Alternatives to Lightroom?

SsSsSsSsSnake said:
Kool.i find it very good.
When i used lightroom i found i hardly used much of it,so for me it was a no brainer,i stopped giving Adobe any more money and save it in a tin towards my next x100;)
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The only thing about the free DXO version is you can't update it, so as new gear and firmwares comes out the software won't update their profiles. It's also got a few less options than the paid one, like the extended NR - though the HD one that is available does seem to be pretty good indeed. But as it is free, I will give LR a chance for a couple of months, as I still find it the most intuitive. DXO is pretty good though, I had it mostly figured out after playing with it for just over an hour :)
 
I'm sure there's ways around? I'll probably stick with it anyhow. I can't find the TOS but I think I have 14 days to decide to keep it or not
 
You could always try Digikam heres the link https://www.digikam.org/download/ i have been using it for a couple of years now. it does all that I require of it. Not only that it is FOSS.
 
I use DXO OP sometimes because it can handle tone and colour slightly differently than LR, and can be especially useful for 'difficult' and extreme contrast situations. I find that in my hands both LR and DXO have their own 'look' although I can generally make images processed in one look like the other with extra work.

The jury is still out for me over whether I could use On1 software as a replacement for LR. It seems to lack the finesse of LR and images are less sharp *on screen when editing* though not obviously different when exported or printed, though the extra speed for reviewing is sometimes useful.
 
I have the stand alone versions of LR and PS ............ but I have just "given up" and gone for the monthly subscription
 
Cagey75 said:
That is one I haven't tried, must give it a trial. I found some tips for LR that do a decent job on noise at higher ISO, it's for the Em1 but it works fine for G80 files too with a little personal tweaking. I just followed his suggestions and made a preset.

https://www.mu-43.com/threads/how-t...h-iso-and-color-rendition-from-our-omd.76508/
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I will give this a try as I still have LR 6 as a standalone. But I am starting to get the hang of DXO and so far so good! I also bought ON1 as they have a 30 day money back warranty! I had tried their 30 day trial, and liked it, but at my age, 30 days isn't enough to learn new PP softwear!! If I find DXO suits my needs I can always get a refund.
I did pre-order Luminar and although there were aspects I really liked, the biggest problem for me was the time it took to load each image. I spoke to them, but they weren't sure what was causing the bottle neck given the specs of my machine. They very kindly refunded me, but perhaps somewhere down the line it could be another contender for Windows users!
 
Cagey75 said:
I'm sure there's ways around? I'll probably stick with it anyhow. I can't find the TOS but I think I have 14 days to decide to keep it or not
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if you do decide to carry on then 6 months down the line cancel, they usually offer you an xtra 2 months on top so even if you intend to keep it you could always try for the xtra 2 months,
Ive done this a couple of times in the past, also why dont you sign up for it on the Serge Ramelli site and get 20% off?
 
SsSsSsSsSnake said:
if you do decide to carry on then 6 months down the line cancel, they usually offer you an xtra 2 months on top so even if you intend to keep it you could always try for the xtra 2 months,
Ive done this a couple of times in the past, also why dont you sign up for it on the Serge Ramelli site and get 20% off?
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Already paid for the first month, all signed up now :/ didn't know about that, ah well, I'm signed up to more photography sites as is than I will ever get back around to :D
 
Cagey75 said:
Already paid for the first month, all signed up now :/ didn't know about that, ah well, I'm signed up to more photography sites as is than I will ever get back around to :D
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If you are on a Mac, I had to upgrade my OS
 
BillN_33 said:
If you are on a Mac, I had to upgrade my OS
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Window laptop here, it's an old one at this stage but it is an i7 and handles these programs well enough, until I open a few of them at once then it'll slow up a fair amount
 
BillN_33 said:
I have the stand alone versions of LR and PS ............ but I have just "given up" and gone for the monthly subscription
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So do I.
Because they are bought and paid for, I refuse to pay for them again as a monthly rental.
 
ancient_mariner said:
This free webinar tomorrow about migrating from LR to On1 may be of interest to some: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_k0QR4FwORSKDq3wSIR5iGg
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So I listened to the webinar, which was interesting and may be made available.

