Adobe's Lightroom is a divisive piece of software. Proponents love the consistency and close compatibility with Photoshop, while others argue it is inefficient with resources and has inferior processing compared to competitors. I want to take a look at a much simpler, fundamental issue with Lightroom.
Over the last few months, I've had the opportunity work with some other programs, including Capture One, and I found something odd. I could produce similar finished files with each of the tools and considering my limited experience, I can't say whether I could get better results with one processor over the other. What I did notice, when I returned to Lightroom for a personal project, was how the interface felt so cumbersome. Even with the unneeded sidebars closed and the panels rearranged, it felt like the software got in the way.
The Lightroom interface hasn't changed much since introduction, for better or worse. With the software having been available for over 12 years, a number of display technologies have changed. New monitor aspect ratios and higher pixel densities are both commonly available, but can't be fully taken advantage of. Notably, high-pixel densities can even degrade the effective speed of Lightroom when compared to lower density displays.
The panels are locked to the right side of the image and require scrolling regardless of screen resolution. The keyboard shortcuts are unable to be changed natively and do not lineup with defaults for Photoshop. The interface for presets is dated, requiring you to mouse over each one, while checking a small, slow loading preview. The overall interface is laggy. Even with fast machines, brush performance suffers on complex settings or images.
The single biggest fix Lightroom could receive would be the introduction of interface customization, in line with Photoshop's capabilities. Photoshop can already float panels, allowing for easy optimization of the workspace. Photoshop allows for customizable keyboard shortcuts. With Lightroom, photographers are locked into the rigid default arrangements. Second monitor support is weak, forcing users into a few predefined setups. The small boon of rearrangeable panels, courtesy of a recent update, is the only substantial improvement to the interface in recent years.
Clearly, Adobe has members capable of coding the necessary UI to support these features, as evidenced by Photoshop. Unfortunately, it seems that this issue may be intrinsic to Lightroom's fundamental code, based on the delay in implementing it. I'm not qualified to speak on the software engineering side, but as a user, it's clear Lightroom isn't the most optimized program.
Since Adobe pivoted to the subscription model for Lightroom, I've been relatively content with their updates. Small features here and there, all at a reasonable price. Given the need for Photoshop, Lightroom has just been a given, as I'm already paying for it under the umbrella of the Photography Plan. Despite that, I've grown increasingly unhappy with the performance and interface.
The most recent update offers no useful features, in my opinion. The Enhance Details tool is only a Band-Aid for their mistakes with X-Trans demosaicing, while the HDR panorama merge is just a combination of two pre-existing buttons. Given the emphasis on Lightroom CC, I'm not expecting big fixes and improvements anytime soon.
While no piece of software is perfect, I'm starting to notice more of the flaws in Lightroom. I'm not sure if I'm ready to make the jump to another processor just yet, as I've got catalogs with tens of thousands of photos and hundreds of hours experience in Lightroom. With that said, the love is fading fast. Have you jumped ship to a new raw processor? What was the final straw for you?
Lead Image courtesy of Nathan Anderson
I can only echo what other have experienced. Only made the full switch to C1 and Affinity yesterday.
LR is just slow and tethering for Fuji was almost unusable. 10-11 seconds for a picture to appear on the screen where as C1 it's 3-4 seconds and because I have the Fujifilm version the tether just works out the box.
As for Affinity replacing PS. All I every used PS for was Stitching focus stacks and Panosonics with the occasional content aware fill. And Affinity fill that nicely.
"Clearly, Adobe has members capable of coding the necessary UI to support these features, as evidenced by Photoshop."
But Photoshop is not a an example of good UI. Many of us have invested a lot of effort into getting familiar with it, but the number of inconsistencies in the UI make finding and using a little used feature all but impossible. I genuinely can't think of an Adobe application that I would consider to have a good UI.
I originally used Aperture. By the end it wasn't as feature rich as LR, but I never felt I was working around the UI the same way that I still do in LR. And while I understand that not everyone is a fan of Apple, for me Aperture was a product that was designed by a company who understand UX. LR still isn't.
My problem is that having done a painful Aperture to LR migration, I'm not inclined to do it again.
Same. I would still be using Aperture today if Apple hadn't killed it off.
The merits of Photoshop's approach to UI is a different argument. I'm saying a number of PS's UI features, like movable and dynamic sized panels, as well as editable keyboard shortcuts, should exist in LR.
