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Good news for Mac photographers — Lightroom now available from Mac App Store

Apple

Eyeing an Adobe Lightroom subscription? The photo editing software can now be downloaded directly from the Mac App Store. On Thursday, June 20, Apple added Lightroom CC to the largest catalog of Mac apps in the world, allowing for easier access for downloading the popular photo editing app. Lightroom is the first flagship Adobe app to come to the desktop-based App Store.

The update brings Adobe Lightroom CC to the App Store, offering simpler downloads for users who already have an Apple ID. While Mac users could already download the software directly from Adobe — and still can — opting for the App Store download could save time since Mac users may already have data such as purchasing information stored from previous downloads.

The update brings Adobe Lightroom CC, not the older but more robust Lightroom Classic, to the App Store. The Adobe Lightroom Plan subscription includes Lightroom CC and 1 TB of cloud storage for about $10 a month. Photographers who want both Lightroom CC and Photoshop, or who prefer Lightroom Classic, can still download the Photography Plan, which includes all three programs (with 20 GB of storage instead of 1 TB), for the same price through Adobe.

Apple

While Lightroom CC may be the first major Creative Cloud app to come to the Mac App Store, the mobile app has long been available to download for iOS devices. When Adobe redesigned the popular photo-editing app, the focus of Lightroom CC was a program that could edit from anywhere, consistently. Since the launch, a few features have come to the desktop version first, creating a few differences between the Mac and iOS version as well as between the PC and Android option.

Apple hasn’t commented on whether additional major Adobe apps will be coming to the App Store, such as the Photoshop-Lightroom subscription option or other Creative Cloud apps like Premiere Pro and Illustrator.

Apple redesigned the Mac App Store last year, later adding major apps such as Office 365 (Earlier this month, Apple iCloud arrived on the Microsoft Store). Launching with MacOS Mojave last fall, the updated Mac App Store uses an updated organization scheme and adds Apple’s latest apps like Apple News while also bringing Voice Memos to the desktop and expanding FaceTime.

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
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