Alternatives to Adobe CC on Mac?

Is anyone using Capture One or any other LR Classic CC alternative which performs better on Macs?

But I've heard there are no alternatives with a good integrated DAM module.

AMD CPUs and Nvidia with CUDA are said to perform much better with Adobe CC suite than the Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs that Macs are stuck with.

wco81 said:

Is anyone using Capture One or any other LR Classic CC alternative which performs better on Macs?

But I've heard there are no alternatives with a good integrated DAM module.

AMD CPUs and Nvidia with CUDA are said to perform much better with Adobe CC suite than the Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs that Macs are stuck with.

Click to expand...

If you include Adobe Photoshop CC then Affinity photo is a good competitor.

No DAM tool yet but it suppose to be in the works.

Toermalijn said:

wco81 said:

Is anyone using Capture One or any other LR Classic CC alternative which performs better on Macs?

But I've heard there are no alternatives with a good integrated DAM module.

AMD CPUs and Nvidia with CUDA are said to perform much better with Adobe CC suite than the Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs that Macs are stuck with.

Click to expand...

If you include Adobe Photoshop CC then Affinity photo is a good competitor.

No DAM tool yet but it suppose to be in the works.

Click to expand...

Thank I thought I'd heard that some of these smaller PP software developers have been saying DAM is coming.

Maybe it was Luminar, not Affinity, but I think it's a challenge for all smaller developers trying to win over customers from Adobe.

wco81 said:

AMD CPUs and Nvidia with CUDA are said to perform much better with Adobe CC suite than the Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs that Macs are stuck with.

Click to expand...

Isn't that only true for video editing and 3D? Are there any published benchmarks that show CUDA making any difference at all for Photoshop or any other still image editor application?

Also, Affinity Photo is GPU optimized for Apple Metal, not CUDA.

I haven't used Capture One but found an article from last year about it and GPU acceleration (on PCs). CUDA is not mentioned. OpenCL is. There is a chart of GPUs, the AMD Vegas seem to be up near the top. Also it says "On one hand, it’s nice to see that you don’t need to go with a high-end graphics card to get good performance out of Capture One. On the other hand, it’s unfortunate that those with higher-end cards already won’t see much of an advantage in this particular application."

https://techgage.com/article/a-look-at-phase-one-capture-one-performance/

Also found a Capture One help page about GPU and Mac:

https://support.captureone.com/hc/e...OpenCL-do-and-how-do-I-use-it-in-Capture-One-

It does say a higher number of CUDA cores helps, in one paragraph. But the rest of the page is all about OpenCL as the primary GPU accelerant for Capture One.

On the Mac, Apple is deprecating OpenCL because they want developers to use Apple Metal.

As for a DAM, it is competition that we all badly need and is not there. Affinity talked about it like 5 years ago, users regularly pester them about it on their forums.

But in 2017 Affinity put out a tweet:

wco81 said:

We aren't working on a DAM. We've thought about working on one, but we are currently focused on other projects.

Click to expand...

Their next big release was a layout program (Affinity Publisher) instead.

What type of Mac do you have? I travel with a Air that has 1.6 GHz dual Core i5. 4GB Ram. It runs CC, DXO PL and Canon's DPP. It may not be a rocket but it keeps up quite well.

I just got a 2019 27" iMac. 3.5 GHz 6 Core i5. 64 Ram. 8 GB video card and it rocks. I don't even have to follow these following maintenance tips and the brushes flow.

Spot Removal tool, local corrections, and History panel

The Spot Removal Tool and Local Corrections Brush are not designed for hundreds to thousands of corrections. If your image contains many (hundreds) of localized adjustments, consider using a pixel-based editing application such as Photoshop for that level of correction.

If you have many corrections, check your History panel. The History panel has no limits, and it isn't deleted unless specified. If you've been creating many local or spot corrections, your history could be long, which can slow Lightroom's performance as a whole.

Order of Develop operations

The best order of Develop operations to increase performance is as follows:

1. Spot healing.
2. Geometry corrections, such as Lens Correction profiles and Manual corrections, including keystone corrections using the Vertical slider.
3. Global non-detail corrections, such as Exposure and White Balance. These corrections can also be done first if desired.
4. Local corrections, such as Gradient Filter and Adjustment Brush strokes.
5. Detail corrections, such as Noise Reduction and Sharpening.

