Adobe Lightroom is not one program but three. You could easily call it an ecosystem. At heart, it’s a tool for both organizing your photos and editing them. So how do you get it, what does it cost, and which version do you need?
Lightroom Classic
Lightroom is an all-in-one photo cataloguing, organising and editing tool that also synchronised with a mobile app so that you can browse and share your images while you’re on the move. It uses the same RAW conversion engine and tools as Adobe Camera Raw, which comes with Photoshop, but comes in two versions: Lightroom Classic CC uses the same desktop-based storage system and tools as the 'old' Lightroom, while Lightroom CC is a new stripped-down version with a simpler interface which uses paid-for cloud storage.
Is Adobe trying to retire Lightroom Classic?
As of January 2025, Adobe is no longer offering its regular 20GB Photography Plan subscription to new users at its old $9.99/month price tier. Existing subscribers can continue to use it, though at an increased cost of $14.99/month. But for new users, there is now only the 1TB Lightroom Plan (now $11.99/month) and the 1TB Photography Plan ($19.99/month – as before).
Are these sliders the key to high ISO image quality in Lightroom?
The Noise Reduction and Sharpening sliders might be the obvious go-to tools for optimizing high-ISO images, but these can easily leave you with soft, wishy-washy detail or exaggerated noise as you try to play one off against the other. In fact, there are better ways to get your high-ISO images looking smoother and sharper.
How to get the XPan ‘look’ in Lightroom
The Hasselblad XPan was a classic 35mm ‘panoramic’ camera developed in partnership with Fujifilm. What made it special was its unique widescreen aspect ratio, creating images measuring 65mm x 24mm on 35mm film. You can recreate this unique perspective in Lightroom, together with some of the XPan’s analog rendering. Here’s how.
How to apply corner sharpening in Lightroom with a simple preset
Lightroom Classic has built-in lens correction profiles for fixing distortion and corner shading in countless camera lenses. It also fixes chromatic aberration, or color fringing, via a separate checkbox. The one thing it doesn’t have is corner softness correction – but there is a way around that.
How to create an HDR ‘superRAW’ image in Lightroom – it’s easy!
I’m drawn to extreme contrasts in lighting, which I guess a lot of photographers are. This gets me into trouble, though, because very often a scene will have a wider dynamic range, or brightness range, than the camera can capture.
Tips for a strong black and white look in Lightroom Classic
It’s easy to convert a color image to black and white in any photo editor, Lightroom included, but to get a strong black and white look you often have to do a little more besides. Here’s a look at the B&W mode, B&W panel and the Tone Curve.
Make skies and subjects pop in Lightroom Classic
What’s wrong with this photo of a boat on a shingle beach? I used a prime lens with a wide maximum aperture to get a shallow depth of field effect for this simple composition and that part has worked well. But the boat is just a little too dark and the sky is a little too bright. This is a common issue in outdoor photography.
Black and white with an AI preset
What’s especially clever about Lightroom presets is that they don’t just include global adjustments. You can also create presets with masks. These can be either manual masks which you can move around manually, AI masks which adapt to the contents of images they’re applied to, or combinations of both.
Free Lightroom toning presets
I like to using toning effects in black and white photography because they can often give images more depth and mood. So to speed this up, not just for me but for anyone else who works in black and white in Lightroom, I’ve created this set of 16 free Lightroom presets you can download via the link.