Lightroom 6 (or similar app) on an M1 MacBook Pro?

[Apple_Glen_UK]

I’d appreciate any help/suggestions with this please.

I am still using Lightroom 6 (standalone version - no subscription) on a 13” MacBook Pro (2015) running Mojave. I am thinking of getting an M1 MacBook Pro. I know that these cannot run Lightroom 6.

I have been using Lightroom 6 for years and my main reason for using it is for cataloguing my photos and videos. I rarely actually do any editing on it. So, I am wondering…

If I got an M1 MBP is there a way of running some sort of Mojave emulator so I could still run Lightroom 6 exactly as I use it now?

Or...

... is there a similar app I could use to catalogue my photos and videos? I have thousands of photos and videos all in chronological order and I want to keep this going. I do not want to sign up to anything with a monthly subscription.

You can probably tell that I am absolutely not an expert on any of this, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[Ben J.]

Long time LR user myself, and I'm OK with paying the $18 per month, annual subscription, myself. LR performance on M-series macs and fast SSDs is so fantastic, I thinks it's worth the price. The LR plan includes LR Classic, equivalent to the 'old' LR like LR6, Lightroom (regular) for mobile, and 1TB web storage.

I did a lot of research for a LR alternative when they went subscription, but without much luck. There was really no way to import all my photos, with edits, to a different cataloging app. If you have very little edits, and the organization and sorting part is most important to you, I think there are several alternatives. Maybe even the mac Photos app could work. It also handles video. I have my videos in the mac TV app.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll be amazed at how even the 5 year old M1 will perform compared to the 2015 MBP.

Just my initial thoughts.

(Edit: Oh and I checked 'running LR6 on M1 under Rosetta2' and it seems even though some people have had partial success, most report problems. They say it's due to parts of the LR6 code are 32bit, and other parts are 64bit. Modern macOS is 64bit-only.)