I was just having this argument with myself: I am extremely dependent on LR classic; I have 25 years of images in nearly 6 TB of storage. I use lightroom for catalogue, keyword, and typical raw adjustments, and rarely do I need photoshop.
But in the past few updates I have noticed what was fairly quick bulk processing and preview generation has slowed to a crawl; unbelievably slow. I did the usual tricks (is my catalog on a fast drive, do I have enough space, is anything competing with processing, etc) and I cannot find a reason other than LR itself has turned to crap.
The investment in all those non-destructive adjustments, keywording, copyright metadata, etc. is BIG. So to even entertain the idea of moving to another platform to replace LR is out of the question unless there is something that works better, faster and can import existing catalogs with all adjustments, data intact.
And I tried LR CC and it was blazing fast even with 50 MP files. I just cannot rely on sync to cloud over bad internet (my store actually has cellular for internet, no fiber and DSL is like dialup.) If LR classic had the interface, speed of CC I'd be thrilled.
This summarizes my experience perfectly. As I mentioned above, I'm frankly terrified of moving to a different piece of software and re-indexing and cataloging all of my libraries. Not to mention the extreme familiarity of LR in my workflow. I am rather stuck with it and whatever rental costs Adobe wants to charge. I feel vulnerable, but I don't see a viable alternative.
Last year I moved to ACDSEE Photo Studio. Same functionality as Lightroom (except faster) and no subscription. $60 and you own it forever.
It still has some uses - but most of my post processing is no longer done on Lightroom, and a great deal less is still done these days in Photoshop.
Worse - I recently wanted to stitch a panorama - Adobe's panorama program simply failed, midway - it could join the frames either side of the half way mark, but the instant I tried to stitch all the frames, it simply collapsed and produced a totally bizarre image. Anyway, getting started in it (either in Photoshop or in Lightroom) is generally a lot worse than merely "clumsy".
So I tried a different program - and had my finished panorama in a matter of minutes, with no difficulties whatsoever.
I definitely agree, the panorama stitching is not good. I love the idea of being able to stitch, then edit with the raws, but implementation falls far short.
Judging by the comments, I'm in the minority, but I still like Lightroom. Capture One is getting there with each release, but for all the time I save in image previews, I lose it again with the inferior spot healing brush. The C1 layer system is more flexible, but more time consuming over a number of images. Perspective control is slower as well.
LR now allows you to customize your develop panel which helps workflow significantly. It's slower between photos, but not significantly, especially when I'm using Photo Mechanic for culling and rating.
Finally, there is a Lightroom look that Capture One simply doesn't do (for better or worse). Capture One is more clinical and accurate, but LR has a bit of a glow that translates to portraits and weddings well if you don't want the editorial look. It's just preference, but it's still different.
I know it's been hip for blogs to bag on LR for clicks, and I'm all about increased competition in the software world, but I think it's been overblown a bit. Glad everyone has choices though.
This is coming from a guy with 234K images in my LR catalog, so I'd say I'm a medium-volume user. The speed is more than acceptable on a 2017 iMac and a 2015 MacBook Pro.
I've tried Capture One, and it's a LOT slower on my 2017 iMac with i7 and 40GB of RAM. It's basically very "laggy." LR seems pretty quick and responsive in comparison, and I'll be sticking with it.
I ditched LR completely a few years ago. Garbage. Bloated, slow and I absolutely hate the organization part inside LR. The UI sucks donkey balls, as does PS, but PS is less bloated. My workflow is 50% PS, 25% Affinity Photo and 25% Exposure X4. Don't need anything else. I may ditch PS entirely soon too. Adobe has really been sitting on their asses for a very long time.
This. There is no good reason why Adobe doesn't completely own the market. They've had a lock for decades and they sat on their laurels and ignored users. Now, it may be too late.
I really like Lr for my iPad to cull photos and make quick edits, but I still use Lr Classic (worst name ever) because Lr CC isn't there yet. Adobe should wonder why users are switching to CapOne and make Lr CC more friendly. Lr Classic seems like it's on life support at this point. I use it because I already pay for it and it's 'good enough' for my needs.
I used Capture One, Luminar, After Shot, Aperture and Apple Photos as alternatives, but dumped them all and kept coming back to Lr and Ps.
