Lightroom Alternatives

Hey guys!

 

A week or so ago I've tried searching for the top 10 photography forums, and this one came up! That's amazing! I'm looking forward to being a part of this community! About my title: How many of you use Lightroom alternatives, and if so, which one do you use?

 

Greetings!

I switched from LR to Capture One and haven't looked back. I also now use Affinity Photo for deeper edits, which I rarely do these days. I just didn't want to pay a subscription for LR. I know some pros do it as a cost of doing business, but I get sick of every Tom, Dick and Harry wanting a piece of my dough. It's like renting a camera or just buying it. Also, welcome. :-)

I've just begun using GIMP, which is freeware. You can see multiple YouTube and and regular web pages with pointers for using it.

My first RAW converter was Aperture. Then I moved to DxO. These days there is at least one free app out there. It might not support lens profiles and such but if you're processing film scans, I imagine that profiles are less relevant, if relevant at all.

Yes

Picasa

Packaged RAW converters

Darktable, RAW therapee, GIMP

 

What is your goal and what might be LR benefits that are hard to live without?

I'm missing the chance to manage multiple cameras by adding a correction factor to their system clock and an Xrite colorchecker based profile. - How important is such to the stuff you are really doing?

I don't believe in a need for LR to see the images in my computer's reach or to convert the odd RAW file.

Capture One is excellent. It has a bit of learning curve but the tools are great. I tried On One but it’s slow.

I moved over to capture one from adobe and while it’s ok for processing the raw file I actually prefer Digikam to house my catalog. My guess over time I will stay with digikam for long term cataloging and eventually move to using affinity as my raw processor.

For free Darkroom is a winner. ACDSEE Photo Studio 5.3 for Mac is a wonderful and capable program for both processing and cataloging of images.

GR

P.S.-For years I used Corel AfterShot Pro 3 and enjoyed it. Today, they have not updated camera formats and my camera is not yet supported. If and when they deem fit to update their software I probably will use it again for quick processing as this software had many good features and was very quick too.

> How many of you use Lightroom alternatives, and if so, which one do you use?

 

I am a "native" Unix user, ie. have grown into unix ecosystem before Microsoft came out with Windows 3.1 and 95. So for home computing I run OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux and there are many raw editors, usually I am good with Gimp + Darktable or Rawtherapee or Lightzone. These are also compiled for Windows and MacOSX (which is a unix system under the hood).

The advantage with these is that, being opensource, you can try different interfaces without paying a license, in order to make your mind.

 

I use post-processing mostly with scanned negatives, from totally manual systems, so all the databases of cameras and/or lenses specific tweaks coming with some proprietary software are totally useless. It may be of interest for people who shot only digital (or even film) with electronic cameras and lenses.

 

so in short: it depends what kind of photography you do (all digital, film with electronic, purely analog), what computing environment you are used to, how much you are willing to learn, how much you can spend.

You might get more responses if you post this in the digital darkroom forum.