Lightroom vs Apple Photos long term story

[orionquest]

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.

Going down the photography rabbit hole here...
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.

🤷‍♂️ Seems clear to me.

I wouldn't even waste time or money (yes I know it was gifted) on LR if they are doing minor edits which can be done in Photos, the odd LR feature doesn't really qualify necessity, but a nice to have. Also after a years worth of photos ingested into LR and they decide to move on they now have a catalogue they can't access without a sub or have to redo all those pictures in Photos etc.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

The thing with any advanced photo editor is that it can do the basic edits like free apps, but has the power to do more. The notion here is that you should see these tools as more of an opportunity to do more with the good photos you really love, NOT as a tool to "save" bad photos. Sometimes we lean on editors to save the best photos we have of a particular moment, but any tool is best used for working with properly exposed images.

 

[Clix Pix]

I am always surprised at how much better a good image looks after I've taken the time to work with it in the editing process. A poor image sometimes can be saved, sometimes not, but definitely relying on either editing or converting to B&W to rescue it is not the answer. A good B&W image is shot with B&W in mind in the first place, and editing can correct some errors, but really cannot make a poorly exposed or composed shot look stellar.

I'm much happier when I can quickly edit images because I shot them right in the first place, and they only need a light touch. Getting into situations where complex technical skills are required is really beyond me and I usually just delete the image rather than fool around with it. Sometimes I will experiment on it, though, as a learning or practice exercise, and that can be helpful if one has the time to do so.

 

[Ray2]

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.

1. True. Picking up on your view that you'd rather be a photographer than a photo editor, you will spend time getting around Adobe's less than stellar integration of Mobile and Lightroom. For those of us who grew up with Classic, it’s a poor integration we live with. If your not steeped in Classic, Photos is probably as good a choice as LR cloudy. Definitely some pros and cons but sticking with Photos avoids a learning process.
2. Yes and no, Adobe's sharing is far more reliable and flexible than Apple's. People I share albums with via Adobe are far more pleased with the experience than with my/their use of Photos.
3. Something is wrong. Current LR is not a memory hog, has never been. Check out pro workstations for Lightroom and you will not find tons of memory. PS is the memory hog. I ran LR just fine on a 16GB ram mini and now Air and iPad Pro. Never had a memory issue. Dealing with Fuji raw and about 50,000 images in my main catalog.

My feeling is if you move to Adobe, you move to LR Classic. If you don’t want to go beyond LR cloudy, stick with Photos. It’s the devil you know and has good editing tools. It’s weakness is it’s dam stinks. While LR cloudy is a bit better, it’s Classic for excellent dam.

 

[GumaRodak]

I am the oposite way. I do photography as a professional, for this i do use capture one.
But for private life i do use Photos and shooting directly to jpgs…so i dont spend time on editing etc, as i would rather spend the time with family….
the way how photos lets me tag, assign peoples, creating memories, albums, clips on my apple tv … and edit in case i need… this is the best value

 

[Danfango]

Ok big thanks to everyone here again. I've spent some time with this now and evaluated my options carefully. I have decided to go with Lightroom in the end and just pay for it. I am too invested in this as a hobby now to not sink the cost and the associated power. Also I found out it comes with Photoshop which I didn't realise originally and actually helps with one of my other interests which is digital art. The memory and CPU gobbling issue disappeared about a week ago after I updated it!

Anyway this is what sold it for me.

Original photo. Composition was about right but I fudged the exposure. Should have knocked it down a stop or two to retain the sky detail.

10 minutes in Lightroom

And I was hooked like a crack ho.

 

[JamesMay82]

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.

Very similar to me although I run a Lightroom cc library and Apple photos library relatively in sync. I do this because I prefer Lightroom editing but I like Apple photos for how it reminds Me and shares photo memories. Plus i also have shared albums with family etc in photos.

I’ve not been as active this past year with my photography and I did think about cancelling light room but I do like the thought of having the additional cloud back up as security.

think I’ll do your idea of uploading edits to Apple photos as I tend to keep my edits just in Lightroom

 

[Jumpthesnark]

Hi @Danfango since you're just starting out with LR, you have an opportunity to rethink your workflow, metadata, backups, etc., if you want. Anything you didn't like about how you worked your images before, you can change now.

Also, there are a ton of good YT videos on LR, which can be really useful when getting started. Good luck!

 

[Danfango]

Hi @Danfango since you're just starting out with LR, you have an opportunity to rethink your workflow, metadata, backups, etc., if you want. Anything you didn't like about how you worked your images before, you can change now.

Also, there are a ton of good YT videos on LR, which can be really useful when getting started. Good luck!

Totally agree with this. I’m slowly moving my library over piecemeal. Will take me a year or two I reckon. A positive thing is that I’ve discovered some old photos I had forgotten in the process so am cataloguing stuff properly as well.

As for tutorials, I bought a refresher Udemy course about a month ago on digital photography which has a large Lightroom and photoshop section on it which has been really good so far. Link here: https://www.udemy.com/share/101WBe3...4DinnpudyOcX3TpXSLcc_B2RkQmDJtx-xkjyz0wYzQ==/

 

[Goodrich]

The photo capabilities of Lightroom and Photos are comparable. I find the Lightroom interface easier to use and it gives you a bit more control (eg to switch off lens corrections or fiddle with sharpening). It also has better metadata handling.

It is good to have a version of Lightroom on each of ipad and Mac but the sync features are clunky if you have any volume of photos.

 

[Michael Sanders]

I'm in the same boat as many here.. What would really help is if Apple put the iPhone photos outside of the Photo app package so they could easily be read by Lightroom.