Lightroom Cost

Lightroom is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, which, as of 2017, no longer offers permanent software licenses. Instead, users pay a monthly subscription fee to access some or all of the programs and services offered by Adobe. Under this model, users are free to decide for themselves how much to pay each month, and they can judge which services they will need. Adobe also offers a free trial of many of its Creative Cloud programs.

What is Lightroom?

Adobe Lightroom is compact photo organizing and editing software that allows users to catalog and edit photographs from any device using the Adobe Creative Cloud. Using Lightroom, users can examine and edit photographs on the fly immediately after taking them without having to leave the site. This makes Lightroom ideal for photographers who want to create perfect photographs for advertising, social media, or personal printing, as Lightroom lets them take a photo and immediately start the process of editing. Lightroom provides tools for color correction, altering contrasts, modifying brightness, and basic editing functions such as correcting red-eye or blurring/sharpening an image. Since Lightroom is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, it is also optimized for photo sharing, letting users work with the same photo across multiple devices and including tools to help users prepare their photos for publication.

Adobe Lightroom is closely related to Adobe Photoshop. The major difference between the two programs is that Lightroom is optimized for mobile devices and on-the-fly photo editing, whereas Photoshop is optimized for desktop use and has more precise and granular editing tools. Lightroom is best suited for users who want to take a photograph and immediately begin editing it to suit their needs, particularly photographers working on-site, away from their desktop computers. Lightroom also lets users create and import preset filters and settings to help them quickly edit their photos.

Read more about what Lightroom is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Lightroom?

Adobe Lightroom is a powerful photo editing tool with a number of features that make it useful for both professional and hobbyist photographers. Whether a photographer is taking photos of models for a series of print advertisements or just taking vacation photos for their own personal social media account, the ability to edit photos quickly and efficiently will greatly improve the quality of their output. This versatility makes Lightroom an ideal choice to learn for anyone who is regularly taking photos as a part of their day-to-day life.

Lightroom lets users make on-the-fly edits to photographs, altering colors, shade, contrast, and other digital details with only a few clicks. Owing to its easy-to-use sliders and built-in/customizable presets, users can begin editing their photos within seconds, easily letting them identify the issues that need to be changed to get a perfect shot. Recent updates to Adobe Lightroom allow users to build and edit rudimentary video animations, opening a whole new world of possibilities for creative photographers.

Lightroom is also a powerful tool for archiving and publishing photos. Linked to the Adobe Creative Cloud, Lightroom lets users easily share their photos across multiple devices and programs. Users can take a picture, edit the basics of the color and contrast in Lightroom, then import that photo into Photoshop to perform more detailed photo editing. Then, they can import the newly edited photos into a program like Adobe XD in preparation for publication on a website or digital advertisement.

In-Depth Review of the Cost

Adobe offers a few different pricing options for Creative Cloud subscribers. For $9.99 a month, users can subscribe to two different packages. The first only gives users access to Lightroom, and it comes with 1TB of storage space, which is equal to about a quarter of a million photographs. The second sub-ten dollar subscription gives users access to Lightroom and Photoshop but only comes with 20GB of data, which is still equal to about four thousand photographs. For $19.99, users can access Lightroom and Photoshop with 1TB of data storage. For $54.99 a month, users will have access to all the programs in the Adobe Creative Cloud alongside 100GB of cloud storage. Each of these packages can be bundled with a free trial of Adobe Stock, Adobe’s library of stock photos and royalty-free assets, which after one month carries a fee of $19.99 a month.

All of the applications in the Adobe Creative Cloud are available in their full version for a short free trial, during which users can familiarize themselves with the system before purchasing a subscription. These trials don’t need to run simultaneously, so new users are free to experiment with the programs without feeling overwhelmed or rushed.

Since it is operating on a subscription basis, there is no guarantee that the price of a subscription won’t change. As new programs and data packages open up, the price of individual programs and bundles are liable to change. In addition, because Lightroom operates on a subscription model for its data storage, once a user cancels their subscription, they may find themselves unable to access many of their photos,

Why Learn Lightroom?

Adobe Lightroom is an ideal skill to learn for both professional graphic designers and amateur photographers. By using Adobe Lightroom, creatives can alter and catalog their photographs immediately after they’ve been taken, giving photographers the tools that they need to create ideal photographs on the spot. This makes Lightroom an ideal program to learn for creative professionals who plan to regularly take and alter digital photos. Photographers will obviously benefit from being able to alter photographs immediately, but Graphic Designers, Web Designers, and marketers like Social Media Managers all stand to benefit from learning Lightroom.

Lightroom is also closely linked to the other creative programs that make up the Adobe Creative Cloud, particularly Photoshop. Users who learn how to use Lightroom may find it much easier to learn how to use other Adobe creative software in a professional capacity, and learning Lightroom will help creatives optimize their workflow when this skill is paired with training in Adobe Photoshop. Few creative professionals only use a single creative design tool, so learning the whole of the Adobe Creative Cloud will both make prospective employees more well-rounded, and it will make their lives easier as they can utilize multiple different programs.

Read more about why you should learn Lightroom.

Free Introductory Lightroom Course Online

Some students may not feel comfortable enrolling in an immersive skills training course without a background in Lightroom. Those students may wish to take advantage of some of the free introductory courses and online tutorials. Noble offers a free introductory seminar helping students understand the basic functionalities of Lightroom and how it differs from Adobe Photoshop. This seminar is an ideal way to introduce oneself to Lightroom and decide whether to learn Lightroom, Photoshop, or both.

Adobe also provides new Lightroom users with a seven-day free trial of the program. During this time, students can take advantage of the free offers available through Noble alongside the free tutorials and training videos offered by Adobe. Once students have exhausted the free tutorials available through Noble, they may consider looking at the options for free courses available through other service providers such as Udemy or Coursera, both of which offer free tutorials in the basics of Lightroom.

Read about more free Lightroom videos and online tutorials.

Learn Lightroom with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers a wide range of Lightroom courses designed to fit the practical and professional needs of all students. Participants can take these courses both at Noble’s Manhattan location in-person, or they are available through live, online instruction. Even if taken online, these courses boast small classes taught by experienced instructors who can respond to student needs in real-time. Taking a class online through Noble provides students with the same high-quality instruction and professional skills training as the in-person courses, with the advantage of being available to students from all over the country. Noble’s courses offer a free retake option within one year, allowing students to hone their skills at no cost.

Noble’s Adobe Lightroom Classic course gives students hands-on experience using Lightroom to edit, share, and publish photographs. Students will practice manipulating photos and learn strategies to optimize these photos for different purposes, such as social media advertising, web design, and physical printing. Students will also learn how to utilize the Adobe Creative Cloud integration to share, publish, and archive their photos safely and effectively. This course will provide students with the experience they need to use Lightroom Classic for professional and personal purposes.

Noble also offers Lightroom instruction as part of its Photo Retouching Certificate program. This training program teaches students the skills that they need to take and edit their own high-quality digital photos for professional use. Students will learn the best ways to take a digital photo and then be taught how to edit those photos using both Lightroom and Photoshop. Students will learn how to optimize their photographs by taking advantage of Lightroom’s editing and sharing capabilities alongside learning how to make more advanced and complex manipulations in Photoshop. Completing the course provides students with an industry recognized certificate of completion, and participants are also eligible for a free retake within one year to continue honing their retouching skills.