How to Get Lightroom Free on Mac: Easy & Fast Ways

Adobe Lightroom is the solution to both the professional and amateur photographer who needs an all-rounder photo editing and management tool. It is quite popular with those who take photography seriously because of its AI-assisted editing capabilities, smooth cloud syncing, and so on. This article will provide various alternative methods on how to get Lightroom free on your MacBook Intel and Apple Silicon series.
Part 1. Is Adobe Lightroom Available For Free?
The Lightroom free Mac version is not entirely free, but you can get access to its full function in the 7-day trial. However, this free version has limitations compared to the paid subscription, which you can get more information on by reading the following:
Adobe Lightroom Pricing Models
In the following, learn about the pricing models of Lightroom and get a better idea of which one suits your needs:

Subscription Plans
Lightroom
Photography
Creative Cloud Pro
Pricing
$17.99/month
$11.99/month (Yearly)
$119.88/year
$19.99/month
$69.99/month
Includes
Lightroom and Lightroom Classic
Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Photoshop
Including Photoshop, After Effects, Lightroom, Illustrator, and more.
Device Accessibility
Mobile, Desktop, and Web
Desktop and Mobile
Desktop and Mobile
Storage
1TB
1TB
100GB
1 million+ Templates, photos, clips, and more
✓
✓
✓
Access to Adobe Fonts
✓
✓
✓
Targeted Audience
Photographers
Photographers and creators
Creative professionals, graphic designers, video editors, and illustrators.
Free Trial Availability
Adobe offers a 7-day free trial that allows full access to Lightroom's complete feature set across desktop, mobile, and web platforms. The trial includes Lightroom Classic as well, so users can try both versions before deciding on a purchase. During the trial, users get 1TB of cloud storage and 100 monthly credits for generative AI-powered editing tools, a recent advanced feature for creative photo enhancements, and more.

What's Included In The Free Trial?
Users can get the following features in the free trial version of Lightroom, which they can utilize for multiple purposes:

- 1.You get access to all photo and video editing tools, like exposure, white balance, color correction, etc.
- 2.This tool offers you tons of free presets for online purposes, making it easy to give your photos a polished look with one tap.
- 3.With this tool, you can get up to 1TB of cloud storage for syncing, backing up photos, and editing them later.
- 4.All the advanced tools, such as AI-powered editing capabilities, AI masking, object selection, and generative AI credits, can be accessed by the users.
- 5.It enables you to share your work directly to social networks or any other platform, browse in-app tutorials, and learning material.
Adobe Creative Cloud Student Discounts
Adobe offers substantial discounts for students and educators on Creative Cloud subscriptions, often reducing prices by 57% and more. These discounts provide full access to the entire suite of Creative Cloud apps, with pricing reduced to about $29.99/month. Moreover, Adobe Lightroom for Mac provides students with ample opportunities, as it provides over 20+ Creative Cloud apps, 100 GB, and over 1 million Adobe Stock assets.

Part 2. Adobe Lightroom for MacBook Air: Pros and Cons
After understanding the details of how to get free Lightroom for MacBook Air, let's learn the various advantages and disadvantages of this tool, as given below:

Pros
- The MacBook Air handles the basic photo editing tasks with great efficiency, making it suitable for photographers.
- Its excellent Retina display offers sharp and color-accurate image previews, which is beneficial for photo editing.
- You can run Lightroom smoothly on your MacBook Air with Apple Silicon, even with RAW images.
- There are no fans on the MacBook Air, thus letting you operate and work silently, while also staying cool during shorter editing sessions.
Cons
- With the lack of an active cooling system, you cannot perform prolonged, intense tasks, like bulk rendering, exporting large batches, and more.
- While Lightroom offers 16GB RAM, the Classic version prefers more memory for optimal performance, especially when multitasking.
- For photographers who work extensively with large RAW files and need a high-intensity editing session, this tool is not ideal.
Part 3. How to Download Lightroom on Mac for Free?
Let's learn how to download Lightroom on Mac by following these 3 comprehensive step guides:
1. Official Website
You can visit Adobe's official Lightroom download page, where Adobe offers a 7-day free trial of the full Lightroom desktop app. The following are the steps that explain how to get the free trail on your Mac:
Step 1.From the main website page, press the "Free Trial" button, and choose a "Pick a Subscription" from monthly to yearly, and proceed with "Continue".
Step 2.Now, enter all your credit card information, email, and more, and hit the "Start Free Trial" button to begin.
2. Lightroom App (For Mobile Access)
If you don't have to do advanced editing on your media, you can access its mobile version, which offers multiple features for free. Users can go through the following easy steps and understand how to download the Lightroom app on their different Android and iOS devices:
Step 1.On your mobile, open the App Store, search for Adobe Lightroom, and hit "Install" cloud icon to get the free version.
Step 2.Next, sign in with your Adobe account to start the free trial on the app and access all the various photo editing tools, like actions, crop, adjustments, and presets.
3. Wait For Offers
The software sometimes runs promotions or discounts, especially for students or during holiday seasons, thus reducing the price or extending the trial periods. You should check Adobe's official website or authorized resellers occasionally to find such offers. Moreover, keep an eye on Adobe's official website, newsletters, or resellers for deals that could reduce subscription costs or offer extended free trials.
Part 4. The Best Lightroom Alternative Free: HitPaw FotorPea
Although Lightroom is a powerful editing tool, beginners don’t find it friendly or intuitive, which coincides with their expensive subscription fee. Thus, use a best Lightroom alternative free, HitPaw FotorPea (formerly HitPaw Photo Enhancer) because it has powerful AI-based editing tools despite having user-friendly interface. It also offers 9+ AI models that can enhance, denoise, and unblur your photos at no cost, and is a good choice with robust photo editing tools.
Key Features
- 1.Enhances image's textures, like skin, fabric, shadows, and more, with extreme sharpness precision.
- 2.Fixes shaky images with AI and bring back their clarity and quality in 4K to 8K quality.
- 3.Unblurs photos with lens blur, motion blur, and compression blur sharpening modes.
- 4.Gets rid of grainy pictures and balance the shadows and highlight details of your image formats.
- 5.Brings the natural colors of the image by using the colorizing, scratch repair, and color calibration models.
Walkthrough Guide on How to Enhance Photos Using HitPaw FotorPea
The following steps will help you understand how easy it is to enhance and upscale your images using this advanced AI photo enhancer:
Step 1. Open the Enhancer Tool and Import Image
On the main interface, head to the "Home" tab, click the "Enhance Photos Now" button, and choose an image from the opened dialogue box.

Step 2. Choose AI Enhancer Model & Begin the Process
Next, from the right panel, toggle the "Face Model," and hit the "Preview" button to get the enhancement started.

Step 3. Preview the Image and Export on Your Device
In the end, get a side-by-side preview of the enhanced image from the original, and press "Export" to save it on your computer.

FAQs on How to Download Free Lightroom for Mac
Yes, using cracked Lightroom is illegal as it violates copyright laws and can lead to legal consequences, such as fines and lawsuits. Furthermore, downloading a cracked Lightroom for Mac from any third-party or pirated sites can introduce viruses and malware.
Lightroom Mobile allows free basic editing, but RAW editing usually requires a paid subscription. On your mobile, the RAW photos can be edited for free, but users need to pay to get access to advanced RAW editing features.
You can get free access by using Adobe's official 7-day free trial, which offers all features, including Lightroom Classic and cloud storage. The Lightroom Mobile and web versions offer limited free editing, which you can use without limit.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this article dealt with the issue of how to get Lightroom free on your Mac devices, as it offers various advantages to photographers. The first part explained in detail about the various pricing plans, free trial availability, its features, and discount offers. However, if you don't want to pay monthly, turn to HitPaw FotorPea, which offers twice more features for free.
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