Best Non-Adobe software for Image editing on a Mac?

[Jan_Steinman]

Also don't overlook Skylum Luminar AI.

And you can support a Ukranian business at the same time!

I had an old Luminar app hanging around, but I upgraded just to support brave people trying to run a business while living and working in a war zone, thanks to an aggressive invader.

Jan

 

[Jan_Steinman]

Is iTunes not yet abandoned?

AT least in Catalina, iTunes has been split apart into a number of apps, including specialized ones for music, podcasts, news, etc.

iTunes was becoming unwieldy. I'm not sure Apple improved things by splitting it up, though. Music has some serious shortcomings for listening to radio — when I put on CBC, Music drops the connection every hour.

Ten (10) months ago when I posted the question, before upgrading to Big Sur and Monterey, I wasn't having this problem with Apple Music.

How do I stop the Music app from opening automatically?

(when BlueTooth headphones detected) Can't do it.

I hear you! Actually, I "hear" Music whenever I turn on my Bluetooth speaker, even if I don't want to.

Actually, I just quit Music and turned the speaker on again… imagine my surprise when I heard Jimmy Cheng talking! This time, the speaker "decided" that I really wanted to listen to YouTube!

Jan

 

[Henry Richardson]

I finally got my Mini in the mail yesterday. Very happy with it so far.

One of the first things I did was install Affinity (Still on sale for $25) and the Topaz DeNoise and Sharpen plug-in's.

Very impressed by Affinity, it performs super fast on the M1. Also the Topaz plug-in's are running well and outperform my 3.4GHz i7 + GTX1050 Windows 10 machine by about 250%.

Yes, for Topaz, Lightroom, etc. the Apple Silicon chips are excellent.

I'm not sure I need DAM software (like ACDsee) since the Finder does a good job of displaying thumbnails that can be scaled to whatever size you want. I typically just use the filesystem to organize things.

On MacOS you can adjust the thumbnail sizes in some cases, but in another important case you cannot. They are stuck as the smallest 64 pixel size. See this:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66040509

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66041567

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66043324

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66046687

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66048414

I've got to get a network setup between my Windows 10 machine and the Mac mini. So far Wi-Fi works but it's painfully slow when transferring multiple GB of files. Hopefully I can successfully get a wired 1Gb ethernet connection going to transfer files between machines.

Good luck with the wifi.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[Henry Richardson]

I finally got my Mini in the mail yesterday. Very happy with it so far.

One of the first things I did was install Affinity (Still on sale for $25) and the Topaz DeNoise and Sharpen plug-in's. Very impressed by Affinity, it performs super fast on the M1. Also the Topaz plug-in's are running well and outperform my 3.4GHz i7 + GTX1050 Windows 10 machine by about 250%.

That's unexpected. The M1 GPU is supposed to be equivalent to 1050 Ti, which is not 250% faster than GTX 1050.

Topaz and DXO use Neural Engine

Chart: 4 M1 SoCs & discussion

synthetic benchmarks are best case a starting point for further real world examinations. The most attractive part of the Apple SOCs is the low power consumption for CPU and GPU. As a user I care about the electric bill for my tools and the heat that needs to be pulled away by the AC in my...

www.dpreview.com

So, even if the M1 GPU is more or less similar to the GTX 1050 Ti, the Neural Engine possibly accounts for the speed difference.

 

[Jeff Wahaus]

I'm not sure I need DAM software (like ACDsee) since the Finder does a good job of displaying thumbnails that can be scaled to whatever size you want. I typically just use the filesystem to organize things.

What formats do you use?

I thought at some point I could view ".ORF" Olympus RAW files in the Finder. But certainly not in Catalina. That alone is a "deal breaker" for (ab)using the Finder as a DAM.

Jan

I use Olympus RAW (i.e. .ORF) and .JPG file formats and occasionally .TIFF when I export from OM Workspace.

Apple added full support for E-M1iii and E-M10iv RAW files a few OS revisions ago so viewing thumbnails in finder works fine.

I eventually went over to the dark side and started an Adobe subscription for Lightroom and Photoshop. They both work really well and fast on M1 equipped Macs.

 

[danieljcox]

I've decided to get my feet wet with Apple Mac. I'm a long time computer user and programmer (30+ years) but I've never done anything Apple. Windows is getting so bad that don't see myself wanting to support it in the future so I have a new Mac Mini (M1 CPU) on the way.