A big reason is that none of those have the organizational chops of Lr, the metadata and publishing features, the plugins, and the support. Just not close.
But that being said, Lr is kind of like Word or Excel in that any change is likely to send existing users into a frenzy—yes, the interface element might be clunky, but when time is money many don't want to learn a new way. Look what happened when they changed the import module (although I grant it wasn't that improved).
The key is options. The suggestions above could be done but still allow users to have Classic the classic way. Some movable and customizable panels. Shortcut modification (BTW, in macOS you can add keyboard shortcuts, like for plugins). A sliding comparison tool (where you move the line back and forth). Better text search.
Adobe has a feedback forum, and they visit it. Add your requests.
"The single biggest fix Lightroom could receive would be the introduction of interface customization, in line with Photoshop's capabilities. Photoshop can already float panels, allowing for easy optimization of the workspace. Photoshop allows for customizable keyboard shortcuts. With Lightroom, photographers are locked into the rigid default arrangements."
I actually hate this about Photoshop and love the way its done in Lightroom. I lose the panels in Photoshop and struggle with getting them back. Also, LR's static interface provides consistency that I like. So, one man's art is another man's frustration.
Sounds like we're looking for different things out of the UI. I've made use of PS's movable panels, while never running into that issue. I see how that could be frustrating.
Yes left Lightroom to C1 and Affinity Photo, great combination never looked back.
My love for Lightroom has fallen into the crapper, in part because of Adobe's godawful customer support.
The fact that I can sync the edits I make to photos when I work on my iPad and on my Mac (using Lightroom Classic there because a) I have a shit-ton of photos and b) I need the plug-ins that are only available for Classic to get my photos to my website, so don't tell me to use CC) is great, but the fact that I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT sync keywords back and forth is ASININE in the EXTREME. Every customer service rep tells me a fix is on the way, but it cannot get here fast enough.
I'm still on Lightroom v6.5. I see no reason to upgrade and get into some paid subscription scam.
I wonder how much time is spent on the computer doing PP? Has anyone ever done research on this?
For me, it really depends on what I'm shooting. Anywhere from 20% of the time I spent in the field, for something like a landscape shoot, to over 100% for something like product photography.
20% is good for landscape as it's not TOO difficult to get it how you want just from the camera, but my God! 100% for things like product? How do you do it? I mean...that's a really long time to be spending. But I guess I can see it as you really want to nail it good for whomever you're shooting for. My professional work is (well...was) done with film. But when shooting for Historic Ducumentary I did use digital. Good luck to you sir and keep it up.
Too much time, in my experience.
I switched to Skylum Luminar. It is a great piece of software with 1 time payment, you get almost all the features you need such as Libraries, photo editing and processing quite similar to LR. The learning curve is relatively easy if you switch from Lightroom.
But recently there are some major upgrade to this software which makes it a bit buggy. I believe the software team are working hard to make it better.
Is there an alternative to LR that can share a workflow across both MacOS and iOS?
Bridge > ACR > Photoshop
LR is just too muddied for me, catalogues and library's are all too confusing. Unless I'm forced to change I use LR very, very little, mainly for setting up proof galleries.
I was an early user of Apple's Aperture, one of the few that paid the original price of $500 when it was released in late November 2005. At the time, it was like a breath of fresh air. Someone had figured out a way to provide professional photographers with an easy way to catalog our work. It also had a beautiful UI that was easy to use and understand. When Adobe released Lightroom in early 2007, I jumped on board, then immediately jumped ship. The main reason ... it had the worst UI imaginable. I literally couldn't stand to look at the thing. I kept hoping that Adobe would eventually pull it together. I eventually moved on to Capture One.
Yeah LR is such a pain to use. Brushes slow down everything even on the simplest setting, despite having a powerful CPU, tonnes of RAM and a very decent GPU... I have tried ON1 but was extremely unhappy with noise reduction (I shoot a lot of high ISO night time photos). Next step try Capture 1.
Lightroom is like a familiar old friend, but there are new blokes on the block. I have licenses for C1, Luminar, PhotoLab, Afinity. Only enough time to use one or two. It is worthwhile comparing. I am very impressed with PhotoLab.
I don't at all understand the disdain for Lightroom in all of these articles and comments. The UI is about as simple as it gets, and its blazing fast on my 2014 MacBook Pro.