In essence, if you have Lightroom there is no migration path to ANY other software keeping your edits intact for your raw files. If switching to On1, all that will transfer is metadata, star ratings (not flags) and folders. In the migration tool there is a facility to simultaneously export all your edited images with the lightroom adjustments in place, but the adjustments will be irreversible and you will have twice as many images as before. If, like me, you sometimes make several versons of the same image then this feature might be useful for you if space is not an issue. MK was quite explicit that edits performed in lightroom are not and will not be transferrable to other packages because of the proprietary format used to store edit information in LR. The same is likely true for Capture 1, DXO OP etc. if you want to ransfer edits made in them into another package.

One neat thing with On1 is that you can choose whether to store sidecar files with your images or not. If you DO create sidecar files then if you can see the image on another drive from a different computer you can work with it and any changes you make are stored with the image in the sidecar. Basically it doesn't matter which computer you perform the edit on, because the software doesn't import images in the way LR does. This is obviously useful if you use a laptop when travelling and a base unit at home, since there's no catalogues to merge etc.

Despite the above, I'm not an On1 evangelist, and will continue to use Lightroom 5.7 as my main software for as long as my cameras are supported. Hopefully this will be useful to someone.
 
I too have arrived at LR5.7, and in the circumstances plan to go no further. I like the way it works, but I'll never be a subscriber. But I have a considerable investment in that I like to keep my raws as an archive for readjustment, and keeping the old adjustments is a good base for any new ones. Thus starting from scratch with another app from another maker meets with some resistance. But the longer I leave it ...

For me, it's a question not of how long the LR I've got supports my camera, because I'm happy to go the dng route if necessary, but rather how long the LR I've got keeps working on whatever iteration of Windows I have.

Should I change sooner rather than later? That begs the question.

As of now, it would have to be Capture One. I can't see that anything else comes close (and I might even be happier). But it's £300, so I dally. If it was my livelihood, then yes - no question.

And so it rolls on. All i know is that when the going gets tough, I'll roll with the punches. But as of now, there's nowt to compare with LR and C1. Not if you're serious. But things might change ...
 
I gotta be honest, once I'm done with an image, it's done ... I don't keep original RAW files once I'm happy and have stored that image away. I process every image individually and I don't save until I'm happy. I feel that going back and 're-doing' it later would be taking away from how I felt about that image in the first place - I tend to begin editing as soon as I get back from any shoot. It's just me, and it saves a hell of a lot of space.
 
Cagey75 said:
I gotta be honest, once I'm done with an image, it's done ... I don't keep original RAW files once I'm happy and have stored that image away. I process every image individually and I don't save until I'm happy. I feel that going back and 're-doing' it later would be taking away from how I felt about that image in the first place - I tend to begin editing as soon as I get back from any shoot. It's just me, and it saves a hell of a lot of space.
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Same here,minimal i can feel is good enough but i admire souls who can spend hours on 1 photo
 
ancient_mariner said:
The same is likely true for Capture 1, DXO OP etc. if you want to ransfer edits made in them into another package.
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Capture one imports:

Collections
Crop, Rotation, Orientation
White balance, exposure, saturation, contrast
Metadata (IPTC ratings, color label keywords)

Color adjustments are approximate only

Smart collections are not imported, and need to be converted to normal collections before importing

From https://blog.phaseone.com/jumping-ship-to-capture-one-pro-from-lightroom/
 
Ive been looking at C1 and DXO to replace LR. Can you use it on multiple machines? The reason I ask is because I have both a Mac and a MBA for when we go away and wondered if you could run it on 2 machines (finished images exported to Photos)
 
ChrisHeathcote said:
Ive been looking at C1 and DXO to replace LR. Can you use it on multiple machines? The reason I ask is because I have both a Mac and a MBA for when we go away and wondered if you could run it on 2 machines (finished images exported to Photos)
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Capture One allows three activations with the same license.
 
