I think it’s important to provide some context to why we made changes to Import. Over the years we’ve done extensive studies of customers interested in Lightroom. The studies have been comprised of people passionate about photography and who use their cameras as a creative outlet. In short, their motivations share the same motivations as people who already love Lightroom.
We visited them in their homes, and asked them to install, launch and use Lightroom. Since this was their first interaction with Lightroom, we were interested in observing specifically where they encountered obstacles, and therefore where we needed to focus our attention.
Customers were universally unable to decipher the Import dialog without getting frustrated. Some people pushed forward, bolstered by spending time searching the web for help. They might have been successful in importing files, but they didn’t feel successful. Others gave up, deciding that Lightroom might not be the right product for them.
The previous Import experience literally made people push back from their computers in frustration. Keeping the existing Import experience isn’t an option, and we needed to evolve the Import experience.
We’ve heard great feedback on the changes, and we’ve always evolved the Lightroom product with feedback from photographers and look forward to continue to evolve the experience going forward with your feedback in mind.
Please keep the feedback coming!
That is some king-sized hubris right there. Apple-grade, Photos-level hubris. Approaching Final Cut-level hubris.
Now, just for fun, read the responses. Twitter is, well, a-twitter over this change.
Also, the crashing "bug" under El Capitan? That wasn't a bug? Apparently has been promoted back to a bug again:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adobe Lightroom Journal
The Lightroom team wanted to let the community know that we’re investigating some critical performance and crasher bugs, and will be issuing an update shortly to address them.
If you are experiencing crashing or slowdowns, please try the following:
Go to Lightroom > Preferences.
Click on the General tab
Uncheck “Show ‘Add Photos’ Screen”
Restart Lightroom
Because who would want to use the 'Add Photos' screen in a DAM? SMH
I didn't mean to imply that. Of course, their app could languish and become unusable with updates to the OS. But some of the larger developers should have staying power. And there are a healthy amount of them. And I suppose that as one disappears (whether Adobe buys them or they die of attrition or their developer gets a job somewhere and no longer updates the app), others will sprout up.
...Larger vendors like Adobe?
Who has a longer track record of continuity than Adobe in Vector or Pixel applications?
I mean, sure, anything could happen, but I'm surprised to see this argument floated by the 'anything but Adobe' crowd.
I swear, at least some of you guys much be real Adobe fanboys, or you just astroturf about software you don't even use. Because there is no way you could be using the new version of Lightroom and not experience how badly neutered Adobe it in order to be more user friendly to photo noobs.
And, talking about losing previous edits, under El Cap, Lightroom has been a total crashfest.
At least the perpetual use licenses can revert back to 6.1 on Yosemite. Those of you on the "rental" plan (2015.2) are just plain screwed.
This is simply not true. The 'rental' plan allows for all version back to CS6 era to be installed.
Here are the options I can install:
There are equivalent legacy versions available for every application. Starting with CS6, the same as the perpetual license, to CC (20XX).
So I have access to every stable release of CS/CC back as far as I could ever need, thank you very much.
So if Adobe changes their mind down the road, what happens to all the Lightroom-edited images on my iOS device? Uneditable unless I subscribe?
Well, yeah.
Uneditable
Not unretrievable
First, let's put your complaint in perspective. For your scenario to even come into play these things would have to happen:
Adobe would need to reverse course on the decision they just made.
You would have to decide to NOT signup for a subscription plan
Adobe would need to intentionally omit the standard Save As/Export functionality it allows for in other expired CC desktop applications to prevent just the media lock-in you seem to fear.
All this FUD obfuscates the fact of the matter which is that Adobe has actually opened up access to a previously pay-only app for free.
Who else complains about something that used to cost money yesterday, becoming free today, out of fear that it may someday cost money again at some point in the future? Do you trust that Apple will continue to not charge for the next MacOS version after El Cap?
My dad used to say 'You'd probably complain about not getting hung with a new rope' for people who so profoundly miss the point.
You're right and I'm wrong. I agree: Adobe has been a long-running company and they have the financials and the development talent to weather the storms that market changes and emerging technology will send their way.
I've been almost completely Adobe-only on the desktop. But the change to Creative Cloud hasn't benefited me very much. I recently reverted to Illustrator CS6, finding it more stable and a little faster for editing type-heavy, multi-layered complex maps. Given my hw/sw set-up, it's proven more stable than CC 2014 and 2015. My needs are more production than design and so I rely on a small feature set of the software. The latest AI tools are not compelling to this point. I let my subscription lapse because I didn't feel like it was buying anything I was using on a daily basis. Of course, it does buy continuity with the current software and less hassles when sharing files with others. That hasn't been a problem for me...yet.
As for iOS, I simply haven't explored Adobe's offerings because my immediate needs are filled by buy-once apps. But as you and others point out, there's no guarantee that they will stay in business. Fortunately, the output of these apps is to standard file types that can be read by other mobile and desktop apps, Adobe included.
