Hi,
I’m debating ditching Lightroom for good and I have downloaded the PL7 trial… When I open some of my edited RAW files which have their edits stored in XMP sidecar files the edits don’t show in PL7.
I have 10 years worth of back catalogue with tons of edits which I need transferred over seamlessly.
Will this be possible?
Kind regards,
Matt
Lightroom edits will never transfer over. Whereas Adobe uses XMP sidecar files, PhotoLab uses DOP sidecar files for edits and XMP for metadata only.
in a word, no.
Even if PhotoLab was able to read edits from XMP files, all the settings and adjustment scales would be different because the two companies use different algorithms.
Thanks Joanna for that concise yet very sobering answer…
That makes it even harder to leave Adobe. Even if I switched my main workflow over to an alternative I’d still need Adobe on my machine for my legacy archive.
Hmmmmm…
Kind regards,
Matt
As long as you don’t envisage having to rework your legacy archive - the word archive indicating that you could export them all to TIFF as finished work - you wouldn’t need to keep Lightroom.
Something other folks have found is that having to rework some of their legacy images gives them a new life, because you can do things differently and, sometimes, better.
Just checked the Adobe website, and this is what they say happens to Lightroom Classic when you cancel your subscription:
You can continue to access all your photos on your local hard drive through Lightroom for the desktop. You can continue to import and organize photos and output your edited photos through Export, Publish, Print, Web, or Slideshow. Access to the Develop & Map modules and Lightroom for mobile is not available after your membership ends.
Going fowards, would processing in PhotoLab, and organising in the subscription free version of LrC meet your needs?
Don’t! I made that mistake and regret it - have mostly gone back to lightroom.
Interested to know why are you ditching Lightroom.
I’m still debating… I like my LR workflow but the latest developments around Adobe and its ToC make me wonder…
I have only fiddled around with PL7 for like 20 minutes so far. Can’t tell whether I’ll manage to replicate a similar workflow.
I am really indecisive. I have a subscription until mid 2026 or something (loaded via coupon cards). So there is still some time to think…
So LR is still supposed to start with no active sub? I kinda doubt that… Even if it says otherwise. Adobe also says, they don’t spy 
Kind regards,
Matt
PL really isn’t a “workflow” on its own.
What is it that you would miss if you no longer used Lightroom?
I find all the editing tools in PL to be more than adequate and regularly turn out exhibition quality prints. If you want the metadata side of things, there are several apps that can take over from Lr or, as mentioned, apparently, you can continue to use that part of Lr, even with no active subscription.
In any case, you have a thirty day free trial period and I would recommend you use that heavily, even on images that have already been treated, just to see what you think.
PL is a compréhensive tool, especially if you add in FilmPack and ViewPoint. You really can’t compare it until you’ve tried it comprehensively.
I stopped using LR for 2 reasons:
I still pay the annual fee to use PS for a few of my photos as I am comfortable with using layers and the masking tools. I also use it for other pixel-based tasks. So I have access to LR, but don’t use it.
I didn’t keep my old LR catalogs since I don’t rely on the XMPs or database. If I choose to re-edit, I start from scratch using the current tools.
I don’t need DxO to read XMPs.
The ToS issues are not a factor in my decision. I am OK with DxO and other’s verifying my license periodically. Nothing in my photos would be embarrassing either. If they are scanned and used to improve denoise and masking tools perhaps I’ll benefit. I don’t over worry about the finer points of the ToS, figuring Google, MS, and Apple all know more about my on-line and location behavior than anything Adobe, DxO, or others would want. I do try to minimize that stuff and don’t use social media either. At this point, I trust Adobe and DxO will not try to scrape my financial or medical info more than the big FAANGs.
I made the move from LR+PS to PhotoLab recently. I just download all my images as high resolution jpegs except for a small subset which I wanted to retain as raw; I will remake the adjustments on these. (As someone else says, that can be fun, though perhaps not if you have thousands). For me this works fine. I don’t really need to return to the raw files once I have supplied them to clients or uploaded them to a stock library. I can take the risk (about 0.0001%) chance that a client is going to come back to me and ask me to make an edit that really needs the raw file.
If you really need to be able to edit all your images - one option might be to buy a version of Light Room 6 for desktop. This version was available as a non-subscription option and maybe you can still find a copy. But I don’t know if it would read edits made using features that have been developed since - probably not. Or - if you are on the full photography plan maybe it would make sense to downgrade to the LR only plan - so at least you had it there if you needed. But - I’d only do this when the occasion arose. (