Note: Performing spot healing first improves the accuracy of the spot healing, and ensures the boundaries of the healed areas match the spot location.



The above comes from this which I follow carefully. Takes a bit of reading but once set up it is no effort at all. The big one people found on other sites is to turn off lens corrections before using brushes, particularly Spot Healing. Another one is how much free HD space does your system have. Rule of thumb is 100GB.

wco81 said:

But I've heard there are no alternatives with a good integrated DAM module.

Click to expand...

Everytime I heard that sentence, I always chuckle, you haven't looked hard enough

darktable is free/open-source and is very similar to LR. Both LR and darktable utilize SQLite DB as the back-end for DAM. It even got recommended in mainstream:

https://petapixel.com/2019/09/06/a-comprehensive-intro-to-darktable-a-free-lightroom-alternative/

wco81 said:

AMD CPUs and Nvidia with CUDA are said to perform much better with Adobe CC suite than the Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs that Macs are stuck with.

Click to expand...

darktable has been utilizing GPU for years, way ahead of Adobe:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=darktable-opencl-gpu&num=4

more recent benchmarks:
https://math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas/darktable_bench.html

sluggy_warrior said:

wco81 said:

But I've heard there are no alternatives with a good integrated DAM module.

Click to expand...

Everytime I heard that sentence, I always chuckle, you haven't looked hard enough

darktable is free/open-source and is very similar to LR. Both LR and darktable utilize SQLite DB as the back-end for DAM. It even got recommended in mainstream:

https://petapixel.com/2019/09/06/a-comprehensive-intro-to-darktable-a-free-lightroom-alternative/

sluggy_warrior said:

AMD CPUs and Nvidia with CUDA are said to perform much better with Adobe CC suite than the Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs that Macs are stuck with.

Click to expand...

darktable has been utilizing GPU for years, way ahead of Adobe:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=darktable-opencl-gpu&num=4

more recent benchmarks:
https://math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas/darktable_bench.html

Click to expand...

I chuckle as well. It is a good software. Does it come with an integrated personal website? Zenfolio was costing me $150 a year and dropping it basically paid for the plan.

If I ever drop Adobe my backup is DXO but I'll look into DT. I tried it once and didn't like their process but I didn't put a lot of time into it. When I test software I typically look for these things at first. Capture, Creative and Export sharpening which includes downsampling algorithms. Clarity and micro-contrast options. Things like that.

I feel even more confident that soon things will have a wonderful conclusion

Zeee said:

I chuckle as well. It is a good software. Does it come with an integrated personal website? Zenfolio was costing me $150 a year and dropping it basically paid for the plan.

Click to expand...

being free/open-source, it doesn't focus on making money, I even had to donate to the individual developers directly, no donation set up for the project yet. Thus, integrated personal website is very unlikely.

It does have several export modules that send the output files directly to Facebook, Google Photos, Piwigo, or emails. I've been using Google Photos since 2010 to share photos with my family and friends, unlimited storage, including 2-hour long recital videos. Though, I don't send them directly from darktable, just drag-drop from a folder instead, but they're nicely organized into albums, so my family can easily search through them anytime from their mobile devices.

Zeee said:

If I ever drop Adobe my backup is DXO but I'll look into DT. I tried it once and didn't like their process but I didn't put a lot of time into it.

Click to expand...

They've been making rapid changes and improvements, make sure you try out the latest version, 3.0.1 currently:
https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases

A good recent write up to reflect the current state:
https://pixls.us/articles/darktable-3-rgb-or-lab-which-modules-help/

or scroll directly to the beginner section:
https://pixls.us/articles/darktable...odules-help/#a-minimal-workflow-for-beginners

Zeee said:

When I test software I typically look for these things at first. Capture, Creative and Export sharpening which includes downsampling algorithms. Clarity and micro-contrast options. Things like that.

Click to expand...

see a sample I posted here, it that good enough?
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63734838