I have Lightroom 5.7; if I get a Leica SL3, would it work in my version of Lightroom?

[thebarnman]

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Never really had a digital workflow since I still shoot film.  I've simply just imported scans of filmed images into Lightroom 5.7 and worked with them that way.  Also, I just found out Lightroom now goes all the way up to 13.2. 

1.  Would I really benefit in any real way with an updated version of Lightroom such as 13.2?  

2.  Thinking about trying out digital with a Leica SL3.  Would my Lightroom 5.7 work well with that?  

 

Thanks

 

 

[SrMi]

To get Lightroom 13.2, you have to subscribe to Creative Cloud ($9.99). The latest version is much better. You can try downloading an SL3 raw file, but I doubt that you import it to Lightroom 5.7.

Here is a gallery with SL3 raw files:

https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/4112142540/leica-sl3-preview-sample-gallery/6898963578

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[zeitz]

Besides the latest Lightroom being 13.2, the latest Camera Raw which is used in Lightroom is 16.2.  I don't see how Camera Raw would work with Camera Raw unless it is nearly the latest version.

[thebarnman]

8 hours ago, SrMi said:

To get Lightroom 13.2, you have to subscribe to Creative Cloud ($9.99). The latest version is much better. You can try downloading an SL3 raw file, but I doubt that you import it to Lightroom 5.7.

Here is a gallery with SL3 raw files:

https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/4112142540/leica-sl3-preview-sample-gallery/6898963578

I thought Lightroom Classic was a one time purchase like my 5.7 version.  Is 13.2 a on-line version?  I thought the Lightroom CC was the on-line version.    

In any case, what your sharing with me is really cool!  It looked like for a second like an image opened up in my Lightroom.  So that on-line stuff is a really nice way to share!  Fun looking at your images. 

UPDATE: Thanks for the access to your RAW files.  After trying out a few things, I unexpectedly downloaded one of the RAW files.  After it downloaded, I double clicked on it and it opened up in Photoshop CS6.  Makes me wonder if I can open it in my version of Lightroom, but I won't have time to try that till tomorrow evening.    

 

Edited April 26 by thebarnman

[Chuck Albertson]

Lightroom Classic is a one-time purchase...once a month. I use Lightroom 6.14 (the last store-bought version) for most of my work, but I also broke down and got the subscription version on my laptop. Adobe keeps playing with product names, so they no longer refer to the cloud-based version as LR CC - it's just Lightroom, and the desktop version is Lightroom Classic. Having just finished editing scans of some really old negs, I can tell you that removing dust spots/fibers is much simpler with the subscription version. There's a bit of a learning curve if you're coming from v. 5.7, but it's tolerable.

Edited April 26 by Chuck Albertson

[thebarnman]

5 minutes ago, Chuck Albertson said:

Lightroom Classic is a one-time purchase...once a month. I use Lightroom 6.14 (the last store-bought version) for most of my work, but I also broke down and got the subscription version on my laptop. Adobe keeps playing with product names, so they no longer refer to the cloud-based version as LR CC - it's just Lightroom, and the desktop version is Lightroom Classic. Having just finished editing scans of some really old negs, I can tell you that removing dust spots/fibers is much simpler with the subscription version. There's a bit of a learning curve if you're coming from v. 5.7, but it's tolerable.

Thanks for that update.  I'm going to check tomorrow if I can open up that RAW file in my version of Lightroom like how it worked in my older version of Photoshop CS6.  So you say the last one time buy version of Lightroom Classic is 6.14?  Still not interested with a on-line version however I do have lots of negatives but I'm sure I won't be scanning them to work on.  

If I need any scanning done, I'm sure I'll just take them to get them scanned at my nearest pro photo lab.  

This is confusing however about Lightroom.  According to this https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/keeping-lightroom-up-to-date.html the latest version of Lightroom is 7.2.  But no mention if that's a monthly subscription for that or not.  If so, maybe I'll search for a 6.14 version if I can find one.    

 

 

[Chuck Albertson]

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They are all subscription versions. Lightroom Classic if you want to store/work on your pictures on your desktop/laptop, Lightroom the cloud-based version, and another Lightroom for mobile devices.

I open up my SL2-S DNGs in Lightroom 6.14 without any problems - don't think 5.7 is that different.

[250swb]

For anybody who has forgotten a regular 18month update of Photoshop or Lightroom used to cost about £160 and spread out that equates very closely to the current price of the subscription model, except you don't have to wait 18 months for the updates, they come as soon as they are ready. And while everybody will tell you until the cows come home about their own little niggles and gripes with it, the whole package is much, much better functionally than it ever was. So £9.99 a month is less than two coffee's and a bun, and you spend how long on the computer with your photos and spent how much on the camera and lenses?! 

Edited April 26 by 250swb

[LocalHero1953]

Adobe's naming is bizarrely confusing. The current equivalent of your v5.7 is called Lightroom Classic, and works more or less the same way, with a local catalogue, local images, and edits stored locally.

