The news won’t mean much for existing Lightroom users, but it is a sign that Adobe sees a potential market for pro app subscriptions through the Mac App Store and wants to take it more seriously. Lightroom 5 never came to Apple’s store, however, and even Adobe itself doesn’t sell standalone versions of Lightroom today. Back in 2012, when Adobe sold its apps as standalone purchases before starting to push Creative Cloud subscriptions, Lightroom 4 was available for $149.99. This isn’t the first time that you’ve been able to get Lightroom in the Mac App Store. It’s free to download and use for a week, then it’ll require a $9.99 monthly subscription through Apple’s in-app purchasing system, which includes 1TB of cloud storage.
The Mac App Store version of Lightroom is the “new” Lightroom formerly known as Lightroom CC, which syncs with complementary mobile and tablet apps and has a different UI to what is now called Lightroom Classic. It’s the first pro Adobe app to make it to the App Store since Apple redesigned it with Mojave, last year’s version of macOS. Adobe has made Lightroom, its pro photo editing and management tool, available on the Mac App Store.
