Today’s Question: A follow-on question [to the question about Lightroom Classic no longer being available with a perpetual license]. What happens if I stop paying the monthly charge for Creative Cloud? I assume I can no longer utilize Photoshop, but how about my Lightroom catalog information that I have invested a lot of time in?
Tim’s Quick Answer: When you cancel an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, you will actually still have access to Lightroom Classic on your computer, though some features would be limited. Photoshop would no longer be available after your subscription ends.
More Detail: I think many photographers would be surprised to learn that they can continue to make use of Lightroom Classic to manage their photos, even after they have canceled their subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud. Of course, some features would be unavailable, and you would not be able to upgrade the software. That means, for example, you would not be able to get the latest updates for new camera raw capture formats.
Here is how Adobe describes the limitations of using Lightroom Classic after you’ve canceled your subscription:
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You continue to have access to all your photos on your local hard drive through Lightroom [Classic] 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.
After cancellation, your allowed cloud storage is reduced to 2 GB. If you are over your storage limit, you have 90 days to reduce your online usage.
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What this all means is that you would be able to continue managing your existing catalog of photos with some limitations, and your online storage allowance would be reduced. However, the feature that remain available would enable you to continue managing your workflow as you transition to other software.