Best Lightroom Alternative

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

Heavens Light said:

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

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You wouldn't pay the $120 for the year?

Reilly Diefenbach said:

Heavens Light said:

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

Click to expand...

You wouldn't pay the $120 for the year?

Click to expand...

No, like to pay for anything I do monthy. Keeps things affordable. Anyway, I’m gone from Lightroom. Stuff it, Adobe

Heavens Light said:

Reilly Diefenbach said:

Heavens Light said:

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

Click to expand...

You wouldn't pay the $120 for the year?

Click to expand...

No, like to pay for anything I do monthy.

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Hmm. Most people who don't see the value of the Adobe Photography Plan and its myriad capabilities complain about the monthly subscription. Repost this in the Retouching Forum where it belongs and you'll have no shortage of replies.

Heavens Light said:

Keeps things affordable.

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So it was affordable at $10 a month but not $120 per year or $80 per year around Black Friday. Got it.

Heavens Light said:

Anyway, I’m gone from Lightroom. Stuff it, Adobe

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Classy!

Heavens Light said:

Reilly Diefenbach said:

Heavens Light said:

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

Click to expand...

You wouldn't pay the $120 for the year?

Click to expand...

No, like to pay for anything I do monthy. Keeps things affordable. Anyway, I’m gone from Lightroom. Stuff it, Adobe

Click to expand...

I will be interested in what photo editor you select (maybe Affinity Photo 2)? I paid the Adobe annual fee $120 (more convenient than monthly). I have experimented extensively with Affinity Photo 2 and concluded it is a nice app. and does a lot but does note come close to replacing Photoshop for me.

Heavens Light said:

No, like to pay for anything I do monthy. Keeps things affordable. Anyway, I’m gone from Lightroom. Stuff it, Adobe

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You've obviously decided to ditch Adobe, and sound rather angry about it. That being said, I've found that in software you get what you pay for. It costs money to develop and maintain apps, and Adobe's functionality is breathtaking. Someone's got to pay, either through subscriptions or advertising. I prefer subscriptions b/c I like the developer to have a steady income stream and I don't like looking at ads, but YMMV.

These threads about LR alternatives pop up periodically. The fact that they do suggests that no one has come up with a good LR alternative.

Steve

Heavens Light said:

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

Click to expand...

Start with the functionality you want. LR is a highly functional tool. No point buying something else only to discover it misses something that matters to you.

There are many options, for example RawTherapee if you want to try alternative demosaicing algorithms and don't mind the learning overhead of an expert's tool.

I use Capture One and PhotoLab and update my versions when I have kit not covered in my current one, and when the Black Friday deals are active.

Capture One majors on colour and PL has its own camera and lens profiles and an excellent AI NR tool. I mostly use C1 because it allows me to use RAWs from different cameras with a similar neutral starting point and the EXIF embedded lens corrections. I'm too lazy to learn another tool.

PL is what I use for NR.

Although both C1 and PL are expensive, they have buy-once options and I like that. I got into C1 because there used to be a free Sony-only reduced basic version.

Andrew

--
Infinite are the arguments of mages. Truth is a jewel with many facets. Ursula K LeGuin
Please feel free to edit any images that I post

"Best" really depends on how you prioritize what you do/neeed/want in your software.

Capture 1 (I also got hooked by the free version with my a6000), LrC, and DXO PL all include comprehensive image management and cataloging tools, which you may/may not care about.

I bought Affinity (sale + upgrade = cheap) and use it for simple things, but afaik it doesn't have any decent cataloging functions. ON1 PhotoRaw (on sale through today) also looks interesting at <$100US. Not sure about file management there. If you don't need to search keywords, etc. these can be good options. ON1 has good denoise tools, Affinity has a decent design suite (not illustrator/indesign level, but cheap and not subscription).

Raw Therapee and Darktable are comprehensive and free, but they will take some time to figure out how to maximize what they can do (assuming you want to maximize; e.g., if you're touching up ooc jpegs vs cleaning up ISO 25600 raws). Most $ packages have trial periods, so you can see what works best/$ for your needs.

