Lightroom Classic review

Verdict: 4 stars

Lightroom Classic has become a standard tool for a large number of photographers and it does streamline the organisation and editing of large numbers of photos. But while it’s powerful and effective, its raw processing is not the best and its organisational system can feel quite awkward. Worse, for many users Lightroom Classic has become very slow to use, though Adobe does continue to claim performance improvement in updates. But Lightroom Classic is convenient and powerful, and Adobe’s Photography Plans are very good value and include a constant stream of free updates.

Pros

+ Good value as part of the Adobe Photography Plan
+ Powerful organising and search tools
+ Wide support for camera RAW formats/lens correction profiles
+ Automatic/manual perspective correction/transform tools

Cons

– Can be slow on some computers
– Not the best for detail and noise rendition
– Interface looks dated and cluttered compared to Lightroom CC

What is Lightroom Classic?

Lightroom Classic is an all-in-one photo organising, editing and RAW processing program aimed at enthusiasts, experts and professional photographers. It’s no longer sold on its own but instead comes as part of different Adobe software subscription plans. The best option for photographers is the Adobe Photography Plan, which costs £9.98/$9.99 per month when paid for annually.

There are, in fact, two versions of Lightroom. Lightroom Classic is the traditional version, where your photos are stored on your own computer – Adobe calls this the ‘desktop first’ approach. Lightroom CC (or just plain ‘Lightroom’) is a newer, streamlined version which stores your photos online using Adobe’s own servers. This is the ‘web first’ version of Lightroom and you can read the Lightroom CC review here.

While the name and many of the tools are the same, these are two different programs and the new Lightroom won’t be for everyone. This review covers the standard desktop-based Lightroom Classic version. To learn about the differences, read the Lightroom Classic vs Lightroom CC article.

• Lightroom CC review
• Lightroom Classic review
• More Lightroom articles
• How to get Lightroom CC/Adobe Photography Plans

How does Lightroom Classic work?

Lightroom Classic imports your images into one or more ‘catalogs’ (image databases). It stores a thumbnail of each photo and a larger preview image, and a link to the original file on your computer. You can import pictures in their existing location, or choose where to import your photos to if you are importing them straight from a memory card.

Once photos are imported into the catalog (also called the ‘Library’) you can browse them in their original folders or create any number of Collections to select and group related photos together without changing their physical location.

Lightroom Classic also has powerful image filtering and search tools, and you can also create Smart Collections based on one or more search criteria that will find and display matching images automatically.

Lightroom Classic editing tools

Most of the recent work on Lightroom Classic has gone into its editing tools, however. These are ‘non-destructive’, which means that the adjustments you make can be altered or removed at any time in the future. They’re stored by Lightroom as processing ‘instructions’ and only applied permanently when you export a new, processed version of a photo. You’ll need to do this to share an edited image with anyone else, print it or use it online.

The editing tools are very powerful. You can edit a RAW file seamlessly alongside JPEG and TIFF images, without an intermediate processing – in fact Lightroom Classic is really at its best with RAW files because you can bring back extra shadow and highlight detail not present in JPEGs and choose a different white balance setting after you’ve taken the shot.

Lightroom Classic now supports ‘profiles‘ for applying different ‘looks’ to your photos as a kind of pre-processing step, mimicking the picture styles offered by the camera and adding many more of its own.

It also has very effective local adjustment tools for applying gradient filter effects to darken bright skies, for example, a radial gradient filter tool for ‘relighting’ your subjects and a manual adjustment brush. And if you’d like to try out different variations for a single photo, you can do this with Virtual Copies that don’t take up any extra space on your computer and all work from the same original image file.

New features in Lightroom Classic

One advantage of the Adobe subscription model is that you keep getting a steady stream of updates and new features. They are not all particularly significant or big, but there are no big version changes and upgrade charges.

For example, the May 2019 update brought Flat Field Correction, a technical tool for removing vignetting and color shifts when using certain cameras and lenses, and a Texture slider for enhanced fine detail rendition.

