Adobe's Lightroom is unquestionably the leading professional photo-workflow software.
The one question is, which Lightroom should you use? The photo software is now available as two separate applications: the consumer-targeted Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, reviewed here.
Lightroom Classic offers professional photographers a powerful way to import, organize, and correct everything they shoot.
The June 2020 update adds local hue adjustments, custom ISO-based presets, and new default preset options, along with some UI touch-ups.
Other recent major updates include the Texture slider, Flat-Field correction, and the Enhance Details tool.
The program earns a rare five-star rating, along with a Daxdi Editors' Choice award.
Though there are excellent competing products such as ACDSee Pro, CyberLink's PhotoDirector, DxO's PhotoLab, and Phase One's Capture One, none equal Lightroom Classic's combination of smooth workflow interface, organizers, and adjustment tools.
HDR tools and panorama-stitching tools, improved performance, face recognition, a mobile app, and cloud integrations are also at your disposal, along with top-notch lighting, color, geometry, and lens-profile based corrections.
A Tale of Two Lightrooms
With the release of the rethought Lightroom, the program photo pros have come to know and love got a younger, and frankly, still fairly immature sibling.
Lightroom does offer simpler, cleaner interface, but it lacks some expected tools—including the ability to print and plug-in support.
Pros will want to stick with the subject of this review, Lightroom Classic, the true heir to the Lightroom throne that offers every bit of the franchise's functionality.
Lightroom, on the other hand, is more suited to consumers and enthusiasts who want everything available from the cloud—since the newer program requires you to upload all images to its cloud storage before you can edit.
Setup and Pricing Options
A Creative Cloud Photography subscription (which costs $9.99 per month) gets you not only Lightroom Classic, but also the full version of Adobe Photoshop (which alone used to cost up to $999), along with 20GB of online storage.
Adobe no longer offers Lightroom as a one-time purchase, and no longer updates pre-Creative Cloud versions—if you see one for sale (the last perpetual license was for version 6), run the other way, since you'll be paying for obsolete software that won't support recent camera models.
To install Lightroom, you need an up-to-date OS, as it only runs on Windows 10 (Version 1803 or later), or on macOS 10.13 or later.
The Windows version now only runs on 64-bit operating systems, so get yourself up to date.
You install and update the program through the Creative Cloud utility that sits in the Taskbar; you'll need a fast Internet connection or lots of time for getting started, as it takes up nearly 2GB of drive space.
You also have the option to download a full-featured 7-day trial (Adobe has reduced this from the previous very generous 30-day trial).
When I first ran Lightroom, a ball icon bounced over to the software nameplate, showing that clicking on it opens a three-choice dropdown menu.
This is where you turn on and off face detection and address lookup for GPS coordinates.
In the July 2020 update, a new cloud panel appears at top right, showing your remaining cloud storage amount and syncing status.
Interface, Import, and Organize
Unlike Corel AfterShot Pro and Lightroom, Lightroom uses separate modes for organizing (Library), adjusting (Develop), and other program functions.
You can turn the mode entries on and off at top left (and even change their font).
By default, modes now include Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web.
A nameplate appears at top left when you sign in for syncing your photos with Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom.com.
Lightroom has a big, ever-present Import button and media auto-detect that launches the nondestructive importer.
This lets you see thumbnails and full-size images on memory cards even before you import them.
External media is by default selected in the Files section, rather than in the Devices section, which Adobe claims is faster.
Lightroom lets you start work on any photo in the set before all the import processing is done.
Usually, you'll want to import photos as camera raw files, which offer more control over the final images.
Lightroom supports camera raw file conversion for every major DSLR and high-end digital camera.
Lightroom imports pictures using a database, which Adobe calls a catalog.
The database approach makes sense for photographers with huge collections of large images, and you can store the database file separately from the actual image files.
This is helpful if you want to store them on external media or a NAS.
At import, you can either Copy, Copy as DNG (Adobe's universal raw camera file format), Move, or Add.
