It is pretty clear that Adobe intentionally makes it very difficult to get a standalone version of Lightroom on its website and it only wants its customers to upgrade to the CC version… Both only offered CC and standalone full versions and there was no upgrade anywhere to be found.

I even looked for the upgrade at B&H Photo Video and Amazon. After about 15 minutes of searching, I gave up! Indeed, my friend was right – the process of finding an upgrade link turned out to be a nightmare. I then looked through a few websites and forums that gave step-by-step instructions on how to find the standalone Lightroom 6 version and none of them worked either. The very first legitimate option from Adobe was “Adobe Store – Adobe Lightroom 6 – Upgrade”, which took me to the Adobe Southeast Asia store! The funny thing is, the moment I clicked on “Change” to change to another store, it took me right back to the Adobe Catalog, which only offers one Photoshop Lightroom version and you guessed it right, the CC version. I typed “Adobe Lightroom 6 Upgrade” in Google, which took me to all kinds of places, none of which offered an upgrade option to Lightroom 6, only CC offers. I immediately thought that he was simply overlooking something, so I decided to give it a quick go on my mobile phone.

He told me that he was frustrated with his online Adobe experience, since he could not find the standalone version – every search lead him to the Creative Cloud (CC) subscription model, which he did not want to buy. A friend of mine texted me with a question on how he can upgrade from his Lightroom 5 copy to Lightroom 6 this weekend.

Lightroom version 6