Lightroom: AI Photo Editor

Lightroom Review: Desktop-Grade Tools on a Phone, Most Behind Premium

Free vs Premium: what $49.99 a year unlocks on mobile

Adobe's FAQ draws the line: capture, organizing, sharing and most sliders are free, while masking, the healing brush, geometry tools, batch editing, raw editing, cloud storage, sync and search need Premium. Generative Remove, Lens Blur and Adaptive Presets are paid too, though the free app lets you try some of them. The US App Store lists Premium with 100 GB at $6.99 a month or $49.99 a year, and Adobe's help pages say store-bought Premium works on mobile only. The desktop app and Lightroom Classic need an adobe.com plan, such as the 1 TB plan at $11.99 a month on an annual commitment. Check the current price in the app; it varies by region.

Generative Remove is credit-free; Generative Expand costs one credit

Generative Remove runs on Adobe Firefly: brush over a road sign or a passer-by, and the Refine panel offers three AI fills. It needs a connection, and Adobe's credits FAQ lists it among features that currently consume no credits. Generative Expand, added in August 2026, spends one credit per generation as it widens the canvas to a ratio or a social-media size, and on iOS it runs on iPhone only. Photo to Video, under Animate in Quick Actions, sends a still to Google's Veo 3.1 Lite model for a 4-, 6- or 8-second clip at up to 1080p; longer clips cost more. The mobile and web plan includes 100 credits a month, the 1 TB plan 250, with no rollover.

Raw editing and cloud sync: paid, with a Snapseed contrast

Raw editing on a phone or tablet is a Premium feature; files come in over a USB On-The-Go cable on Android or Apple's Camera Connection Kit on iOS. Snapseed, Google's free editor, expanded its Android raw support in July 2026 to DNG, ARW, RAF, NEF, CR3, ORF and PEF files with no subscription. The paid plan earns its keep in sync: originals you add back up to Adobe's cloud, edits follow you to desktop and web, and raw files from Lightroom Classic arrive as lighter smart previews, though only one Classic catalog can sync. When storage runs out, new photos stay on the device that took them. Cancel, and you keep the free tools but lose premium features and syncing.

Adobe's content terms, the privacy labels and what 2026 reviews report

In June 2024 a re-acceptance prompt for Adobe's Terms of Use drew concerns about its content license, and Adobe added a pledge never to train generative AI on customer content. Photos stored on its servers are still scanned automatically for illegal content and may be analyzed with machine learning for product improvement unless you opt out in your Adobe account preferences. Apple's privacy label lists identifiers used to track you; Google Play's data safety section reports no third-party sharing but collection of precise location. Among the 150 newest Play reviews we read, from September 28 to October 1, 2026, seven of 28 one- and two-star ratings cite paywalls and seven cite lost edits, slow loading or failed exports.