Lightroom 6 or CC

[Kayaker72]

Do you access it online each time you use it, or does it download and stay on the machine so you can work off line?

Download it once, it is on your machine

Is it only a cloud feature where you are uploading your files or does or can it all remain on your computer?

Essentially behaves as it did when you bought the software. The software and all files are on my computer.

Can you use programs on other machines, for instance can I use it on the iMac at home and then utilize it on the Windows machine at work?

There is an option where you can sync files with the cloud and that allows you to sync between multiple devices. I believe their target is mobile devices, but I do not see why you couldn't do that with a work then home machine. In other words, if anything they seem to be encouraging the sharing of files between multiple devices. I do not use that feature, so am unsure of how well it works.

Or is it limited to only available on two computers like the old versions?

I am not sure. I found the 2 device reference online which referred to specific sections of the T&C...the current T&C's no longer read that way. But I only use on one device.

The apps are downloaded and your files remain local. It needs to check-in one in a while to ensure the license is still valid. Their servers went down for a day or two a while back. People's apps still worked, but they lost the ability to use the Adobe Font stuff... that wanted to be able to check the license either on each use, or far too often. They may have fixed that, as it was a lot of bad press at the time. So, barring any extended outage of internet, you should be fine. The CC apps can be activated on two machines, just like the old apps. I'm pretty sure you can mix and match PC/Mac just like the old apps too.

Old apps needed you to deactivate your license on the machine to get the license back, into order to install it elsewhere. That sucked if your machine died. Now that they require the occasional phone-home, they should be able to give you back a lost license, once the previous phone-home time limit has expired... Though I'm not sure they offer that. This question was what put me off getting the Photography CC subscription when it was announced, as I'd just lost a PC and one of my Elements licenses. I only decided to switch to CC when I got the 7D2, since a new Elements or Lightroom would be the same price, except I'd have full Photoshop. I still only went for it after I realized that even if Adobe don't offer any way to get your licenses back, I could cancel at the end of a year and buy it again with a new email address to get 2 new licenses... so it's not the end of the world.

All I can add to this is my computer crashed, I re-downloaded LR no problem. Could be because I only was using it on one device. I've lost power/internet for a few days in a row and was still using lightroom on generator power.

The handshake thing makes sense. The only issue I've run into was if I changed my password online, I needed to logout and log back into the Creative Suite app to make sure I was logged in with the current password. A bit odd, but this happened while I was downloading LR 6/cc. Lightroom 5.7 opened just fine, but LR 6/cc would not.