Lightroom is a family of photo editing apps designed for photographers by photographers. Lightroom is both a library and a development tool that empowers you to edit, organize, store, and share your photos. Lightroom is the digital twin of darkrooms used by photographers to develop their photos.
Lightroom comes in two primary flavors: Lightroom Ecosystem and Lightroom Classic.
LIGHTROOM CLASSIC
Lightroom Classic is a desktop app that allows you to organize and store your photos on a local hard drive, and still share them in a variety of ways.
An internet connection is not required to access your photos but is occasionally needed for licensing and syncing with Lightroom for mobile.

Adobe Lightroom ecosystem and Lightroom Classic can help easily make your images look their best and will organize them effectively so you can find the right ones for the job.



For a detailed feature comparison, see Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Ecosystem | Feature Comparison
Here are a few primary things to consider as you decide which version of Lightroom works for you:
Primary considerations | Recommended app |
---|---|
Do you take a lot of raw photos and/or have terabytes of photos stored? | Lightroom Classic |
Do you prefer your photos to be stored on a local hard drive or network storage? | Lightroom Classic |
Do you want to use plugins to edit or organize your photos? | Lightroom Classic |
Do you prefer your photos to be backed up and stored on Adobe's cloud? |
Lightroom Ecosystem |
Do you have a fast and reliable internet connection? | Lightroom Ecosystem |
Do you want friends and family to be able to contribute to your photo albums? | Lightroom Ecosystem |
Want to use Lightroom beyond 7 days? Compare plan features to find the one that’s right for you.