Lightroom CC is a locally installed app that stores your images online (you can keep local copies) and keeps your catalogue online. Its functionality for editing and file management is severely limited compared to Lightroom Classic (you can't print from it, for example), but it does have advantages if you want to access your images, distribute them and edit them from multiple locations and devices, including smartphones and tablets.

You can use the two apps in parallel - with caution. I use Lightroom Classic as my main catalogue and editing tool, keeping all my original images locally on my desktop PC. When travelling, I use Lightroom CC on my Macbook to ingest new images, from where they are uploaded to the cloud as collections. When I get home, I move the images from the cloud collections into my local Lightroom Classic catalogue, then delete them from the Lightroom CC catalogues. My subscription to Adobe gives me 20Gb of image storage, which is enough for my needs.

I write 'with caution' because one can get confused about where your originals are and where your edits are - in the cloud, on your main device or on some other device. And experience has taught me that unless you do things correctly, housekeeping on one device to remove local copies can result in Adobe deleting the same image wherever else you have it. I can't say this is a bug, but it is a consequence of confusing design by Adobe.

To add to the confusion, you can also edit your cloud-based photos in a browser-based Lightroom CC.

 

Edited April 26 by LocalHero1953

[SrMi]

10 hours ago, thebarnman said:

I thought Lightroom Classic was a one time purchase like my 5.7 version.  Is 13.2 a on-line version?  I thought the Lightroom CC was the on-line version.    

Lightroom Classic (LrC) 13.2 is a desktop version that requires periodical online access to verify the subscription.

The $9.99 monthly Photography Plan includes Lightroom Classic, Lightroom (cloud), Photoshop on desktop and iPad, Lightroom Mobile, and more (link).

Highly recommended.

[Jeff S]

The Adobe Photo Plan is one of the biggest bangs for the buck among my photographic expenses. A mere ten bucks a month, always current, and not any more expensive than using the old LR/Photoshop purchase model.  
 

LR Classic is also vastly improved from version 6, eliminating the need for Photoshop in many cases, and the cost includes Photoshop if not. No cloud storage required; ignore the confusing names.

Jeff

[Anbaric]

10 hours ago, 250swb said:

For anybody who has forgotten a regular 18month update of Photoshop or Lightroom used to cost about £160 and spread out that equates very closely to the current price of the subscription model, except you don't have to wait 18 months for the updates, they come as soon as they are ready.

A 'perpetual' Lightroom licence was commonly available (e.g. from Amazon) for about £100. Lots of people neither cared about PS nor bought another copy of LR until they acquired a new camera that wasn't supported by the old version, perhaps several years later. From those who would have been happy to wait 5 years between updates, Adobe is now getting 6x the revenue they used to. And I think we can safely assume that a substantial proportion of Adobe users skipped updates, or they wouldn't have bothered switching to rentals.

[Jeff S]

Funny, on a Leica forum, where folks often spend tens of thousands of dollars on gear, there are concerns about paying $120 a year to essentially ‘develop,’ edit and store their pics, a lot less than many spend on film, let alone darkroom and storage materials. 
 

I always kept my LR up to date, as I found that sometimes updated processing engines, and often newer features and controls, yielded better prints from both new and older, re-printed, files.  I suppose some of the same folks who saved a few bucks not updating software, proceeded to instead spend thousands to upgrade their already fine gear, for minimal if any real print differences (assuming they even bothered to print). 

Jeff

[250swb]

2 hours ago, Anbaric said:

A 'perpetual' Lightroom licence was commonly available (e.g. from Amazon) for about £100. Lots of people neither cared about PS nor bought another copy of LR until they acquired a new camera that wasn't supported by the old version, perhaps several years later. From those who would have been happy to wait 5 years between updates, Adobe is now getting 6x the revenue they used to. And I think we can safely assume that a substantial proportion of Adobe users skipped updates, or they wouldn't have bothered switching to rentals.

It seems to me you don't actually understand what the improvements are within the latest versions of Lightroom/Photoshop (I don't use Lightroom). I recently went back just to compare some 2010 photos done with a P&S Sony at 1500 ISO that were then pretty much for the record and unusable 'artistically' because of small sensor digital noise. But now they clean up fine, and I can even enhance them again to make even bigger prints. I'm not saying everybody should now go back through their digital files and redo everything, what is done is history, but the potential is massive compared to what it was only two years ago. And compared to the price of a roll of film or hankering after the latest APO bollocks lens Leica are trying to sell you the Adobe package is astonishingly cheap and far more productive.

Even if your camera doesn't move on you can make it 'better' with newer software, so instead of jumping software updates you can jump camera updates. Now, which is cheaper?

 

Edited April 26 by 250swb

[zeitz]

Jeff & 250swb, thebarnman stopped being an Adobe customer about 10 years ago.  With about $22B in annual sales and an expected growth of 20% this year, I don't think Adobe misses thebarnman's $119.88 annually.  All I know is my software is constantly up to date, works with every iOS update, and performs better with every passing month largely due in part to a customer base that is committed to continued Adobe product improvement.  I lease my Mac Studio, I might as well lease my software.

