Lightroom vs Apple Photos long term story

[Danfango]

Going down the photography rabbit hole here. I have used Photos for the last 5 years or so with no problems at all other than a couple of rebuilds required. It's fast, mostly reliable, works across all devices and the editing tools on the Mac are quite good. I've been using it with Pixelmator Pro. I consolidated over 10,000 photos from scans to digital and videos spanning 125 years into it. I have started shooting RAW from a Nikon Z50 recently which tend to be quite large.

However recently my father bought me a year's Adobe Lightroom/PS subscription. I've spent some time in Lightroom and the catalogue and editing tools are arguably a lot better, particularly things like Dehaze and the ability to pull some real magic out of a RAW. It's really impressive what you can do.

But it has a lot of negatives I am worried about. I'm wondering if anyone could shed some light into my complaints or issue any reassurances:

1. I sacrifice the cross device availability unless I use Lr CC and Adobe Cloud which is expensive.
2. I lose the easy sharing functions.
3. It's a complete steaming memory gobbling nightmare frequently bringing my 16Gb M1Pro to a stuttering halt occasionally.
5. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I am a photographer not a photo editor and would rather do minor adjustments to the images rather than attempt to dig in the sewage I've taken and turn it to gold somehow.
6. It's an eternal bill to be paid at £10 a month.

I'm trying to make an objective analysis of which direction to turn. Any insights and opinions would be appreciated.

To clarify I am not looking at any other options at the moment at all. I've already played with most of them.

My entire library is ~70Gb in Photos at the moment.

 

[SpittingImage]

What camera do you use? I use Capture One Pro but they do a free cutdown version for Sony, Fuji and Nikon RAW images.

It's very, very easy to use and might suit you.

 

[mollyc]

I have been using LR since version 1 (2008). I do use it only on one device (iMac). I have several terabytes worth of photos in my catalog.

1. How many devices do you want to use it on? You can keep a catalog on an external drive (although not a NAS) which might be helpful. I do know at least one person keeps her catalog on Dropbox, although I strongly recommend against that. But I think she creates a new catalog monthly or so and then exports finished jpegs elsewhere. I think that risks catalog corruption, but she insists it works for her.

2. What kind of sharing functions do you want?

3. yes, it is a memory hog. welcome to adobe.

4. you forgot this number 😂

5. half the power of LR is in the DAM functions, keywording and organization. If you aren't using that half, then LR is perhaps not a great fit for you.

6. Yes, it's $10/month, but I find the upgrades are worth it, and I personally bought every single yearly upgrade when it was a single license, and now I also get PS for the same yearly price, and I use PS in my photo workflow and for other projects, so for me it's less cost overall. This is highly personal though.

 

[Danfango]

What camera do you use? I use Capture One Pro but they do a free cutdown version for Sony, Fuji and Nikon RAW images.

It's very, very easy to use and might suit you.

iPhone 13 Pro and Nikon Z50. Capture One Pro is outside my budget. Well technically it's not but I won't derive the value that I put in it I suspect.

 

[Danfango]

I have been using LR since version 1 (2008). I do use it only on one device (iMac). I have several terabytes worth of photos in my catalog.

1. How many devices do you want to use it on? You can keep a catalog on an external drive (although not a NAS) which might be helpful. I do know at least one person keeps her catalog on Dropbox, although I strongly recommend against that. But I think she creates a new catalog monthly or so and then exports finished jpegs elsewhere. I think that risks catalog corruption, but she insists it works for her.

2. What kind of sharing functions do you want?

3. yes, it is a memory hog. welcome to adobe.

4. you forgot this number 😂

5. half the power of LR is in the DAM functions, keywording and organization. If you aren't using that half, then LR is perhaps not a great fit for you.

6. Yes, it's $10/month, but I find the upgrades are worth it, and I personally bought every single yearly upgrade when it was a single license, and now I also get PS for the same yearly price, and I use PS in my photo workflow and for other projects, so for me it's less cost overall. This is highly personal though.

1. Currently using Photos across my iPhone, MacBook Pro and iPad. Lightroom is tied to the MacBook Pro only which is a limiting factor as I sometimes drag just my iPad around with me. I don't want to use Lr CC as I instantly incur the 1TB plan charge.

2. Mostly hosted gallery stuff. So primarily project and family sharing stuff. I also contribute to a couple of instagram accounts via their rep. I can manage Lightroom gallery exports and have a couple of Internet-facing Linux machines at my disposal so I did look at that option but it's so much harder than sending an iCloud gallery link.

