Adobe Lightroom 6 is collapsing?

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, developed and sold by Adobe, is a photo editing software that released Lightroom 6, a permanent licensed version in 2015. However, as of December 2020, there have been reports of crashes when trying to use some features of Lightroom 6, and reports that Lightroom 6 is not a permanent version.

Lightroom 6, released in 2015, is made available for permanent use of the software once purchased. Lightroom 6 sales ended in 2017, and all Lightroom purchase methods were abolished, and currently, there is only a subscription method, Lightroom CC.

Adobe announced that it was finally discontinuing support for the final version update of Lightroom 6, a sales method, at the end of 2017. Nevertheless, users who do not switch to the subscription method continue to use Lightroom 6, but in December 2020, there were reports on the Lightroom 6 official forum that Lightroom 6 crashes when trying to use certain features.

Users of Lightroom 6 reported that opening the Lightroom Face Recognition module causes the application to close in seconds. The Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC facial recognition modules are tools that allow you to identify and catalog specific faces in photos.

On December 13, 2020, one user reported that Lightroom crashes when opening the face recognition module for the last week, and whether it is affected by the December 2020 Windows update or installing Photoshop elements (Photoshop Elements 2021, Adobe Premiere Elements 2021). It is said that it may be related.

Another user reported that the app crashes when using the facial recognition module as well as the virtual cloning feature that duplicates photo metadata. Another user changed the date of the PC to October 1st, and, curiously, revealed a solution that the face recognition module worked, so the problem was the system date.

Foreign media who reported this incident point out the possibility that the third-party license used for the Adobe app function has expired, causing a series of problems in that the problem is solved by rotating the system date. One user pointed out in a forum that the problem was that Adobe’s facial recognition function was licensed from the vendor in the form of a DLL. Stopping support for Lightroom 6 is fine, but Adobe claims to be responsible for any flaws that render Lightroom 6 unusable due to license expiration.

This is not the first time that the Lightroom 6 function has been disabled. In 2018, there were reports that the map module function, which allows you to check the location where a photo was taken, on Google Maps, is not available in Lightroom 6. This is due to the expiration of the Google Maps API key used for this feature, and can be solved by replacing the Adobe API key with a private API key.

It is pointed out that the expiration of third-party licenses due to this incident is likely to occur in the future and that more features will not be available in Lightroom 6 over time. One user said that he bought Lightroom 6 because of the perpetual license version, and asked if he should discuss the definition of permanent facial recognition DLL license expiration.

Adobe responded that the licensed version of Lightroom Classic is not supported. Since Lightroom 6 support has already been ended, technical support, security fixes, and bug fixes are not possible. Of course, some analysts say that it is a wise decision from a business point of view for Adobe to pursue a change in subscription method that can achieve significant sales growth in 2020 and secure continuous profits. Related information can be found here .