Today’s Question: Is it possible to test [the new] Adobe Lightroom CC without losing Lightroom Classic CC?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can test Lightroom CC without disturbing Lightroom Classic. I do, however, recommend only working with a test set of photos for this purpose.
More Detail: The new cloud-based Lightroom CC provides online synchronization of all of the original image files within your library, which is a key feature that many photographers may find intriguing. Of course, there are still key features that are not available within Lightroom CC, which means it may be too soon for some photographers to adopt this new software.
The best way to get a sense of whether Lightroom CC might work for you is to take advantage of the free trial for this new software. But, of course, you don’t want to create any problems for your Lightroom Classic catalog when you are performing this testing.
Lightroom CC will have its own library that is separate of the Lightroom Classic catalog. Note, however, that synchronization with Lightroom CC requires that you first disable synchronization with Lightroom Classic. That means if you later decide that Lightroom CC is not for you that you’ll need to re-enable synchronization in Lightroom Classic, and that all folders you had enabled for synchronization will need to be re-synchronized. Other than that, as long as you work with duplicate images, there aren’t any risks associated with testing Lightroom CC.
I do recommend exporting copies of a variety of your photos from Lightroom Classic, using the “Original” option for the Image Format popup in the File Settings section of the Export dialog. You can then add the images in that folder into the Lightroom CC library for testing purposes. When you’re finished testing, you could simply delete all of those photos since they are just copies of your “real” originals.
Provided you work with duplicate copies of specific photos in Lightroom CC, and don’t import any of the actual source photos that are being managed by Lightroom Classic, you can have both applications installed on your computer so you can determine which provides the best solution for your workflow.
You can view a webinar presentation that talked about Lightroom CC versus Lightroom Classic on my “Tim Grey TV” channel on YouTube here:
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