Download Adobe Lightroom CC

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Key notes

  • Adobe Lightroom is currently one of the most popular and effective photo editing and management software solutions.
  • As you can see, the requirements aren't absurd, although we can agree that they're on the high-end side.
Logo of Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom CC is a tool you can download to edit and manage photos. It provides unmatched editing tools and comprises an intuitive photo management section, so you won’t have to switch windows every time.

However, don’t expect all this awesomeness to come for free. If you’re interested and want to find out more about Adobe Lightroom CC, our comprehensive review will quench your thirst for knowledge.

Adobe Lightroom CC system requirements

Before you download Adobe Lightroom CC, check if your system meets these requirements:

  • Operating system: Windows 10 version 1803 or later
  • Architecture: supports only the 64-bit version of the OS
  • Processor: 64-bit friendly Intel or AMD CPUs
  • CPU Frequency: 2 GHz or faster
  • Memory: at least 4 GB RAM (minimum); at least 8 GB RAM (recommended)
  • Display: a monitor that supports a resolution of at least 1024×768
  • GPU:
    • AMD Radeon with DirectX 12 support
    • Intel Skylake (or newer) with DirectX 12 support
    • NVIDIA with DirectX 12 support
    • 1 GB VRAM
    • at least 2 GB dedicated VRAM (4 GB VRAM recommended)
  • Internet: a stable Internet connection is needed for activating the software, validating the subscription, and accessing online services.

As you can see, the requirements aren’t absurd, although we can agree that they’re on the high-end side. However, considering the number of advanced features that Adobe Lightroom provides you with, it makes perfect sense.

Overview of Adobe Lightroom CC features

    • Tone Curves and Color Mixer features to help you achieve the perfect look for your photos
    • Intuitive sliders make sure you don’t lose time with endless tweaking operations
    • Adjust the size and aspect ratio to the perfect values with Crop and Rotate
    • Invert or straighten photos the way you like
    • Highlight your subjects or change the focus of your photos
    • Noise Reduction makes sure your photos will stay sharp without a lot of noise
    • Soften or sharpen your photos to adjust their clarity
    • Edit only specific parts of your photos
    • Numerous profiles and presets to help you create achieve the desired effect in no time
    • Geometry tools let you align your image perfectly
    • Healing brush can help you remove unwanted components of your pictures
    • Adobe Lightroom saves your every move in the cloud and lets you access your projects from other devices
    • Extensive library of helpful tutorials
    • Saves photos you want to share automatically so you can access them from your devices
    • Adobe Sensei machine learning component can recognize your content to provide you with faster, more relevant search results
    • Create custom categories using image labels
    • 1 TB of cloud storage included in the basic subscription plan
    • Non-destructive edits remove the need of creating copies of your work
    • Upload photos straight to Amazon Prime or Google Photos
    • Works great with other Adobe tools (Photoshop, Behance, Stock)

Screenshots

Interface of Adobe Lightroom

Our Review

Pros
Professional photo editing/management tool
Sleek interface
7-day trial
Cons
Can't purchase a lifetime license
Creative Cloud installer is slow at times

How to get Adobe Lightroom CC for free

As we’ve mentioned somewhere in the review’s introduction, you shouldn’t expect this advanced photo editor/management tool to come all for free. You’ll have to purchase a subscription if you want to use Adobe Lightroom without restrictions.

If you’re not really prepared to spend money on a product you didn’t test, you’re in luck. You can download and use a 7-day trial of this product before you make a decision on whether or not you need a subscription plan.

How to install Adobe Lightroom CC from Creative Cloud

Unfortunately, Adobe Lightroom’s installer comes along with the Creative Cloud desktop app. So there’s no way to download this product’s setup file and install it traditionally, without any intermediaries.

If you’re any familiar with Adobe products, you might agree that the Creative Cloud app can be really slow. Although it simplifies things greatly by providing you with an all-in-one downloader/installer/manager, sometimes the download/setup part may take way more than usual.

Sleek, polished interface

Once you’re past the infamous Creative Cloud installation part, you can finally take a good look at Adobe Lightroom’s interface. It combines traditional menus and toolbars with intuitive, highly accessible controls so that you won’t have to waste time looking around for them.

The program sports a classy, dark theme, which further adds to its professionally-designed layout. Even if you’re a total beginner, you’ll have little to no trouble with operating Adobe Lightroom like a pro in no time.

What you can do with Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom’s main purpose is to cater to most of your photography-related needs, ranging from creating outstanding results from your photos through editing to sharing your photos across supported devices and managing pictures seamlessly.

The program’s built-in machine learning component (Adobe Sensei) can recognize people and places on the fly. That way, you can perform quick searches on your photos and Adobe Lightroom will always return the most relevant results.

Handy all-in-one photo management tool

All things considered, Adobe Lightroom truly is a utility for pros. It provides you with unmatched editing capabilities, but also offers top-notch photo management tools, cloud access so you can share content between devices, and an extensive collection of tutorials.

The only drawbacks are that you can’t have it for free and that it’s tied to the Creative Cloud component, which might slow down the downloading/installation operations. Oh, and you can’t purchase a lifetime license, either.

FAQ: Learn more about Adobe Lightroom CC

  • Can I use Adobe Lightroom for free?

Yes, you can, but there’s a catch. You can download and use a 7-day trial version of this program, after which you’ll have to purchase a subscription plan.

  • What’s the difference between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC?

There are many differences (feature-wise, performance-wise) between these two versions of Lightroom. However, the most noticeable one is that you can’t purchase a perpetual license Lightroom CC, while Lightroom Classic still allows you to do so.

  • What happens to my photos if I cancel my Adobe Lightroom subscription?

You won’t lose your photos or access to them, for that matter. However, you will get reverted to the free 2 GB storage version of it, and you’ll have 90 days to either reduce your storage to below 2 GBs or download all your files to your local machine. If you leave more than 2 GBs of files on your cloud storage for more than 90 days you might lose access to some or all of them.

Full Specifications

License
Free trial
Keywords
photo editor, photo management

More about the topics: Adobe Lightroom, photo editors