I'm familiar with Adobe products and I have a non-rent version of Photoshop on my Windows 10 PC but in order to use it on the Mac I'm going to have to pay the monthly rental fee which I'm not going to do. I don't mind buying software, something in the $100 range, but I'm not going to rent software.

So, what do the Mac users that don't use Adobe use to edit their photos?

I'm a big fan of Pixlemator Pro.

 

[SSz]

Aperture was the reason I have bought my first Mac. Crashy but still working on Big Sur/M1. Definitively dead for editing RAWs on Monterey (unless I am missing some trick to make it alive). There is NOTHING similar on the market yet. Affinity Photo is good but it is a different tool.

 

[robgendreau]

Aperture was the reason I have bought my first Mac. Crashy but still working on Big Sur/M1. Definitively dead for editing RAWs on Monterey (unless I am missing some trick to make it alive). There is NOTHING similar on the market yet. Affinity Photo is good but it is a different tool.

Nothing similar? \

Lr Classic is, and was.

Raw Power. Literally written by one of the folks in charge of Aperture. Looks close enough in developing to be almost a clone, although updated, snce Aperture is like MacPaint these days. For example LUTs and tone mapping for iPhone photos.

 

[Jan_Steinman]

Aperture was the reason I have bought my first Mac… There is NOTHING similar on the market yet. Affinity Photo is good but it is a different tool.

I hear you!

I'm using Excire Foto as my DAM. It's still not as elegant as Aperture, but hey, it's only version 1.3! It does a credible job of AI-based automatic keywording, which with hundreds of thousands of images, I really need! It does an excellent job of providing selections based on faces, but not as good as Aperture in naming and identifying. It does a great job of finding images "like" another one, which is great for dup-finding.

But no image editing. You can select one or more images, then send them off to Affinity or your favourite editor.

For "deep EXIF" work, I still prefer Graphic Converter. It gives you edit access to every tiny bit of metadata in the image. UI is a bit clunky, but some things (like assigning keywords) is easy and 100% keyboard-driven, whereas with Excire, you still have to grab the damn mouse from time to time.

Jan

 

[ChrisLumix]

Aperture was the reason I have bought my first Mac… There is NOTHING similar on the market yet. Affinity Photo is good but it is a different tool.

I hear you!

For "deep EXIF" work, I still prefer Graphic Converter. It gives you edit access to every tiny bit of metadata in the image. UI is a bit clunky, but some things (like assigning keywords) is easy and 100% keyboard-driven, whereas with Excire, you still have to grab the damn mouse from time to time.

One of the oldest and most respected applications out there, and much loved by its adherents. Now 30 years old!.

 

[Gesture]

Definitely a great, affordable app to have on hand.

Its Print interface is also good.

 

[wklee]

Aperture was the reason I have bought my first Mac… There is NOTHING similar on the market yet. Affinity Photo is good but it is a different tool.

I hear you!

For "deep EXIF" work, I still prefer Graphic Converter. It gives you edit access to every tiny bit of metadata in the image. UI is a bit clunky, but some things (like assigning keywords) is easy and 100% keyboard-driven, whereas with Excire, you still have to grab the damn mouse from time to time.

One of the oldest and most respected applications out there, and much loved by its adherents. Now 30 years old!.

Definite!y a gem! I use it too. For a command line version of EXIF, Phil Harvey has Exiftool and Graphic Converter's EXIF feature comes from Phil Harvey's Exiftool.

 

[SSz]

Lr?

Yes - we have ben told many times: "Lr is better than Aperture"

Finally, Apple believed - unfortunately.

 

[SSz]

Updated Raw Power? "Close enough " - well said.

Thank you!

 

[Andy Hewitt]

Aperture was the reason I have bought my first Mac… There is NOTHING similar on the market yet. Affinity Photo is good but it is a different tool.

I hear you!

For "deep EXIF" work, I still prefer Graphic Converter. It gives you edit access to every tiny bit of metadata in the image. UI is a bit clunky, but some things (like assigning keywords) is easy and 100% keyboard-driven, whereas with Excire, you still have to grab the damn mouse from time to time.

One of the oldest and most respected applications out there, and much loved by its adherents. Now 30 years old!.

I can’t remember how long I’ve owned it myself, but it’s more than 20 years I think, I originally used it to convert Atari images to my first Mac in the early to mid 90’s. It’s certainly a bit of an acquired taste, but also one of those apps that everyone handling images should include on their system.

IIRC it’s not far off being as old as Photoshop.