During import, you can have the program build Smart Previews for faster editing, ignore duplicates, add to a Collection, or apply a preset such as Auto Tone.
Lightroom Classic can now import Photoshop Elements catalogs and .PSB files.
It's nice to see Elements getting some love from the Creative Cloud club, as it has long seemed a very separate entity.
PSB files are like PSDs (Photoshop Document), but the B stands for big, since these files can be up to 512 megapixels and 65,000 pixels wide.
Note that you need to check the Maximum Compatibility box when saving in Photoshop for the Lightroom import to work.
You can now choose which monitor is used for preview and which for controls, if you have a multiple-monitor setup.
Another way to get photos onto your computer is to tether it.
Mostly of use to pro photographers, tethering lets you connect your camera with a USB or FireWire cable and actually control the shutter release from the computer.
ACDSee and CyberLink PhotoDirector, by comparison, offer no tethering capability, though Capture One does.
In its February 2019 update, Lightroom Classic gets faster tether transfers for Nikon SLRs to catch them up with the improvements made for Canon updates last October.
Also added were control over ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and white balance in the software.
In Library mode, double-clicking takes you between thumbnail and screen-fit view, and another click zooms in to 100 percent.
Zooming, unfortunately, is limited to Fit, Fill, and ratios like 1:3, and 1:2, and it doesn't make good use of the mouse wheel, as many other photo editors do.
You can use a touch screen to pinch-zoom to any level you like—something I was thrilled to see in testing on my Acer T232HL touch-screen display.
There's even a touch interface with large controls, which you can enable by tapping a finger icon.
Lightroom's Library mode offers unmatched organizational abilities, including the ability to group pictures into Quick Collections of thumbnails you select, and Smart Collections of photos that meet rating or other criteria.
Star rating, flagging, and rotating can also be done from within the thumbnails.
You can use Quick Develop tools in the Library mode for lighting fixes or preset effects (B&W, Cross Process, and the usual Instagram-like suspects).
One basic fix you can't do unless you move to Develop, however, is cropping, but you can hit the R keyboard shortcut to get right to the cropper, which offers aspect ratio presets and leveling, as well.
Lightroom has long let you create custom presets, but with the June 2020 update, a new capability lets you make ISO-adaptive presets.
Take, for example a situation in which you have several photos shot at ISO 2000, for which you want a certain level of noise reduction; but for ISO 800 shots you want a lower level.
The new option lets you automatically apply the adjustment you want based on ISO.
To get the feature to work, you need to select two or more photos with different ISO levels.
The adjustment then applies the correction on a sliding scale, so, for example, if you apply it to a photo with ISO 1250, the setting is in between the two you set.
You can even use this preset as a default for your raw camera files.
Another useful tool in Library mode lets you click on thumbnails to apply either metadata or adjustment presets.
The program also does a good job of making it easy to compare images side by side.
A Survey mode lets you select several images for larger comparison views, and the loupe tool magnifies spots for close work.
Face Detection
Like its enthusiast-level sibling, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom offers face detection and recognition.
You can get started with the feature either by clicking on the software nameplate at top left and choosing Face Detection from the dropdown, or you can click on the face icon in the toolbar in Library mode to enter People view.
That's actually a little more hidden than I'd like: There's no entry in the left pane with Collections and Catalog, and a Faces mode view would be nice, to go along with the Map mode.
You can start finding faces in your entire catalog or to only find faces on an as-needed basis:
To test this, I chose the first option, and the program began detecting faces right away.
It built a grid of unnamed people, stacking those that it detected as being close enough to be considered one and the same person.
It's interesting how a person in the same session but with a different expression sometimes isn't included in his or her stack.
Once it's done detecting, you type a name into the box with a question mark below the photo or stack, and it pops right up into the Named People section.
Once you name a few, Lightroom proposes names for unnamed face shots.
