LIVE DEBATE Pros and Cons of Lightroom CC vs Classic; Featuring David Schloss of Digital Photo Pro
Photo Moment - October 23, 2017
This special edition of PhotoJoseph’s Photo Moment features David Schloss, the Editor-in-Cheif of Digital Photo Pro and Digital Photo magazine and a contributing editor at Outdoor Photographer. We will discuss and debate the merits (or lack thereof) of Adobe’s latest Big News™, the split of Lightroom to “Classic” and “CC”.
Learn more about David at davidschloss.com/about-david-schloss/
Videos Mentioned In Today's Photo Moment
Lightroom CC; Overview — PhotoApps.Expert Live Training 1300
This doesn't directly affect me, as I use GNU/Linux as my OS, Darktable and GIMP for editing. Still, I think a big point is being overlooked.
It's easy to dismiss this as a money grab by Adobe. But Adobe also wants your data, effectively turning you into the product (as "free" services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., do) and also making you pay for it.
Just three years ago, Adobe got busted hoovering up data on non-DRM content in users' eReader libraries--and sending that data, IN THE CLEAR, back to Adobe. In fairness, Adobe said the data collection was unintentional, quickly patched the software, and the current ToS explicitly states Adobe won't collect info on non-DRM materials. But the snooping was detected by a user, who noticed unusual activity on his device. With your data resident on Adobe's servers, you have little chance of conducting your own security audit, beyond making sure your data is still there.
Further, Adobe's privacy policy admits they use your data for their own purposes--and they DON'T pay you royalties. You may "opt out," to some degree, but a company seriously interested in their users' privacy would require you to "opt in" for any use of your data past what is strictly required for operation of the service.
Eventually, as you point out, Adobe will kill "Classic." At that point, users' only choice will be to store their images on Adobe's servers, or to export their edits from the now-defunct product and move to another solution. Did I mention Darktable?
EDIT: Just noticed David's suggestion that "the majority of users shouldn't care" how their data is managed/used/harvested/exploited. That's a remarkably servile attitude!
It's easy to dismiss this as a money grab by Adobe. But Adobe also wants your data, effectively turning you into the product (as "free" services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., do) and also making you pay for it.
Just three years ago, Adobe got busted hoovering up data on non-DRM content in users' eReader libraries--and sending that data, IN THE CLEAR, back to Adobe. In fairness, Adobe said the data collection was unintentional, quickly patched the software, and the current ToS explicitly states Adobe won't collect info on non-DRM materials. But the snooping was detected by a user, who noticed unusual activity on his device. With your data resident on Adobe's servers, you have little chance of conducting your own security audit, beyond making sure your data is still there.
Further, Adobe's privacy policy admits they use your data for their own purposes--and they DON'T pay you royalties. You may "opt out," to some degree, but a company seriously interested in their users' privacy would require you to "opt in" for any use of your data past what is strictly required for operation of the service.
Eventually, as you point out, Adobe will kill "Classic." At that point, users' only choice will be to store their images on Adobe's servers, or to export their edits from the now-defunct product and move to another solution. Did I mention Darktable?
EDIT: Just noticed David's suggestion that "the majority of users shouldn't care" how their data is managed/used/harvested/exploited. That's a remarkably servile attitude!
Great chat I think you covered a lot of the areas.
There is one issue that at least for me I want to say. Yesterday I contacted Adobe support via their chat support and while the person I was talking to was polite they were totally clueless as to my question. As I am a current subscriber to the Photography Plan I was just checking to see if there was going to be a price change if I didn't do anything. The person I was chatting to could not give me an answer and told me to try again 1 or 2 days before it renews. Now my account is set to renew on the 5th of November which was only 11 days away so I would have hoped by then they should know if current customers were going to be charged any different if they did nothing. From what I could see I think it was going to be the same price as last year and would include both LR versions and the other new software they released too and possibly an increase of storage from 2GB to 20GB. The thing is this price would seem cheaper than other options with less in it so not sure if it can be right.
There is one issue that at least for me I want to say. Yesterday I contacted Adobe support via their chat support and while the person I was talking to was polite they were totally clueless as to my question. As I am a current subscriber to the Photography Plan I was just checking to see if there was going to be a price change if I didn't do anything. The person I was chatting to could not give me an answer and told me to try again 1 or 2 days before it renews. Now my account is set to renew on the 5th of November which was only 11 days away so I would have hoped by then they should know if current customers were going to be charged any different if they did nothing. From what I could see I think it was going to be the same price as last year and would include both LR versions and the other new software they released too and possibly an increase of storage from 2GB to 20GB. The thing is this price would seem cheaper than other options with less in it so not sure if it can be right.
Of all the things Adobe could have concentrated on, to spend subscribers money on...the last thing surely was to destabilize a core requirement of modern photo/video software and that's storage/sorting/filing/identifying/retrieval management, especially when so much media is being generated so rapidly. When the thought of new software could create loss, corruption or incomplete conversion of media files puts the fear of crap through anyone's mind...backup or not. I hate when these software companies come up with these ideas based on tests or equipment using stunning/perfect transfer rates or remote connections. I've seen a UK provider's, fibre connection throttled from 20Mb/s to 5Mb/s just because I was updating Adobe CC software one evening and their systems thought I was abusing the connection. Now we are potentially talking TB's of data on a regular basis. I have a maximum 16Mb down link and struggle to get 1Mb uplink speeds. Thanks Adobe for expecting me to double or triple my monthly broadband costs to suit your new software idea. Come on Adobe give us tangible improvements in our daily needs like higher/optimized efficiencies in hardware use (GPU's etc) and algorithm performance.
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