Adobe sets Lightroom free for Android phones, tablets
Following October's move to offer Lightroom at no charge for iOS device users, Adobe is doing the same for Android: The company announced on Monday that Lightroom Mobile 1.4 is available for free in the Google Play Store.
Until now, Adobe required a monthly paid subscription to use the app. And you still need one if you plan to synchronized images and edits between devices or with Adobe's Lightroom Web.
If you simply want to edit photos on a local device, however, there's no longer a reason to pay for the Creative Cloud subscription.
With Lightroom, you can use a number of one-touch controls or apply detailed granular edits to photos, ranging from white balance, tint, temperature, tone curves, and more. The latest version can be found in the Google Play Store here.
Although there are a number of superb low-cost or free image editing apps for Android - think Pixlr, Snapseed (now owned by Google), and others - Adobe's Lightroom Mobile has still proven popular: It shows between one and five million downloads in the Play Store.
That figure stands to rise with Adobe dropping the Creative Cloud subscription requirement; not just because it's free for local edits but because it's a solid photo editor.
Google even named it one of the best Android apps for 2015 as Lightroom made the cut of 50 titles.
And Adobe could actually boost its Creative Cloud user base as more people download the free app and later decide to take advantage of a free CC trial or pay $9.99 for a monthly subscription as they move their photo editing workflow from device to device.