I rely on PhotoLab for RAW processing. I use Lightroom mainly 1) as a DAM, 2) because PhotoLab integrates well with it, 3) for stripping backgrounds and doing skin smoothing in portraits, and 4) for HDR and Pano merging. I hate the UI, though. It looks like it was designed by the Windows XP team. The modal approach is awful. It takes far more clicks in my workflow than Aperture did. And, the lack of customizable keyboard shortcuts is simply unforgivable, especially given that the defaults change depending on which mode you're in. (What were they thinking?!)
I'd gladly switch away from Lightroom if I could find one good substitute. At present, I'd have to adopt separate apps for DAM, pixel editing and HDR/Pano. Might have to try Luminar + Aurora.
Not feeling the love anymore. I am part of the club that has crashing and freezing issues whenever I try to use an adjustment brush or zoom at 1:1. I was only able to reach Tech Support once. All other times I gave up after over an hour on hold. I would jump ship if there was another program that offered the equivalent of LR Mobile where I have 20,000 smart previews at my disposal and can cull new shoots from anywhere.
biggest issue is speed and performance and UI.
I am also a Capture One/Affinity Photo user. I miss the iPad capabilities of Lightroom, but not enough to pay ransom every month for the rest of my life,
Tried three and got stuck with affinity at the end. sorted out exposure x4 and luminar. both had big performance issues. even on the biggest dell xps 9570. exporting with luminar was a pain in the butt. took almost 40 sec to a minute to save a processed image, during that time you can't go on with the next image, you have to wait until the file is saved. exposure x4 i disliked from the start on. the layout/surface and all the rest wans't really my cup of tea
I see articles like this describing how someone likes or dislikes a piece of software, or a phone, or some other device. It makes me wish sometimes that I could write an opposing article agreeing or disagreeing with whatever the author stated in the original article.
Your article is nothing but your dissatisfaction with Lightroom which won't make Adobe change what they are going to do any faster than you putting up the same post on Adobe's forums. It's not really an opinion piece either, it's just you griping. Maybe I should apply to Fstoppers to write a column as well?
I'm not posting this to be some troll, what I'd like to see is something constructive that will serve the readership, articles like these don't do anything except getting other people to agree or disagree or your dissatisfaction.
Thanks for allowing me to post my dissatisfaction. A regular reader of Fstoppers.
While these "LR sucks I switched to C1" seem to appear every 26 days on fstoppers I disagree that they shouldn't be presented on fstoppers. People who are unhappy with a product should vote with their $$$ etc. I jumped off the LR treadmill because of lame Nikon camera profiles, lack of customization, and slow speed.
C1 12 processesing 36 megapixel files does not kill one of my 2015 macbooks with 8gb ra and flies with desktop and 13 mbp.
They should pin these "LR sucks so i switched to c1" to top of fstoppers site as more people should be aware there are way better options out there.
Never used it professionally - too slow, Bridge with Camera Raw/Photoshop was perfect for for everything for years, and Capture One is my friend in studio and basically for everything else.
I use lightroom with ipad pro for some film-scans - and absolutely frustrated with its workflow on mac, but find it very useful on ipad.
I'm very close to jumping ship to Capture One. For me LR's tethering abilities are the final straw; slow, glitchy, non- existent, they're costing me time.
You wont regret it I am sure. There is a slight learning curve - but it was made with pros in mind - so everything makes sense in the end. And its blazingly fast when working with just raw files (even older version of Capture One) compared to... well anything...
Bridge is close to it, but sometimes big raw files make it read thumbnails too long. Capture One crashes rarely but it does.. but it happens with any software it seems.
and when it comes to tethering - capture one was always on top in terms of speed.
This has been an almost constant argument with myself for years. Not because of the subscription model - I don't care about that. I think a pro shooter is going to pay about the same to buy and update most software. Topaz being the lone exception.
It's the lack of meaningful development, the bugs, crashing and lagging, and the inability to get any meaningful support. The problem is, as others have said, is I have 50k images in my library, I know how to use the software and have a high comfort level with it. Add to that the 3rd party support and add-ins, and I keep not leaving.
Over the last couple of years, I have spent multiple times with trials of all the contenders and I'm pretty sure I could make any of them work. The rushed releases of Luminar 3 and ON1 2019, put a bit of a kink in the process, but there are things I really liked about all of them and face it, a slider is a slider.
