata.  However, the Develop module as well as the other features of the software will not function.  Basically, you can get to your images, see the editing you have done in the past and export them out of the program.

Here is something that isn't good.  If you previously purchased LR 6 before the Creative Cloud was created, you still own LR 6 and can use it in perpetuity.  But...any catalog you created in versions of LR that superceded LR 6 will not open in LR 6.  So if you are a CC user and want to go back to your older version standalone program LR 6, you cannot use the catalog you created in subsequent CC versions.  All of that work is not backwards compatible.  Crazy, isn't it?  I hope you kept a copy of your old LR catalog!

If you like the way your images have been cataloged, this may be another partial solution to your problems with Adobe.  In a practical sense, you can continue to use the LR CC catalog, find your edited images, export them to a file outside of LR in the form of a JPEG, TIFF, PSD, PNG, DNG or Original (not sure what that means!), then utilize this new version of your file in another program.  The DNG seems especially attractive as it retains most all of the benefits of the original RAW file.  I believe that the LR editing instructions are contained within the DNG file.

There is much to think about and much to plan and do before abandoning Adobe's ecosystem.  You aren't totally trapped and dependent upon Adobe, but each year it is getting more and more like that.  Please don't be caught short and lose much of your work.  Also, don't count on my research.  Do you own.  Find out what editing programs keep what information and what attributes of your image files so you aren't greatly disappointed, frustrated and downright mad about having to change in the first place!

Will your new program handle any PSD files you created in Photoshop?  Will your new program keep and apply your "user created" presets that you made in Lightroom?  If you applied a Fuji film simulation or a profile from another manufacturer's camera, will your new program have the ability to retain the color palate, contrast, saturation and other attributes of that profile?  What do you do with your collections?  Do you need to change flags to stars and will your program correctly apply those flags?  These are just a few questions you need to ask yourself.  I'm sure there are many, many more.

Finally, a disclaimer: I'm not vouching for this post to be 100% accurate or comprehensive.  I'm just giving you a "heads up" on what I think I know about all of this and pass it to you.  It is your responsibility to do your own research and make your own decisions before doing anything to your files.  Just "sayin..."

¹(except for a couple of circumstances such as working in layers or smart objects, but that is another post)

Good Luck!

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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