If you are doing this casually and are not performing complex edits, Affinity Photo 2 is a definite option. You can purchase for roughly $80 and you have it for as long as you want.

I agree it's not everything Photoshop is but for most casual users is more than sufficient. It will take a learning curve but there are a lot of YouTube videos on various aspects of it.

Personally I use Capture One Pro for same reasons another person mentioned. I love how it handles camera profiles and colors. Most of my work is done in Capture One pro alone. But for more complex edits I export from Capture One pro to Affinity 2. It's good for retouching, photo stacking to create motion blur, composites, etc.

Affinity Photo 2 does have a development module for RAW file processing so Capture One pro is not required.

There are other options but I have not used them so will leave to others to discuss.

Darktable won't cost you anything at all!

The initial transition might be a little difficult, but a change from one long-used software to another tends to be anyway. I became a Linux user long before I became a raw photographer, so I can't compare to the win/mac packages. I started with Rawtherapee (also free) but somehow settled in to darktable. I'm glad I did: local adjustment (masking etc) is very powerful and relatively easy in dt!

I guess everybody offers a free demo copy, so it costs nothing to try --- the nice thing about darktable/rawtherapy is that they stay free . And, possibly the only thing you won't find is fancy AI noise reduction. At least not yet.

Adobe was never one of my favourite/favoured companies, so if I was, at some time, looking to process on Win or Mac, I would not be considering them.

For me, as a RAW shooter, the best price/performance alternative to Adobe "Photography plan" is using ON1 as a Lightroom alternative and Affinity Photo 2 as a "light version" of Photoshop. Is not ideal but it suits my amateur workflow and use well enough. To be honest I did not find an alternative that would completely replaced Lightroom's capacities, performance, workflow and "easy to use experience", but that's the cost I'm prepared to endure to avoid mandatory subscriptions.

Capture One is to expensive for me.

Darktable is becoming better and better with every version, but still has some quirks that are not polished out enough and the transition can be difficult IMO.

mattviki said:

For me, as a RAW shooter, the best price/performance alternative to Adobe "Photography plan" is using ON1 as a Lightroom alternative and Affinity Photo 2 as a "light version" of Photoshop. Is not ideal but it suits my amateur workflow and use well enough. To be honest I did not find an alternative that would completely replaced Lightroom's capacities, performance, workflow and "easy to use experience", but that's the cost I'm prepared to endure to avoid mandatory subscriptions.

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I think that is the issue. Another pro for Lightroom for me is the mapping module to allow me to GPS tag photos and the support for GPS meta data making it easy to copy metadata from one photo to another shot in the same place that may not have it.

darktable has mapping, it also has tagging. But I don't use either, so can't comment further. Just providing ticks for the comparison columns :-D

Heavens Light said:

Reilly Diefenbach said:

Heavens Light said:

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

Click to expand...

You wouldn't pay the $120 for the year?

Click to expand...

No, like to pay for anything I do monthy. Keeps things affordable. Anyway, I’m gone from Lightroom. Stuff it, Adobe

Click to expand...

Moving software can be a lot of hassle. Obviously up to you but you need to decide whether your unwillingness to commit to a yearly price to avoid a price rise outweighs that. I’d also suggest it’s sensible to have a plan for migration and probably also have completed your move before you cancel…

For my photo library, I’ve only done it once many years ago when Apple ditched Aperture. My catalogue wasn’t all that big, but I still had to do it in tranches and had various photos that caused issues which I had to spend time tracking down. Also, edits didn’t migrate for my raw files. Things may have improved in the intervening time and it will vary depending on the software, but I’m always wary of any company that tells you how easy it is to migrate to their software.

If you’re set on moving, as others have said, think about your requirements and make sure the replacement covers them all. E.g. one of the key things about Lightroom for me is the cloud based workflow, so any solution that doesn’t support that would be out for me.

I really like ACDSee Ultimate. It has cataloging, developing, and editing in one package. You can purchase a one-time license, i.e., subscription not required.

About 10 years ago when I switched from JPG to RAW I tested a number of packages incl Lightroom and Darktable and decided on DxO (Optics Pro back then, now PhotoLab).

Still on PL6 which I updated from PL4 some Black Friday years ago.

