Originally posted by MadMathMind Think of cloud storage now as a mobile-platform, mostly for JPEGs.
Agreed. They're trying to bring in the folks who shoot primarily on their smartphones, and use Lightroom on their mobile device. This is reasonable from their perspective, certainly. It makes it awkward for the rest of us.
The problem is that the new Lightroom CC doesn't really have an option to directly save and archive
outside the cloud. It's also not feature complete compared to Classic. This is a major problem for those of us who shoot RAW, or shoot hundreds of shots at a time, or do detailed editing. Adobe knows this. However, I doubt they want to maintain two separate Lightroom products any longer than they have to.
So they're going to have to do one of two things (or, conceivably, both):
- Build additional functionality into Lightroom CC - which I believe is likely, because I think Lightroom Classic is going away as soon as that happens;
- Radically reduce the per-MB cost of their cloud storage, either by lowering the actual cost, or by adding considerably more storage for the same cost.
If they do only the first option, I wouldn't be opposed to returning to the Adobe fold. I actually like the new interface - it's tremendous for mobile editing, and works well on laptop touch screens - and if they can add off-cloud saving and make CC feature-comparable, I'd be ok with it.
However, if they persist in locking my photos inside their cloud-based walled garden, that's a dealbreaker for me. I'd like to think that Adobe isn't going to screw over traditional photographers in favor of casual smartphone shooters, but there's a lot of potential money there to be had. I guess we'll see.