3. Sobbing into my wallet.

4. Oops!

5. I'm doing roughly the same thing in Photos ironically. Also the people detection and analytics in Photos is somewhat better I found.

6. Fair points.

 

[SpittingImage]

iPhone 13 Pro and Nikon Z50. Capture One Pro is outside my budget. Well technically it's not but I won't derive the value that I put in it I suspect.

Check out Capture One Express for Nikon. It‘s free but has all the tools you would likely need and is very easy to use.

 

[mollyc]

I can publish directly to SmugMug from LR. Flickr also has this capability. Probably others as well, it would depend on your host.

There used to be a way to publish directly to LR from IG but it broke a few years back and to my knowledge the developer never fixed it (possibly unfixable due to IG). However, now that you can upload directly from a desktop to IG, I just do it that way. It's one extra step than my old method, but easier than sending from desktop to phone.

Because my catalog is so big I've never used the people function in LR. By the time it came out I probably had 8-9 years worth of photos already so I never wanted to let it scan. Also my kids are 14/16 and I have photos of them since they were babies and I don't know how face recognition would work over their lifetimes. I feel like I'd spend a lot of time "fixing" the people associations.

 

[Clix Pix]

Take a look at DXO PhotoLab 5..... A few years ago I began the journey of trying to find a new editing program to replace Aperture -- Capture One Pro was overkill for my needs and skill level and ditto for some other programs. Years ago I had used Photoshop and had already come to the same conclusion about it. I had tried LR when it first came out, which was right around the same time that Aperture did, and chose Aperture. I really find it unfortunate that Apple eventually stopped supporting it. I don't use Photos, nor did I use iPhoto, which preceded it.

Anyway, at some point I came across DXO PhotoLab (version 3 at that time) and realized almost immediately that this was the program which would work best for me, as much of it seemed intuitive and yet it also offers plenty of room for growth as one explores and experiments with new techniques and (hopefully) develops new skills. Like you, I am not all that thrilled about spending loads of time in the editing process; I much prefer the shooting experience. However, when one shoots RAW, editing is a necessary evil. That said, I will admit that I have been enjoying the editing process more than I did several years ago, but it will never be a favorite activity. I still pretty much just do the basics and that's it, although once in a while I experiment with something different just to see what will happen.

I don't use a DAM, have my own system which works for me, and I do not want my images tied up in some software program's "catalog" or DAM; I prefer the freedom of moving the images around as I please. My older images are archived on external drives (both HDD and SSD) and current images are on the computer during the time I'm working on them, but afterward are shifted to external SSDs so that they're at hand but not taking up space in the computer's internal drive. I keep the current year's edited .jpegs on the computer, though, for convenience in sharing. Most places where I share my images provide the option to simply upload right from the computer rather than the older, more time-consuming hot-linking from a gallery.

On my desktop I have a folder where I put images to be shared in my iPhone and iPad and Apple Watch. As for putting any image files on another computer in the household, a simple matter of copying the chosen ones to an external SSD and then dropping them into the desired location on the other machine. I usually don't feel the need for instantaneous transfer, and do this when a backlog begins to accumulate and I finally get around to it.

So, yes, there can be a photographic life without Photoshop and Lightroom!

 

[Hughmac]

Thanks @SpittingImage, I've just downloaded Capture One Express for Nikon.

Plus, if you have an "older" Mac OS, Capture One Express for Nikon v22 appears to work in Mojave, despite the published system requirements

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Drew Johnston]

Going down the photography rabbit hole here. I have used Photos for the last 5 years or so with no problems at all other than a couple of rebuilds required. It's fast, mostly reliable, works across all devices and the editing tools on the Mac are quite good. I've been using it with Pixelmator Pro. I consolidated over 10,000 photos from scans to digital and videos spanning 125 years into it. I have started shooting RAW from a Nikon Z50 recently which tend to be quite large.

However recently my father bought me a year's Adobe Lightroom/PS subscription. I've spent some time in Lightroom and the catalogue and editing tools are arguably a lot better, particularly things like Dehaze and the ability to pull some real magic out of a RAW. It's really impressive what you can do.

But it has a lot of negatives I am worried about. I'm wondering if anyone could shed some light into my complaints or issue any reassurances:

1. I sacrifice the cross device availability unless I use Lr CC and Adobe Cloud which is expensive.
2. I lose the easy sharing functions.
3. It's a complete steaming memory gobbling nightmare frequently bringing my 16Gb M1Pro to a stuttering halt occasionally.
5. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I am a photographer not a photo editor and would rather do minor adjustments to the images rather than attempt to dig in the sewage I've taken and turn it to gold somehow.
6. It's an eternal bill to be paid at £10 a month.