[Jeff S]

Yup, I’m happy Adobe recommitted resources to their products, including desktop oriented users like me, not just the mobile crowd.  Same with Apple/Mac.

Jeff

[Anbaric]

2 hours ago, 250swb said:

It seems to me you don't actually understand what the improvements are within the latest versions of Lightroom/Photoshop (I don't use Lightroom).

Everyone's usage is different. Previously we had the flexibility to choose when it was really worth upgrading. Now we have to stay on the treadmill. Whether the (rather clean, usually not very high ISO, Nikon DX sensor) shots I have from around 2010 would be visibly different if processed in today's LR is rather a moot point, since I didn't like the default colours I was getting in ACR at the time, and used Nikon's own packages (not as slick as LR, but with results comparable to Capture One). Like you, I'm actually a PS user, and I also use other Adobe packages that aren't in the £10 per month bundle. Instead, I'd have to get the £57 per month 'All Apps' subscription (I don't need all the apps, but that's the cheapest way to get what I do want). At the moment, I have the CS6 Design Standard bundle, which used to have a retail price of £1,032 in the UK (we paid less at work). That's equivalent to only about 18 months of CC All Apps. CS6 does everything I need except raw processing, and I only use a limited subset of the features.

If I'd switched to CC All Apps when it came out about 11 years ago, it would by now have cost roughly as much as a Leica M11.

Edited April 26 by Anbaric

[thebarnman]

12 hours ago, Jeff S said:

LR Classic is also vastly improved from version 6, eliminating the need for Photoshop in many cases, and the cost includes Photoshop if not. No cloud storage required; ignore the confusing names.

Jeff

Interesting.  What do you mean that LR Classic eliminates the need for Photoshop in many cases?  

 

10 hours ago, Anbaric said:

A 'perpetual' Lightroom licence was commonly available (e.g. from Amazon) for about £100. Lots of people neither cared about PS nor bought another copy of LR until they acquired a new camera that wasn't supported by the old version, perhaps several years later. From those who would have been happy to wait 5 years between updates, Adobe is now getting 6x the revenue they used to. And I think we can safely assume that a substantial proportion of Adobe users skipped updates, or they wouldn't have bothered switching to rentals.

For me, there's a point where I'm happy with a certain software version so I feel no need to update.  That may be possible because I never really shot digitally so never felt the need to upgrade.   

9 hours ago, Jeff S said:

Funny, on a Leica forum, where folks often spend tens of thousands of dollars on gear, there are concerns about paying $120 a year to essentially ‘develop,’ edit and store their pics, a lot less than many spend on film, let alone darkroom and storage materials. 

Jeff

Hi Jeff, I have the same kind of money put into my home theatre.  Sometimes a remote the comes with a certain product is not designed well.  In the past I have upgraded my remote to one that's for a higher end model of electronic gear and paid upwards of $100 for it.  I have seen others who balk at the prices of a nicer remote and will only buy a knock off that looks pretty much the same and still functions with a price of something like $15 off of eBay.  I used the same argument you just mentioned that we spend thousands on equipment and yet some are worried about a $100 item.  

To me however, there's a difference between a one time cost no matter how expensive and a monthly cost no matter how inexpensive.  The monthly cost of something not very expensive can over time cost many times more than what I'd be willing to pay if it was just a one time purchase.    

7 hours ago, zeitz said:

Jeff & 250swb, thebarnman stopped being an Adobe customer about 10 years ago.  With about $22B in annual sales and an expected growth of 20% this year, I don't think Adobe misses thebarnman's $119.88 annually.

I only bought once and it still works today.  At the same time I don't know what I'm missing.  I just tested a RAW file from a SL3 yesterday and it opened up in my CS6 version of Photoshop.  Of course I'm guessing it's very likely that a current version of Photoshop and Lightroom will work better with today's RAW files, but I don't know enough about that to know what the differences are.      

[thebarnman]

6 hours ago, Anbaric said:

If I'd switched to CC All Apps when it came out about 11 years ago, it would by now have cost roughly as much as a Leica M11.

And that's what I'm talking about!  

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[thebarnman]

On 4/25/2024 at 1:49 PM, SrMi said:

To get Lightroom 13.2, you have to subscribe to Creative Cloud ($9.99). The latest version is much better. You can try downloading an SL3 raw file, but I doubt that you import it to Lightroom 5.7.

Here is a gallery with SL3 raw files:

https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/4112142540/leica-sl3-preview-sample-gallery/6898963578

Hi SrMi, 

I finally found the time to open one of your RAW files in my copy of Lightroom 5.7; it opened right up.  I'm guessing it would be easy to edit the image as easily as any other images I've edited in Lightroom 5.7?  Maybe not?  Is it possible it's not handling the file correctly?    

Here's what it looks like....

 

 

 

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Edited April 27 by thebarnman