Lightroom | Common questions

Lightroom is a new photography service by Adobe that includes desktop, mobile, and web apps. Lightroom automatically backs up all your photographs to the cloud and lets you access and work with your photos from any desktop or mobile device.

Lightroom provides you the editing power of Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera Raw in one easy-to-use package. In Lightroom, you experience seamless workflows across devices. The editing and organization tools it offers are similar to the ones you already use on your mobile, desktop, and on the web.

Lightroom is designed to work seamlessly with Lightroom mobile (iOS), Lightroom mobile (Android), Lightroom on the web, and Lightroom for Apple TV.

While Lightroom and Lightroom Classic differ in several ways, there are three main things that separate them:

• Lightroom on Mac and Windows share a similar and consistent experience with other Lightroom apps on mobile and web. 
• Lightroom uploads all your full resolution original photos to the cloud. This means that all your photos are safely backed up. It also means that Lightroom can do various things that Lightroom Classic can't. For example, you can use Lightroom to access all your photos on multiple computers such as a laptop and a desktop, or a home computer, and a work computer.
• Lightroom also provides features that are based in the cloud, such as the ability to search for photos based on what's in the photo — without having to add any keywords manually. For example, you can search for 'dog' to find photos of dogs in Lightroom without having to manually assign the keyword 'dog' to any photos.

For related information, see Go from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom.

Adobe will continue to develop Lightroom Classic alongside Lightroom.

Syncing between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom for desktop isn’t recommended.

You can use the capture, organizational, and a few editing features for free on Lightroom for mobile. Additionally, you can purchase a Lightroom for mobile subscription to access other premium features. For more information, see Lightroom | Premium features. 

You can try out various features in the Trial version of Lightroom desktop. When you upgrade to one of the available Photography plans, you can download the full version of Lightroom.

Yes; Lightroom has an 'Edit in Photoshop' feature. Lightroom doesn't currently support third-party plug-ins.

Yes, all the work you have in Lightroom (except for keywords) automatically syncs back to Lightroom Classic. To enable this feature, launch Lightroom Classic and ensure that sync is enabled.

Yes, Lightroom is available in Creative Cloud Team and Enterprise plans.