Lightroom Classic: Kudos to the LR Development Team

I'm a long-time LR user and a professional photographer. I've been reading nothing but complaints about LR for ages and just wanted to pass on my congratulations to the LR team for taking LR's performance problems seriously and doing something about it. I have been using LR Classic 7.2 for about a week on a pretty conventional Windows 10 machine (4 core Intel i7700K with 32 GB of memory) and it simply flies. Not only have import and export been speeded up, but the develop module is snappy and there is no performance loss over time. In other words, I can focus on doing my job without worrying about the software getting in the way.

I've been using the auto develop Sensei technology as well and have been happily surprised to find that it gives me a great head start on developing my images, saving tons of time. Now, I can come back from an event shoot with several hundred photos, import them into LR, build smart and 1:1 previews and auto develop them in a matter of minutes, then go through and select and tweak the developing process for the keepers. Having the auto develop feature also helps with the selection of the keepers - you aren't thrown off by the occasional exposure issue. 

I'm also going to chime in on the subscription pricing issue and give Adobe two thumbs up. I love getting frequent updates and new features. And, when you compare the value of the Adobe photographer subscription to other similarly priced services (e.g. Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime) as opposed to paying an annual upgrade fee, I can't believe that people out there are whining. As a pro, I get all the software tools I need for my job for the price of a sports package on cable TV. This is an incredible bargain. Maybe I should shut up now before Adobe puts the price up!

Thank you Adobe team. You get a lot of abuse from this community (sometimes earned), but LR Classic 7.2 is a huge step forward and I'm thrilled with the product.