Comments
Update on Lightroom 2015.2 / Lightroom 6.2 Release
Originally Posted by Adobe Lightroom Journal
I think it’s important to provide some context to why we made changes to Import. Over the years we’ve done extensive studies of customers interested in Lightroom. The studies have been comprised of people passionate about photography and who use their cameras as a creative outlet. In short, their motivations share the same motivations as people who already love Lightroom.
We visited them in their homes, and asked them to install, launch and use Lightroom. Since this was their first interaction with Lightroom, we were interested in observing specifically where they encountered obstacles, and therefore where we needed to focus our attention.
Customers were universally unable to decipher the Import dialog without getting frustrated. Some people pushed forward, bolstered by spending time searching the web for help. They might have been successful in importing files, but they didn’t feel successful. Others gave up, deciding that Lightroom might not be the right product for them.
The previous Import experience literally made people push back from their computers in frustration. Keeping the existing Import experience isn’t an option, and we needed to evolve the Import experience.
We’ve heard great feedback on the changes, and we’ve always evolved the Lightroom product with feedback from photographers and look forward to continue to evolve the experience going forward with your feedback in mind.
Please keep the feedback coming!
That is some king-sized hubris right there. Apple-grade, Photos-level hubris. Approaching Final Cut-level hubris.
Now, just for fun, read the responses. Twitter is, well, a-twitter over this change.
Also, the crashing "bug" under El Capitan? That wasn't a bug? Apparently has been promoted back to a bug again:
Originally Posted by Adobe Lightroom Journal
The Lightroom team wanted to let the community know that we’re investigating some critical performance and crasher bugs, and will be issuing an update shortly to address them.
If you are experiencing crashing or slowdowns, please try the following:
Because who would want to use the 'Add Photos' screen in a DAM? SMH
Sales of CC have turned out to be much higher than I think anyone expected.
I think you mean "Rentals" not "Sales"
Ahh, the good old days of owning the Adobe collection... and so Affinity was born.
Btw, that should've read f*cks. F***s is too ambiguous.
Well, how charming, both versions!
I didn't mean to imply that. Of course, their app could languish and become unusable with updates to the OS. But some of the larger developers should have staying power. And there are a healthy amount of them. And I suppose that as one disappears (whether Adobe buys them or they die of attrition or their developer gets a job somewhere and no longer updates the app), others will sprout up.
...Larger vendors like Adobe?
Who has a longer track record of continuity than Adobe in Vector or Pixel applications?
I mean, sure, anything could happen, but I'm surprised to see this argument floated by the 'anything but Adobe' crowd.
I swear, at least some of you guys much be real Adobe fanboys, or you just astroturf about software you don't even use. Because there is no way you could be using the new version of Lightroom and not experience how badly neutered Adobe it in order to be more user friendly to photo noobs.
And, talking about losing previous edits, under El Cap, Lightroom has been a total crashfest.
At least the perpetual use licenses can revert back to 6.1 on Yosemite. Those of you on the "rental" plan (2015.2) are just plain screwed.
This is simply not true. The 'rental' plan allows for all version back to CS6 era to be installed.
Here are the options I can install:
There are equivalent legacy versions available for every application. Starting with CS6, the same as the perpetual license, to CC (20XX).
So I have access to every stable release of CS/CC back as far as I could ever need, thank you very much.
So if Adobe changes their mind down the road, what happens to all the Lightroom-edited images on my iOS device? Uneditable unless I subscribe?
Well, yeah.
Uneditable
Not unretrievable
First, let's put your complaint in perspective. For your scenario to even come into play these things would have to happen:
All this FUD obfuscates the fact of the matter which is that Adobe has actually opened up access to a previously pay-only app for free.
Who else complains about something that used to cost money yesterday, becoming free today, out of fear that it may someday cost money again at some point in the future? Do you trust that Apple will continue to not charge for the next MacOS version after El Cap?
My dad used to say 'You'd probably complain about not getting hung with a new rope' for people who so profoundly miss the point.
You're right and I'm wrong. I agree: Adobe has been a long-running company and they have the financials and the development talent to weather the storms that market changes and emerging technology will send their way.
I've been almost completely Adobe-only on the desktop. But the change to Creative Cloud hasn't benefited me very much. I recently reverted to Illustrator CS6, finding it more stable and a little faster for editing type-heavy, multi-layered complex maps. Given my hw/sw set-up, it's proven more stable than CC 2014 and 2015. My needs are more production than design and so I rely on a small feature set of the software. The latest AI tools are not compelling to this point. I let my subscription lapse because I didn't feel like it was buying anything I was using on a daily basis. Of course, it does buy continuity with the current software and less hassles when sharing files with others. That hasn't been a problem for me...yet.
As for iOS, I simply haven't explored Adobe's offerings because my immediate needs are filled by buy-once apps. But as you and others point out, there's no guarantee that they will stay in business. Fortunately, the output of these apps is to standard file types that can be read by other mobile and desktop apps, Adobe included.