Favorite photo editing software, other than LR?

I've used Aperture with great success.  It is my software of choice.  But I also happen to have a copy of Capture One 7; if it is critical the C1 software is better than any I've seen, but really needs RAW files to shine.

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= John
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laninga/sets/
http://laningaphotos.wordpress.com/

I use GIMP and Picasa.

Picasa is very good for organizing  / cataloging / testing effects.

Had a free copy of Photoshop and find GIMP to be almost identical . GIMP is Very good for " Moving stuff around" too !

The portable version of GIMP is excellent on netbooks when travelling.



Tugboat in The Fog

Before I got Lightroom used whatever came with the camera to process RAW files and then did my editing in GIMP. Love the price - free.

Free and free. Also, they're two of the best open source pieces of software available.

I don't thinkof it as real pping and Picasa certainly is in a differnt league to the high flying packages but for dong minor tweaks including cropping it is just so quick and effective.  I bwould hope it never disappears just because it is too simple.

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Faststone 4.6.  Lightyears ahead of Picasa and free to boot.

...includes NIK Color Efex-- which is powerful.  X5 is easy to use and very capable, much more intuitive to use than CS or LR-- or Elements for that matter.  I've been using JASC/Corel for over 10 years.  Poor RAW converter though.

Cheers.  Ernie

I have been happy with ACDSEE PRO.  Not so expensive but plenty of control and very easy to use and manage.  I tried FastStone but much less versatile and it bogs down my computer.

Yes, it's a "good" piece of "software." You can "quote" me on that.

I also prefer ACDSee Pro. And for quick and dirty JPEG PP, I sometimes even use the very basic freeware PhotoScape.

I've got LR4 too, as anybody was so euphoric about it, but I hate programmes that want to force their storing system pon me. Thank you sir, I can't deal with that.

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I'm a HOlygan

Lightroom appears to be the standard for now, but for me too expensive and the relentless and "compulsory" updating by Adobe makes it an expensive product to own over the years.

Only a milli-whisker in output quality behind LR is Silkypix Pro 5 for RAW conversion or for jpeg fiddling. It is expensive but paid updates happen way less often. Always busy adding new cameras in the very frequent minor free updates.

For industrial grade jpeg/tiff fiddling, layers etc then hard to beat PaintShop Pro X5 Ultimate, particularly as the Black Friday price of $29.99 for an update works out it was a full version.

Though for many quick simple fiddles I find FastStone Viewer hard to beat. I did pay the suggested donation as it is such good value.

I use FastStone to load all images into auto day dated folders and then add some text to the folder name. I'm wary of any database way of holding keywords etc as I have been burnt before losing lots of input. I just make things easy to find via folder dates and names plus reference to trip diaries.

Use whichever tool works for whatever job.

Regards....... Guy

I use Adobe products on Windows  at work - including LightRoom - but I prefer Aperture, which I use for my own photos on my Mac at home. I don't think you can really say one is "better" than the other, they have similar feature sets and obviously the underlying concepts are the same. I've been reading about DxO's product, and I think it lools like it has some powerful tools, too.

Obviously, LR isn't the only choice, but it is my choice. I love the user interface.  Have used it for a couple of years, now since I started shooting RAW.  Before that I almost exclusively used Photoshop (upgraded from version 5 to 7, to CS, to CS3, to CS5 where I am now.  Nowadays, I use Photoshop mostly for despeckling scanned or copied images, sometimes noise reduction with noiseware add-on  and some other non-routine photo and graphic work.

Of course LR isn't the only choice, but in my opinion it's the best option if you want both developing and cataloging capability. It's not free, but it is not expensive either. In fact I think it's surprisingly reasonable for how good it is. I was a Photoshop user from PS CS2 through CS5, and started using LR a couple of years ago. Since then I rarely use Photoshop, because LR can do pretty much everything I typically need to do. GIMP and Photoshop are both overkill for most photography needs, in my opinion.

The best thing about Lightroom is how much time it can save because the workflow is so efficient. Being able to cull, catalog/tag, develop, print, and publish all from one application is really convenient. I regularly publish to my Smugmug site, Facebook, DPReview, and books to Blurb all from within Lightroom. The RAW processing in LR is also fantastic. It has it's limits: Cloning out small objects is possible, but removing larger or more complex ones is better done in a product like Photoshop. Same with making precise selections and masks. Photoshop just has more precise tools, but these things go beyond basic developing.

Sean

I have a copy of PSP12 on my machine (tried the later versions but can't get on with them). Its my main programme for preparing images for the web and it has a couple of effects I find useful. Otherwise its LR4 all the way

I like Photivo better than Raw Therapy for RAW files, and it' also free.

The other way round:

They are two of the best pieces of software - I get better results from RT than from PS Elements; however, I never tried LR4.
They run on Ubuntu (who still uses Windows?) and are free.

Peter.

Ever since they started including Nik filters, Corel's Paint Shop Pro Photo X$ or X5 cannot be beat.

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Roberthd12

ACDSee PRO 4 is what I mainly use. Still learning photography and have a long way to go. Here are some of examples from ACDSee processing.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/50320501