Since Adobe’s announcement of the new Lightroom software and licensing model in October 2017 - and my conclusions about the impact of these (Read the article) - I have been contemplating what to do next.

This article is a small analysis of the workflow needs, and where the software marked is relative to this.

My current Photo Workflow:
I’m the kind of photographer that uses Lightroom for everything. That means no Photoshop, no explorer/finder workflow with folders and file renaming. I do it all in Lightroom. My import just dumps my photos in a folder structure organized by lightroom in a year/month/day folder structure, and from then on all the organizing, tagging, sorting/culling, editing and printing is done within Lightroom. I previously wrote an article about my fully automated image file workflow, and how automatic backup/security is built in from the ground up (Read the article).

Breaking this workflow into Lightroom's component parts, identifies the basic needs that I must fulfill, with the new photo software solution I choose:

• The Lightroom Library: This is also know as DAM (Digital Assets Management), and it basically abstracts folder/filename/location of my photos into a database, that allows me to tag anything relevant (persons, location, subject, theme, occation and so forth) onto each photo. It also contains all the camera EXIF data and combines all of this into a searchable library.
• The Lightroom Editor: This allows me to nondestructively edit my photos, and all edits are merely “described” and stored in the Library database without actually touching the original RAW file.
  This allows for seriously nice things such as going back and forth within my edits, create several versions of an image, copying settings to and from images – all without touching or creating additional copies of my RAW files. And most importantly – I do not store any final versions of my pictures. I only use diskspace on the original RAW file. Any edits are exported when needed as a JPG that I do not store – I can always export it again 😊
• The Lightroom Printing Module: This is where I print my pictures in a fully color managed way. This gives me "what you see is what you get" on print in terms of colors and quality.

"I’m the kind of photographer that uses Lightroom for everything. That means no Photoshop, no explorer/finder workflow with folders and file renaming. I do it all in Lightroom"

On their own, each module is actually replaceable with other software on the market, but what Lightroom does is combine all of this into one elegant solution. It reflects all the nondestructive edits and Virtual Copies of images in the Library module without any additional workflow or actual copies of files being made on disk. This very feature is what’s going to be very very hard to replace, because this will need a new software solution, that is as integrated and feature complete as Lightroom. Apple’s Aperture did the same thing, but Apple killed that to cater to the smartphone generation with a new and simpler Photos Application (Much like what Adobe is now working towards with the new CC replacement of Classic).

Right now, there is nothing on the market, that does this as integrated and well as Lightroom in my opinion. The only one getting close is Capture One, and that brings me to the point of this article:

The current Software situation:
My current Lightroom 6 license is perpetual, and since I’m not about the buy a new camera that is unsupported in Lightroom, I would expect I can keep using it for at least a couple of years, before compatibility issues forces me to stop updating Windows or abandon LR6.

"Right now, there is nothing on the market, that does this as integrated and well as Lightroom in my opinion"

If forced to choose a Lightroom replacement right now, Capture One is the only “fairly” mature alternative, and both Luminar and ON1 are chasing down this feature set hard, to grab their part of the sizable Lightroom crowd looking to abandon ship. But here’s the catch:

Any Lightroom replacement should hopefully be a very long term solution, but unfortunately that’s not in the cards if we are talking perpetual licenses, and a product that survives and lives on for the next decade or more.

Why you may ask? Well it’s simple: Cashflow and earnings. To be a successful software company you need cash from continuing sales, and either you do that by going subscription only, or you do that by creating new versions on a regular basis, that entices your customers to upgrade for a fee. So, what’s the problem here?
Well, photography hardware and software has become very mature, and now only offers small changes between each iteration. Combine this with the younger generations appetite for simple, easy and quick to use solutions, and you have the perfect recipe for a disruption ready market. Consequently, sales has stalled and is now shrinking (Apart from smartphones and the accompanying Cloud solutions – aka. The disruptor).
All of us that swears to our DSLR/Mirrorless specialized camera, are an obsolete dinosaur waiting for extinction. Within the next 10 – 15 years only real PRO’s doing productions and well paid commercial jobs, are going to use specialized cameras and software for photography. It’s going to become a Niche – a very expensive Niche. Smartphones, Cloudservices and computational photography is going to kill of the remaining hardware and software on the market (See my article about the future of Photography).

"Any Lightroom replacement should hopefully be a very long term solution, but unfortunately that’s not in the cards if we are talking perpetual licenses, and a product that survives and lives on for the next decade or more"

So looking at the three software alternatives I mentioned before, I see the following happening:

• Capture One is already on a price level comparable with Lightroom, and they are experimenting with subscription software right now. Since they cannot maintain a cashflow from perpetual license sales, they will be going subscription only within a few years. Perpetual license holders will not generate enough cashflow from upgrades, because they will skip some generations due to cost, and the product being so mature it does not offer enough new features.
  My guess is they will look towards catering to the remaining PRO’s once Adobe has abandoned them, when Lightroom Classic goes End Of Life. This will be their Niche as their current price level and product feature set is far beyond the needs of the smartphone generation.
• Luminar and ON1, maybe affinity to, will engage in a fight for the next 3 - 5 years on being the best Lightroom replacement, and their pricing will attract a lot of the Lightroom converts. Since their products are far from feature mature yet, they will be able to sell yearly upgrades on perpetual licenses as features gets added. During this period this will generate the needed cashflow. After that – like with Lightroom and Capture One – the shrinking marked and customers beginning to skip upgrades will hit them like a hammer, and we are back at square one: Go subscription only or face extinction.

"All of us that swears to our DSLR/Mirrorless specialized camera are an obsolete dinosaur waiting for extinction"

Where am I going with this?
The key takeaway from this situation is, that my photos and all the data I generate/add during my organizing and editing, should be available on a very long term basis. Since I believe all current solutions are on a subscription only track in the longer run or facing extinction, I think the only real solution is to:

1. Take the Red pill, pony up the cash and trust Adobe on their Cloud future, features and pricing. Adobe are the biggest player, and thus probably is the best guarantee for a long term cloud software solution. This will give me Lightroom Classic CC until it goes EOL, and hopefully the new CC will become sophisticated enough to replace Classic for me. In a few years the new CC will probably give me the satisfaction of importing my current catalog, with all its settings and edits to the new CC going forward. Something none of the others can offer.
2. Take the Blue pill and break up my workflow into the component parts as described before, and abandon the thought of a fully nondestructive editing workflow like in Lightroom. It is nondestructive editing reflected in your DAM, that requires a combined software solution that is not viable in the long term. By choosing one solution for DAM, one for editing with saving new versions of each file and one for printing, I create a workflow where I can replace each module without affecting the others. On the DAM side this is particularly sensitive, since keeping data between new software solutions is difficult at best.

I’m not sure taking the Red pill will be as interesting as it was in “The Matrix”, so before any choices are made, I will await the year or two my current LR6 license is still good.
But the evaluation and analysis will persist in that period, and my thoughts on a DAM solution and all the inherent problems will be the subject of Part 2 of this article.