In August 2019 Adobe added GPU acceleration for faster image processing with compatible hardware and the ability to add color labels (common in other programs) as another organisational tool).

The November 2019 Lightroom Classic update brought a new Fill Edges option to fill ragged edges of stitched panoramas without cropping and losing some of the image, a Multi-Batch Export option, the ability to export Presets and Preset Groups, and filtering for the color labels introduced in the previous update.

The February 2020 update added the ability to apply custom default settings to RAW files (very useful if you don’t like the default Adobe look or you have your own signature style) and support for Adobe’s Large Document Format (PSB) which I’ve never needed personally.

Then in June 2020, Lightroom Classic gained performance and user interface improvements, Hue adjustments for the local adjustment tools, ISO Adaptive Presets for better noise control, a Centered Crop Overlay to help center the crop around a subject, and some new Adobe Defaults Presets for common photo enhancements.

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Lightroom Classic integrations

Lightroom Classic integrates with Adobe Photoshop, also part of the Adobe Photography Plan, so that you can send images to Photoshop for further editing from within Lightroom and the edited versions are automatically returned to the Lightroom catalog as new images alongside the original. Many third party software publishers make Lightroom plug-ins too, so you can use the DxO Nik Collection plug-ins or Alien Skin Exposure X5 from within Lightroom too.

Even better, you can choose Collections to synchronise with Lightroom Web and Lightroom Mobile too. These Collections and the images inside them can then be viewed and edited in a web browser and on a mobile device via the Lightroom Mobile app.

Here is a key difference between Lightroom Classic and the new Lightroom CC, though. Lightroom Classic synchronises lower-resolution ‘smart previews’ via the cloud, so that although any adjustments you make on other devices are synchronised back to the main library, if you want a full-resolution version of any image, you’ll still need to get it from the Lightroom catalog on your main computer.

Lightroom CC works differently. Here, all your images are stored in their original format at full resolution on Adobe’s Creative Cloud servers. This means your entire image library (not just synchronised Collections) is available everywhere, but it takes a lot of online storage space which you have to pay extra for.

For many photographers, the lower-resolution Smart Previews and selective Collection synchronisation offered by Lightroom Classic CC will be enough.

Is Lightroom Classic good?

Lightroom Classic has both good and bad points. It is a very powerful all-in-one image organising, processing and editing tool, but while it can open and edit RAW images from the widest range of cameras, it’s not as good at optimising fine detail and noise as some other programs. DxO PhotoLab produces usually produces cleaner and sharper images (though doesn’t support Fujifilm RAW files), followed closely by Capture One 20 (which does support Fujifilm cameras), which has better colour and tone controls than Lightroom and a more advanced layers-based system of local adjustments.

Many photographers will automatically gravitate towards Lightroom as the most obvious tool for organising and processing their RAW files (it has the same RAW processing engine and tools as Adobe Camera Raw), but it can often take a little work to get the best out of your images, and even then they may not be quite as good on close inspection as those from DxO PhotoLab or Capture One.

On the other hand, Lightroom’s integration into the whole Adobe ecosystem is a major advantage. It’s not just that you also get Photoshop as part of the same Adobe Photography Plan and that they work together brilliantly, but the fact you can also synchronise images with Lightroom Web and Lightroom Mobile on your smartphone or tablet and have your adjustments (and ratings) synchronised automatically.

The Lightroom Mobile app also has a camera mode, incidentally, which can capture RAW images (in Adobe’s DNG format) straight to your Lightroom catalog.

Where do you Lightroom Classic, what does it cost?

Adobe no longer sells Lightroom Classic CC separately as a standalone produce on a regular ‘perpetual’ licence. The only way to get it is via an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and the best value option for photographers is the regular Photography Plan at £9.98/$9.99, which includes Lightroom Classic CC, Lightroom CC and Photoshop, or the Photography Plan with 1TB at £19.97/$19.98 per month, which adds 1TB of cloud storage. You won’t need this for Lightroom Classic, but you will if you decide to go with Lightroom CC instead (and you may have to get more storage in future as your library grows).

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