Adobe Lightroom CC faces an uphill climb

Adobe's revamped photography strategy includes a new Lightroom CC cloud-based service and the final goodbye to no-subscription Lightroom.

For years I've been urging Adobe to rebuild its Lightroom image editing software on top of a more robust database than its years'-old problem child that randomly corrupts itself and doesn't speak network, among other things.

From now on, I'll be careful what I wish for. 

At this year's Adobe Max conference, along with feature and performance updates to the usual suspects, the company rolled out its revamped photography subscription plans -- including the final buh-bye to the you-can-use-it-without-paying-annually version of Lightroom. Before diving into my Opinions, here's the geography of the new terrain. 

In a nutshell, Adobe:

• Created a completely new service architected to shelve all of your photos in the cloud, and pull them down on demand for editing with a lightweight desktop application. It's called Lightroom CC. (Formerly Project Nimbus.)
• Rebranded and updated the full-power Lightroom CC as Lightroom Classic CC.
• Turned its previously minimalist Lightroom site into a full edit-and-organize online service.
• Updated its Lightroom iOS and Android apps to work within the new Lightroom CC cloud and share the application's look and feel.
• Updated Photoshop and integrated it better with the Lightroom CC cloud.
• Changed and expanded its photography-related subscription plans to accommodate more storage (which you'll need!).

That makes the new subscription options:

• The existing Creative Cloud Photography plan expands to include all the Lightrooms, Photoshop CC and 20GB for $10 per month. With 1TB it will be $20 per month ($15 per month the first year for current subscribers upgrading to 1TB.)
• A Lightroom CC plan with 1TB for $10 per month.
• A Lightroom mobile plan for just the iOS and Android apps plus 100GB for $5 per month.

All the plans include the paid version of Adobe Spark which lets you replace Adobe's branding with your own and create custom templates.