Lightroom Classic vs. Lightroom "ecosystem"
My agency is considering a switch from Classic to the cloud-based LIghtroom, which Adobe appears to call Lightroom ecosystem.
For those who have made the switch, what are the pros and cons? Is performance better in the ecosystem version? Do you lose anything by abandoning Classic? Anything else we should consider for the decision?
I've posted here many times about our performance issues. Last month, we moved all of our original photos from a server destination to a hard drive connected via USB-C. One day last week, performance problems previously experienced on the server resurfaced, including:
- make an edit, several minutes before the change appears in History
- export a photo via keyboard shortcut or menu command, several minutes before the Export dialog window appeared
- exporting would take longer than normal (I know duration depends on quantity, but a batch of 10 photos would take several minutes whereas it typically takes a few seconds)
We don't store any video files in Lightroom. We backup the catalog at least once a week (with optimization).
We thought our server connection could've been the culprit. That's ruled out since we're now on a hard drive. We thought the local computer could be a problem. We installed a brand new computer with Lightroom Classic and Illustrator the only software installed (other than Mac OS stuff). I've wondered if our 375,000+ photo library was excessive, but other users report much larger libraries.
So, in short, would it help to switch to Ecosystem? Or can you help solve any of the above issues?
Tech report: 2023 Mac Studio, Apple M2 Ultra, 128GB RAM, Sonoma 14.8.2, Lightroom 15.0.1, Use Graphics Processor and Use GPU for Preview Generation - both set to Auto, Camera Raw Cache - 5GB maximum size, catalog size - 9.87 GB, catalog preview - 12GB, standard preview size - 1024 pixels