I'm trying to make an objective analysis of which direction to turn. Any insights and opinions would be appreciated.

To clarify I am not looking at any other options at the moment at all. I've already played with most of them.

My entire library is ~70Gb in Photos at the moment.

I made the switch from Apples Aperture several years ago, and it drastically increased my efficiency and workflow. I had a over 80GB worth of photos in my library, now I give every photoshoot it's own unique library and store them accordingly. I love the switch once I made it. Soon to be working on a Mac Studio M1 Max, and Studio Display (When it delivers).

 

[cthompson94]

Why not use both? I keep my photos taken by my Sony camera on Lightroom (those that I edit are edited on LR Classic or I sync them to CC to edit on the iPad) I then send the edited photos to my phone/iPad whatever doesn't matter since it will get synced to all devices anyway. The photos app is mostly iPhone photos/videos besides the edited photos which I then share via photos app.

I also keep copy of my entire LR Catalog on my NAS which from there I can gain access to it from anywhere as long as I have a wifi/cellular connection.

Of course this method means having two different photo libraries and may not work for everyone. Keeping it so that I edit the synced photos in CC means that I am just editing the smart previews so it is a good alternative to being able to edit the photo without all of space taken up in the Adobe Cloud.

 

[SpittingImage]

Thanks @SpittingImage, I've just downloaded Capture One Express for Nikon.

Plus, if you have an "older" Mac OS, Capture One Express for Nikon v22 appears to work in Mojave, despite the published system requirements

Cheers

Hugh

You’re most welcome. I’ve used Capture One for many years and it just gets better and better. If you only do a little to your images it‘s perfect. Very simple. If you have any questions just ask.

 

[orionquest]

I don't mean to be blunt or snobby but Lightroom is meant for professional photographers. From the sounds of it you are a hobbyist and won't utilize the full potential of the software and the cost will be a burden not a utility. Half of professional photography is in the editing if you are not doing any of that then it's a waste to spend money on software you won't use. Also as great as the M1 Mac's are not all software is native yet, Adobe is seriously lacking in this area, and I can't remember if LR is beta of full native on M1's. Either way they still have work to do.

I actually use both Photos and Lightroom for my needs. Photos has impressed me with it's simplicity and just enough editing capabilities. But I only use this for shots taken with my iPhone and sharing between iDevices. I couldn't find a decent method of dealing with iPhone photos with Lightroom so I separated the workflow and this works best I find. Also leveraging some of iCloud's features like Photo Stream is useful. For everything else and when the DSLR comes out it's all Lightroom. I like the fact that Lightroom leaves your folder structure on your computer alone and doesn't hide it within a large database file like Photos. I create catalogues per year, and the folder structure is divided by months/ then events. All stored on a RAID drive and backed up to a NAS.

As for sharing I don't quite understand the lack of convience, I just export what I need as a jpeg and log into whatever service, social media, etc and create a post. I rather do it this way as other sharing methods lack finesse or controls on the particulars of the posts and most website like Facebook and IG always change or update stuff so built in sharing become broken.

 

[Zensō]

I’ve used Photoshop and Lightroom professionally for many years. They have many advantages for a professional workflow, but I’d suggest staying with Apple Photos for casual use due to the cleaner/simpler UI and deep integration in the Apple ecosystem.

 

[Danfango]

Thanks all for the replies - much appreciated. I am digesting them carefully and adding to my notes

 

[xyz369]

If you're not a professional photographer and don't intend to be, it's best to stay with Apple Photos. I see that Lightroom and PS looks interesting and useful, but over time it will only be a waste of money and time to maintain this software.

 

[SueperDrive]

I am a hobby photographer and I edit all my RAW photos in Lightroom and export them as 12mpx jpeg to store them in Apple Photos because I love it. It was one of the reasons I switched to Mac.
Photography is in general a very expensive hobby, so I don't mine the monthly fee for Lightroom. You also get Photoshop wich I barely use. But the filter feature in Lightroom is very handy because you can filter fotos based on, for example, focal length, ISO, camera body, lens etc.

 

[bunnspecial]

I find it interesting that some in this thread consider Lightroom to be in the domain of pros.

I've never pretended to be a pro but I am a long-time user of Lightroom who finds the integrated cataloging, RAW conversion, and editing to be invaluable to actually letting me turn my RAW files into photos in a way that works well for me.