You just hit the check mark if it's correct.
It's one of the smoothest and simplest implementations of people tagging I've seen.
Adobe has clearly studied how other apps do this and come upon a great interface and process.
This time I tested it, it claimed several nonhuman images—patterns in shrubber—had faces.
If you only have a couple named faces, it can match some wildly off other faces for the name, so a bit of training is required.
It also has trouble with profiles and faces partially hidden by hats and other clothing, and as you'd expect, paintings, statues, and Memoji are also detected as faces.
Once faces are tagged, you can always get to them by tapping the same face icon in Library mode, but I wish you could also easily create smart albums based on peoples' names or even use a People mode as you can use Map mode.
Face detection might seem like a consumer feature, but pros who shoot events with lots of faces could certainly make good use of it.
Raw Profiles
Most Lightroom users probably know that working with raw camera files offers the most leeway when you're correcting images.
It lets you change the image's white balance after the fact and enables you to bring out more detail in over and underexposed areas.
Lightroom translates raw data from the camera sensor into a viewable image, using a rendering Profile.
The Profile option is at the top of the Edit adjustment panel in the Basic section.
These Profiles reflect Adobe's color technology more than that of the camera maker.
It's important because it's the starting point for any other editing you do, so it makes sense to put the option at the top.
One quibble is that I wish the option had also been added to Library mode's Quick Develop section; after all, if it's the first thing you should do, it would make sense to have it there.
For a while, I've considered that Capture One has done the best job of initial raw conversion—that pictures look better right after you import them and before you make adjustments.
Phase One's software brought out more detail and color than Adobe's blander Standard Profile.
The Profiles in Lightroom bring Adobe's program at least up to Capture One's level.
Profiles are grouped into two basic categories: raw and creative.
The first group includes Adobe Raw and Camera Matching Profiles, while Creative options include Legacy, Artistic, B&W, Modern, and Vintage.
The raw Profiles only work with raw images, while the last four are special effects that also work with JPG images.
The Adobe Raw group includes Adobe Color, Monochrome, Landscape, Neutral, Portrait, Standard, and Vivid.
Adobe Color is the default for newly imported photos.
It gets a bit more contrast, warmth, and vividness out of the photo than Adobe Standard, which is the same as the previous version of Lightroom.
With the June 2020 update, there are new default options that thankfully let you turn on lens-profile corrections for everything you import, rather than making you go down and turn them on for every photo after importing.
For several of my test shots, particularly of color portraits and landscapes, I now actually prefer Lightroom's initial rendering to Capture One's, though I prefer the less-juiced-up Portrait for many photos rather than the default Color profile, which I find oversaturated.
Any photos you've already imported will retain the legacy Adobe Standard Profile, so you may want to go back and switch that to Adobe Color or one of the others if you're working on an older shot.
Camera Matching Profiles are based on your camera manufacturer's image rendering.
As you might surmise, they're designed to match what you see on your camera LCD or the JPG the camera produces.
I found these less effective than Adobe's Profiles.
In test portraits shot on a Canon EOS 1Ds some were too cool and others were oversaturated.
The Monochrome Profile is a better option than starting with a color Profile and then converting to black-and-white.
That's because it starts from the raw camera image.
Portrait is supposed to reproduce all skin tones accurately, and Landscape adds a lot more vibrancy, since there are no face tones to worry about distorting.
Neutral has the least contrast, useful for difficult lighting situations, and Vivid punches up saturation and contrast.
The Creative Profiles may remind many people of Instagram filters.
I'm disappointed that they have names like Artistic 01, Modern 04, and so on.
I'd prefer names that give you a sense of what the effect does rather than numbers.
For example, Instagram users know what the Valencia filter looks like.
Despite that quibble, the Creative Profiles really do add moods, usually without being overdone.
In some cases, they produce a one-step improvement.
The 17 B&W choices are remarkably varied, too.
The February 2020 update added some control over what raw profiles are...
