Will Lightroom 6 Continue to Work With the Latest Windows 11?

[Chrisn N]

Lightroom 6 continues to work just fine with Windows 10 64 bit.  (I cannot afford LR CC.)

In the future, I am thinking of upgrading to Windows 11. However, what worries me is that Microfoft are making it more difficult to run older softwate on Windows 11. 

Is anyone out there successfully running LR 6 on the latest version of Windows 11? I would be interested to know if it can be done. 

Kind regards

Chris

[Bill Sprague]

This comes up frequently on another forum I follow.   Some say they get it to work and others say it does not work so well.   The key seems to be having the latest 6.14 installation file that was provided to you years ago.  If you don't have it, you can't get it from Adobe anymore.   

Note that version 6 really is "dead".   There have been so many improvements, new tools and value put into the "Photographer's Plans" that it might be a good for your photography to accept the new subscription system.

[dj_paige]

As far as I know, it does work in Windows 11, except the Map Module is not longer supported. Of course, there are people who have trouble getting it to work, and there is no guarantee that it will work. As @Bill Sprague said, your best chance is if you have Lr 6.14 rather than earlier versions of Lr 6.

However, what worries me is that Microfoft are making it more difficult to run older softwate on Windows 10.

Most old software will run on Windows 10/11 in compatibility mode. Again, no guarantee. And I would not assign willful decision making to make your life difficult to Microsoft; newer operating systems, by definition, have new features and capabilities and new methods under the hoold that may be incompatible with old software, it is just a fact of life, the older your software is (in any operating system) the less likely it is that it will run properly if at all.

[Chrisn N]

Thank you both for your replies. I am running LR 6.14 which I purchased from the Adobe store many years ago. 

I checked the original set up file and it is Lightroom_6_LS11.exe. I guess that the Adobe servers incrementaly updated it on my PC to 6.14 using Help/Updates.

So if I did a clean install I don't know if the Adobe servers would continue to update it.

LR6 is working just fine on Win 10. What worries me is the move from Microsoft to slowly phase out ALL older software due to digital signing and security protocols. 

If LR was available as a stand alone software like before, I would upgrade in less than a heartbeat. I can't afford LR CC. Without LR I will lose access to my catalogue and all of my thousands of photo edits.

Kind regards

Chris

[johnrellis]

I run LR 6.14 on Windows 11 and it still runs OK (with the caveats about the Map module and that I use it mainly for testing). See here for downloading LR 6.14:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-lightroom-6-14-download-is-no-longer-...

I'm pretty sure that doing the menu command Help > Updates from an earlier version of LR 6 won't work.

[Chrisn N]

Thank you very much John. I will try my best to download the installer file for LR 6.14.

Kind regards

Chris

PS I found a link here:

https://archive.org/details/adobe-lightroom-cc-2015-6.14-ls11-for-windows

[Bill Sprague]

Thank you very much John. I will try my best to download the installer file for LR 6.14.

Kind regards

Chris

PS I found a link here:

https://archive.org/details/adobe-lightroom-cc-2015-6.14-ls11-for-windows

By @Chrisn N

That is not an Adobe source.  There is risk that you are NOT getting what Adobe provided you in 2017.   

[dj_paige]

Thank you very much John. I will try my best to download the installer file for LR 6.14.

Kind regards

Chris

PS I found a link here:

https://archive.org/details/adobe-lightroom-cc-2015-6.14-ls11-for-windows

By @Chrisn N

That is not an Adobe source.  There is risk that you are NOT getting what Adobe provided you in 2017.   

By @Bill Sprague

I think that the Internet Archive link has been vetted by a number of people here in this forum, and no problems found.

[Chrisn N]

Thank you all for your help and comments. As far as I am aware, there is no longer any official Adobe source. to download LR 6.14.  So web archives seem the only option. I will compare the download from both archives and see if there is any difference. 

When the time comes to install Win 11, I have no idea if I will need help from Adobe to activate the product using my licence key.

Kind regards

Chris

https://archive.org/details/adobe-lightroom-cc-2015-6.14-ls11-for-windows

https://web.archive.org/web/20231127160507mp_/https://prdl-download.adobe.com/Lightroom/60BA1251F1BC...

[johnrellis]

The links come from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, whose crawlers made copies of the old versions of the Adobe help article and the LR 6.14 installers the article linked to:

https://web.archive.org/web/20231220005239/https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/lightroom-...

The Internet Archive is a highly trustworthy nonprofit: 

https://archive.org/about/