Of course, it all depends what you want to do. If you're after image management/organization/library function, I heard DxO sucks, but I am not using that part at all so I can't comment. It works very well to convert RAW files to pleasing jpg or tif versions.

Heavens Light said:

Best Lightroom Alternative

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

Click to expand...

Typically "best" and "cheap" are mutually-exclusive, but how close we can get depends on how you use Lightroom.

Darktable is a free and open-source program that more-or-less attempts to duplicate Lightroom by integrating a DAM (Wikipedia) and a raw converter and--in the Mac OS and Linux but not Windows versions--a print function.

But if you mainly use Lightroom as a raw converter, I don't think there's a good argument that either Darktable or its main free / open-source alternative RawTherapee is on the whole as good as the full version of Adobe Camera Raw that you get with Lightroom, or DxO PhotoLab Elite or Capture One Professional. But each of those costs substantial money, especially if you need (e.g. to get support for a new camera) or want to keep up with relatively current versions.

NAwlins Contrarian said:

NAwlins Contrarian said:

Best Lightroom Alternative

What’s the best alternative? Adobe just bumped my monthly subscription by 50% and enough is enough. I’ve cancelled and am going elsewhere. What’s the best option, preferably cheap as I’m not an everyday user

Click to expand...

Typically "best" and "cheap" are mutually-exclusive, but how close we can get depends on how you use Lightroom.

Darktable is a free and open-source program that more-or-less attempts to duplicate Lightroom by integrating a DAM (Wikipedia) and a raw converter and--in the Mac OS and Linux but not Windows versions--a print function.

But if you mainly use Lightroom as a raw converter, I don't think there's a good argument that either Darktable or its main free / open-source alternative RawTherapee is on the whole as good as the full version of Adobe Camera Raw that you get with Lightroom, or DxO PhotoLab Elite or Capture One Professional. But each of those costs substantial money, especially if you need (e.g. to get support for a new camera) or want to keep up with relatively current versions.

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Of the paid options DxO is still considerably cheaper than CO or Adobe AFAIK, and you always have the option of skipping less appealing updates to save $. With Capture One you technically still have that option but they seem to be aggressively steering people away from it, I bought v20 on sale for like $225 then later it turned out it was cheaper to buy another full license of v22 on sale for ~$200 than to use their paid upgrade path, now they're pushing subscriptions heavily

Personally I do prefer the way Capture One handles lens corrections, because it's the only one that doesn't depend on updates for it, the embedded correction can always be read and applied even with brand new lenses. Adobe forces you to wait on a full program update while they tweak the profile and DxO develops their own, which also forces you to wait. I heard Darktable is now capable of reading the embedded profile on some but not all mirrorless mounts.

That's a big development, until a few years ago nobody but Capture One and Adobe could do that, and AFAIK everyone else (save for DxO) is still using a free open source and user supported database of lens correction profiles, which is fine if you don't try new lenses often but less than optimal otherwise. That to me is the single biggest difference in their basic RAW development capabilities... DxO and Adobe do also have vastly better AI NR than CO though.

I'd say on a budget DxO is probably a good bet, I think the other two have given them plenty of incentive to keep pricing aggressive and the full license pricing model alive. Capture One used to have a lead in tethering capabilities, dunno if that's still true. Adobe obviously has the best cloud sync abilities and the most comprehensive DAM. CO has better layer support...

DXO Photolab is top-notch. It's not "cheap", but it isn't a subscription. You can just have it as long as you want after paying for that version. You get 1/2 off upgrades for two editions if you feel like you want the new stuff.
For colour correction, image correction it is at least as good as Adobe. For image manipulation / masking type stuff, it isn't as clever as Adobe. Not much AI stuff.


Edit: replied wrong spot? idk

DXO Photolab is top-notch. It's not "cheap", but it isn't a subscription. You can just have it as long as you want after paying for that version. You get 1/2 off upgrades for two editions if you feel like you want the new stuff.
For colour correction, image correction it is at least as good as Adobe. For image manipulation / masking type stuff, it isn't as clever as Adobe. Not much AI stuff.
(copied from above)