Is Lightroom free? The mobile app has a free mode, but not the desktop version

Lightroom is available both as a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, and as desktop software. The mobile app is free to install, but you have to subscribe to an Adobe Photography Plan to unlock its full set of features. There is no free version of the desktop versions.

Desktop Lightroom users

If you’re interested in the Lightroom desktop software (Lightroom and Lightroom Classic) you’ll see straight away that these are not free, and you can only get them by purchasing one of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plans. There is a trial version, but it only works for a short time.

• How to use Lightroom: Lightroom tutorials
• Download Lightroom
• Lightroom and Photography Plans explained

Mobile Lightroom users

With the Lightroom mobile app for iOS and Android, it’s a little more complicated. This app is free to download and install, and you can use it to capture, organise and share photos on your device without an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

For mobile users, this might be their route into the Lightroom ecosystem rather than the desktop version, and Lightroom mobile can be used as free software.

However, if you want to get the full range of editing tools, the ability to synchronise images with the desktop versions of Lightroom and a range of other benefits, you will need to subscribe to one of Adobe’s Photography Plans.

What the Lightroom free version can do

This information comes from the Adobe Lightroom for Mobile FAQ:

You can use all the capture, organization, and sharing features in Lightroom for mobile for free, and most of the editing features are available too.

Lightroom mobile has a built in camera app with much more control than the regular camera app, and it saves the images you take to its own internal catalog, where you can carry out various editing and photo fixing tasks, and share them to social media accounts.

Essentially, though, the free Lightroom app is like any other camera app, where the images are captured and kept on your phone. Upgrading to a Creative Cloud Photography Plan adds premium features to the Lightroom mobile app.

Lightroom mobile premium and what you get

There are three main advantages to the premium version – which is what you get when you join an Adobe Photography Plan.

1. Your images now synchronise with the Adobe Creative Cloud service so that they are available on other devices, and to Lightroom on desktop. You can now see, organize and edit your pictures everywhere.
2. Adobe offers other free mobile apps, including Photoshop Mix, Photoshop Fix, Adobe Spark Page, Adobe Spark Video, and more, but you’ll need a Photography Plan subscription to directly access your Lightroom photos with these.
3. Lightroom mobile, the full version, offers useful additional editing tools:
   • You can synchronise profiles and presets with Lightroom on desktop
   • You get a Healing Brush for removing sensor spots and other unwanted objects
   • You can make Selective Adjustments, such as adding a gradient filter to darken a bright sky
   • You get Geometry tools for correcting converging verticals and other perspective problems
   • You can edit RAW images, including those shot by the Lightroom camera or imported for a separate camera
   • You get Adobe’s AI-powered Sensei search tool for finding pictures using object recognition
   • You can share web galleries with others
   • You can sort your photos according to who is in them
   • You can carry out batch editing on multiple photos at the same time

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Is it worth upgrading to a Photography Plan?

Adobe is clearly using Lightroom for mobile as a bit of a teaser to get people to subscribe to a Photography Plan. There’s nothing sinister about this; it’s something most software companies do. And the fact is, the ‘free’ features are worth having on their own.

But it’s also worth considering subscribing to a Photography Plan anyway. Many people object in principle to subscription software, but the Adobe’s Photography Plans are a pretty good deal.

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