BTW, one of the weirdly freeing things I've been doing lately is taking advantage of the ISO invariance of some of my sensors. I can just frame and shoot, make sure I have the DOF I need and am not going to get motion blur, and then sort it out later. LR makes taking advantage of that easy.

To each their own, though. I find Photos to be lacking in a lot of areas, and in particular when I try to use it I find editing functions I always reach for in Lightroom to either be difficult to access(or at least from my perspective-they're not where I expect them to be) or missing.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

The last version of LR I used was v6, which was the last perpetual license they offered. My main concern with the subscription model is that you have to pay to play indefinitely, which may not be much of a bother if you love the toolset and aren't "subscription heavy" in your budget. Another concern for me is if I ever get fed up with Apple and certainly don't want Windows, I can't use LR in Linux. I guess the key is to have an exit strategy. You get a year to try it, and there's nothing stopping you from exporting your content from LR and into Photos the entire time. If you give up on the sub, you won't be out much effort.

These days almost everything is a monthly payment model--streaming movies, TV and music, even gaming and Office suites! One positive with the LR sub is that you get cloud storage to go along with it. $10/mo for LR+1TB storage really isn't too bad. Dropbox and Apple charge the same amount for 2TB, but you don't get a powerful photo editing tool to go with it. Granted, you can't use adobe storage for anything other than your photo library, so it's not a perfect comparison.

 

[wilberforce]

If you're not a professional photographer and don't intend to be, it's best to stay with Apple Photos. I see that Lightroom and PS looks interesting and useful, but over time it will only be a waste of money and time to maintain this software.

Sorry, I don't agree with this viewpoint and consider it poor advice, except for casual photographers.
Have been using LR and PS and Macs for over 10 years, and LR (Classic) is far more comprehensive and capable than Photos. Photos is basically a dumbed down interface with emphasis on intuitive ease of use.

Any software that is more competent also takes more effort to learn. PS takes a long time to understand and learn, whereas LR does a brilliant job of providing incredible capabilities without making it too difficult to learn - a very good balance. Personally, I find Photos very frustrating trying to make it do what it cannot.
I suggest do not discard LR if you are an enthusiast, as opposed to casual, photographer. "Professional" has little to do with it.

 

[mollyc]

i am strictly a hobbyist and use LR.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

I too don't agree with the notion that one has to be a professional to use any app, regardless of kind. Now, I would never pay user fees for any app out there, specially LightRoom and the rest of the Adobe CC apps, simply because I spent lots of money buying a license for CS5 and CS6 before Adobe stopped supporting it.

I am assuming that PhotoShop Elements 2022 would be a good choice for the OP, since it has both a photo editor and an organizer, but I don't know enough about it to recommend it, other than PS Elements is a standalone application that is paid for upfront.

 

[orionquest]

The OP made it pretty clear they will not take advantage of the more advance editing capabilities and Photos fills their other needs just fine.
As for the bit about LR being only for pro's. If it fits your needs and you are not a pro it's fine, it works for you. I don't think anyone said you can't use it if you are not a pro.
It's your money after all do what you like, just like people who buy pickup trucks to get groceries.

 

[cthompson94]

The OP made it pretty clear they will not take advantage of the more advance editing capabilities and Photos fills their other needs just fine.
As for the bit about LR being only for pro's. If it fits your needs and you are not a pro it's fine, it works for you. I don't think anyone said you can't use it if you are not a pro.
It's your money after all do what you like, just like people who buy pickup trucks to get groceries.

I wouldn't say that OP made it clear that they would not take advantage of having more advance editing capabilities. OP mentioned having added things like Dehaze and other tools to better push RAW photos.

It is just whether or not the benefits outweigh the subscription con. I think if OP uses LR more through the 1 year "trial run" that would be sufficient to determine if going forward a subscription is worth it or not and that's why we were just trying to answer the questions OP had so that a possible workflow could be found.

 

[robgendreau]

To the OP I'd suggest you download a demo of Raw Power and try that.

It addresses many of your issues. Mainly because it integrates well with Photos, so you can keep the things you like about Photos, while upping your game with image adjustments. It's very powerful.

It does, however, lack features like local adjustment. So no Lr or Ps like sky masking, which I now find super useful.

I use Photos as a gallery for images I've processed in Lr and exported, and for a lot of the day-to-day stuff I accumulate on my phone. Love it for that. Lr and especially Ps are much much more powerful, but if you don't need it, no sense payiing for it.