The and: Lightroom is hard to buy; harder than I was told by Adobe just the other day. A friend and client tells me:

Unbelievable.
So, I decided to purchase lightroom, rather than use the trial version. Every link on the page either takes you to the creative cloud version with the subscriptions, with the one exception to buy, but that is only to buy an upgrade version for existing customers. I unfortunately purchased the upgrade version only to find out that it is useless to me and so I have to get that refunded.
Anyway after calling adobe and talking to three different people, I found out that the only way to buy a new standalone version is buy calling adobe and ordering it over the phone with them. They really are trying to make it hard to buy anything other than the subscription model. Anyway, I did manage to get the full standalone version, but it certainly took a while.

So persevere, and buy it today, before you have to go to the cloud.

And on an amusing note: here are the world’s 16 most expensive photos. How I would like to be Mr Gursky. http://www.businessinsider.com/andreas-gursky-photo-record-most-expensive-2011-11?op=1