Participant

Question

How do I buy Photoshop Lightroom Classic without cloud and subscription?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
December 10, 2023
5 replies
32935 views

I am nearly 83 and would like to buy standalone Lighroom Classic without having to use the cloud (I will be saving to external hard drive instead for my heirs) and without subscription and without plan. But it seems all the Adobe Photoshop products now require cloud and subscription plans.

Windows

D

Dale Mullen

Participating Frequently

Subscription plans are a money-making racket used by an increasing number of software producers. Such a scheme might (?) be fine for a commercial photographer but is totally unreasonable for the novice. Although you might not be with the "in crowd", an alternate software program available without subscription might be a much better option.

K

kahill1919

Known Participant

Mark my words, the day is coming when everything will be controlled by AI and others. If we are overweight, we won't be able to buy candy, ice cream, etc. Even hospital beds now have scales at the bottom. All the pictures you take will go into the cloud, and when you want to view your own pictures, go to the cloud and pay a fee. at birth, the babies will be inserted with chips. It will be our fault because we choose to go with the flow.

L

ldegroot

Participating Frequently

--
Leo

This email was created from recycled electrons.

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

Lightroom Classic does not store images in the cloud, it requires local storage. (external hard drive is fine)

But it is not available as a standalone application, only by subscription.

The cheapest option is the 20 GB Photography Plan (10 US dollars a month), which also includes the cloud version of Lightroom, Photoshop, and 20 GB optional cloud storage space.

Abambo

Community Expert

which also includes the cloud version of Lightroom, Photoshop, and 20 GB optional cloud storage space.

By @Per Berntsen

You get 20GB of cloud space, but there is no need to use that. Just do not save your files to the cloud (in Photoshop). Lightroom (cloud based) is useless with 20Gb of cloud space. My camera cards have 128Gb. I couldn't even save one full card to the cloud…

So your best "choice" is the Photography Plan (20Gb) with Lightroom Classic and Photoshop including useful helper programs like Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw. Bridge is a powerful file viewer and Adobe Camera Raw is basically the developing engine that also powers both Lightroom flavours. It's used by Photoshop to open raw files, as Photoshop does not have a built-in engine.

This sounds too complicated? Only remind: the good plan for you is the Photography plan (20Gb) for $10/month (annual subscription). Amazon also sells, from time to time, redemption vouchers, so that you can have a prepaid one year subscription at a (possibly) discounted price.

Checked, and they are selling it currently at the full retail price.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Keith Reeder

Participating Frequently

"You get 20GB of cloud space, but there is no need to use that. "

Probably why Per said:

"and 20 GB optional cloud storage space."

Abambo

Community Expert

You will need to take a subscription (photography plan). You can't buy the software licence on a perpetual basis.

You do not need any cloud space, however, with the Photography plan (20Gb cloud space) and that cloud space is anyhow to small for decent work. Do not use Lightroom, that is also included in this package (even that it now or soon allows to manage pictures that are stored locally).

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

You are correct, all Photoshop and Lightroom products require a subscription. However, some of them (in particular Lightroom Classic) do not have to use the cloud......in Lightroom Classic all images have to be stored on local drives, but they can optionally also be synced to the cloud (as smart previews only) in order that they can be available on mobile devices. So for LrC cloud use is optional, but subscription is not.

K

kahill1918Author

Participant

Subscription makes no sense especially for elderly customers who may pass
away in less than a year. This will only create one more item and
potential headache on the executor's to-do list.

Even if cloud use is optional, I am not able to find the software where
cloud storage is not required.

Knowing that the retailer such as Adobe, Best Buy, won't accept returns and
give refunds, I guess I will just settle for stand-alone PSE then.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

If you list the specific reasons you want Lightroom Classic, it might be possible for some of those reasons to be fulfilled with non-subscription applications from other sources.

Lightroom Classic is primarily a camera raw processor with organizational and batch editing features, and can edit a limited number of non-raw formats. There are many alternative applications for the raw processor portion, and also many alternatives for the organizational and batch features. Admittedly it can be a challenge to find one that does both sides well, but they do exist. There are even some alternatives that are free/open source.

Photoshop Elements is like Photoshop: It is not primarily a camera raw processor, it’s primarily a traditional pixel-level single-document photo editor that is focused on non-raw photo formats. (It needs the Camera Raw module to pre-process raw files.)

So although you could use PSE instead of Lightroom, the fact that they’re very different photo applications raises the question: Which features are actually the most valued for making bulk photo prep for heirs the easiest to do in the available time?

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