Lightroom advice please.

[Altea]

Could somebody give me some advice please? I am almost at the end of my Lightroom creative cloud free trial. I have found Lightroom to be amazing (I haven't ventured into Photoshop yet)! I am now considering my options to either take out a subscription or to buy Lightroom as a stand alone product. Could someone please tell me what the difference is? I understand that the stand alone product would not come with Photoshop and would not be updated but is there anything else to consider? Are there any differences in the software itself? Are the system requirements any different for them? I have also found difficulty in exporting my images after editing in Lightroom with my system saying that I don't have enough memory, I can get around this by closing Lightroom and reopening it. Is this a software bug or due to my system being a bit older a system issue? Is one version less demanding on the system than the other? I am more than likely going to be a light user of the program. Just for info my system spec is - Win 10, AMD Phenom 8450 trip core 2.10ghz, 32bit opp system with x64 based processor, 2gb ram (1.75 usable). Thanks in advance.

 

[Sharky]

The CC subscription model / package comes with a couple of extra features, the dehaze and boundary warp tools. It's whether you consider those tools essential or not together with not having Photoshop. As time goes on i imagine more features will be added to the CC only version to draw people to the subs. Nothing wrong with LR5 or LR6 standalone however, they don't suddenly get rubbish overnight.

I'm surprised LR CC has actually run on your machine as i thought it was now a 64bit only product? LR 5 works on a 32bit OS but the move to CC/LR6 was a 64bit leap.

And just to add 2gb of ram will be a big limiting factor as well, even with LR5 on a 32bit OS.

 

[MartinCornwall]

Lightroom standalone misses out on the following , Lightroom CC also gives you ongoing new feature updates as soon as they are available – including the new Dehaze and Boundary Warp functions as well as Local B&W Adjustment Sliders, none of which are in LR6. Your system memory is quite small, it would be worth upgrading to 4gb but only 3gb will be available due to the limitations on the 32bit opp. You can get LR standalone as an upgrade if you have a previous version.

 

[droj]

2 Gb of RAM is horribly light for image work these days ...

Is your need for a RAW processor - you weren't explicit? Check out Raw Therapee, or what your camera came with ...

As a possibly 'light user', Lightroom's cataloguing database functions may be far more than you need?

 

[Altea]

Thanks for your replies. When I have been watching my system resources whilst carrying out certain lightroom tasks it seems that my processor is the thing that is maxing out and not the actual RAM. If I was to upgrade my RAM would that improve things or is it just pointless as my processor is not very good anyway (it's 2.10 ghz AMD 64 triple core)? Also it says that my computer processor has 64bit capabilities so should I just reinstall windows in 64 bit version or would this slow things down even more?

 

[Suomi]

It may help if you could add more ram, and move to 64bit operating system. But it would depend on what your motherboard would allow. You would notice a speed increase if you could move to SSD, likely that you may not have a sata III connection given the age of the chip. You could see if you can get a more powerful X3 chip. May be time to think about a new system, there comes a point where it is easier to bite the bullet and get a new or more modern second-hand system.