I even went so far a few months ago as uninstalling LR and deleting my catalogs and all related data. I don't remember which platform I moved to at the time, either Capture One, ON1, or ACDSee, but got frustrated and came crawling back.
I'll be watching this thread with interest.
Thanks again for the great article.
If you know how to use LR - it means you know how to use Camera Raw and it also means you will be at ease with capture one or any other software. when it comes to really big libraries (my back ups goes for many years, i dont know if i have 50k though) - in my experience it is always better have just proper folders on a hard drives and than just use bridge to browse them (capture one also work nice just for its ability to blazingly fast read raw files), or any other software you find useful at that times. thus you wont be depending on any other software and its state at that time. bridge is basicaly finder - but photo oriented. remembers tags, favorites, thumbnails... now they added an icloud feature (but i still cant figure out how to use it though).
For now, I've gone back to ON1 since I bought a license last year. There are some small things I don't like, but for the most part, it is working good. I'll wait until updates come out to make my final decision. I trialed Capture One twice and liked it a lot. My biggest problem with it was poor support for metadata which is crucial to me. Their support team acknowledged the weakness, but until that is fixed, I can't shell out $300 for it.
The author is right on. LR drives me nuts! I like the results, but the journey is torture.
ALIEN SKIN X4 is the way to go. At least for me. Give it a shot.
Does anybody print? For me that rules out a lot of others. It's simple to setup, pick your paper profile and edit the output turn on clipping.
Everyone else isn't as straight forward...
Everything that was once great will eventually suck (according to bloggers). Apple sucks, Adobe sucks, blah, blah. I guess it can only mean good things for those who like those products though, as it will only force them to improve!
That said, I went on a binge trying out different editors this last month. I like Lightroom just fine, but have two problems with it. The clone/heal tool is not very pleasant compared to PS (and you can only use a few instances before LR gets laggy), and there’s no attempt at dedicated skin toning tools.
Since C1 seems to be the darling of the day, I actually just jumped on the big sale they just had, sight unseen. Try as I might though, I couldn’t make it stick. The program is definitely snappy and smooth feeling. I will give it that. The skin coloring section is great for a quick toning and evening when you don’t want to do freq sep in PS. The overall quality of the RAW file is very high too. But, the layer based system (while flexible) is slow to use, the clone/heal system is horrendous, and I just don’t find the program intuitive or quick to work with. For instance, before/after previews are overly complicated. The biggest kicker though was that I just couldn’t get the end result as nice as I could in LR or even in Luminar (read below for that). Maybe someone else could, but for the wedding film look, C1 just couldn’t seem to take me
there the way LR can. My other reservation is price (and subsequent update prices) and speed of new features. It’s already much more pricey than LR IMO, and do you know they just freaking released a radial and gradient mask - something LR has had for many years? Scary.
ON1, I found slow and laggy, so I won’t talk about that, but I gave Luminar a good run through, and was generally impressed, but just couldn’t pull the trigger. I love their DAM as you simply just setup a folder and update on your computer as you usually would, and Luminar instantly updates with it. I like the interface and find it very intuitive, and I like a lot of the different effects/filters that the other RAW editors don’t really have. Their clone/heal brush is PS quality, but with one major caveat - using it actually creates a JPEG layer of your image, and that will be what you edit from there on out. So, you really need to save the healing tool for the final step or else you will be working on a pretty limited file for things like dynamic range. Lastly, I love that you can add overlays and textures, etc as image layers. Luminar almost elimainates much of the need for using PS. All that said, the Achilles heel of the program is speed. Once you get a couple layers or local adjustments, things start getting laggy, and switching images can take several seconds for them to fully load. It would ultimately slow down my workflow even with some of its time saving tools.
So, I’m back to LR. Nope, I can’t do much spot healing before things slow down, and no, there’s no dedicated skin controls (although I do have a brush preset I made that does a nice toning job), but for what it was made for - coloring and lighting an image - it’s fast, has a good DAM, a good interface, a good preset and LUT browsing and preview system, and improvements happen fairly regularly and often. It may get beat out in some areas, but I still think LR is probably the best all rounder, and honestly if you’re one of the people who complain about spending $10 a month for continuous updates of LR and PS, I think you need to pull out a calculator and do some math and figure out what you are spending on C1, etc.
Hope some of you found this helpful who are looking into alternatives to LR out there. If you would like to donate to me, just go to . . . just kidding.