Mr Perceptive said:
If you spent an hour on a photo, that would be an hour wasted looking for the next camera.....
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I have now had my d3300 for 3 months, not really bothered looking for anything else and I intend to have it this time next year and not having bought anything else in that time,
I think ive finally realised,doesnt matter what camera I own, most of my shots are crap so no point changing :LOL:
 
ancient_mariner said:
The jury is still out for me over whether I could use On1 software as a replacement for LR. It seems to lack the finesse of LR and images are less sharp *on screen when editing* though not obviously different when exported or printed, though the extra speed for reviewing is sometimes useful.
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....On1 greatly lacks finesse and it seems that it is aimed at those photographers who seek a very over processed look. Furthermore On1 are gaining a very poor reputation for consistently using paid customers as beta testers. They also bombard you with marketing emails. Consequently, my jury has decided unanimously against On1 RAW (as it's called) as my frontline RAW editor < I use Capture One for that. I only ever use On1 occasionally if I want an effects filter as a last step and that's it.

Capture One is said by many photographers to have a 'better' RAW conversion engine than anything Adobe offer. Capture One is now version 11 and getting better and better. I'm a fanboy!
 
I did try the Sony version of C1 in 2014, and it didn't seem at that time to offer any advantages over LR in terms of image quality at that time. It's possible that now with more experience I would find it a better tool, but TBH I suspect that it would make little real difference to the images I produce. The £300 cost is fine for a pro (it then becomes a business expense) or for someone who doesn't mind spending freely on their hobby - it's less than the price of most new lenses.
 
ancient_mariner said:
So I listened to the webinar, which was interesting and may be made available.

In essence, if you have Lightroom there is no migration path to ANY other software keeping your edits intact for your raw files. If switching to On1, all that will transfer is metadata, star ratings (not flags) and folders. In the migration tool there is a facility to simultaneously export all your edited images with the lightroom adjustments in place, but the adjustments will be irreversible and you will have twice as many images as before. If, like me, you sometimes make several versons of the same image then this feature might be useful for you if space is not an issue. MK was quite explicit that edits performed in lightroom are not and will not be transferrable to other packages because of the proprietary format used to store edit information in LR. The same is likely true for Capture 1, DXO OP etc. if you want to ransfer edits made in them into another package.

One neat thing with On1 is that you can choose whether to store sidecar files with your images or not. If you DO create sidecar files then if you can see the image on another drive from a different computer you can work with it and any changes you make are stored with the image in the sidecar. Basically it doesn't matter which computer you perform the edit on, because the software doesn't import images in the way LR does. This is obviously useful if you use a laptop when travelling and a base unit at home, since there's no catalogues to merge etc.

Despite the above, I'm not an On1 evangelist, and will continue to use Lightroom 5.7 as my main software for as long as my cameras are supported. Hopefully this will be useful to someone.
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What I have found.
If I open a raw file that has been "tweaked" in Lightroom into OnOne raw, the image initially appears exactly as in Lightroom, but with all the OnOne sliders at "0" (or midpoint).
If I then hit "Reset all" in OnOne, the file has all the Lightroom information (including any cropping) removed and the image reverts to "out of camera" ready to work on in OnOne.
Overall I prefer the result I get using Lightroom much more than I can get with OnOne, which may be more to do with being more used to Lightroom than anything else.
Masking seems to be one of OnOne's greatest strengths and one I find very useful and I must say I like some of the selective edit tools in OnOne, (like the "Prefect Brush" and Refine Brush).

I've also noticed something that all the Lightroom/Photoshop replacement candidates I've tried lack.
At our club, when we have a projected image comp, a lot of people (myself included) like to add a "keyline" or thin (1 pixel) border to some of their images.
I haven't yet found a LR/PS replacement that can do this and whichever program I'm using I find myself importing the result into PS to resize and add the border.
I must admit I haven't explored all the options available in OnOne, so it may be possible.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I did try the Sony version of C1 in 2014, and it didn't seem at that time to offer any advantages over LR in terms of image quality at that time. It's possible that now with more experience I would find it a better tool, but TBH I suspect that it would make little real difference to the images I produce. The £300 cost is fine for a pro (it then becomes a business expense) or for someone who doesn't mind spending freely on their hobby - it's less than the price of most new lenses.
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Agreed.
I have the free Sony version of C1 which came with my A6000, but purely for the sake of consitency, I prefer to use Lightroom for both my Sony and Canon raw files, so you are at least using the same adjustment sliders in both instances.
 
Brian G said:
What I have found.
If I open a raw file that has been "tweaked" in Lightroom into OnOne raw, the image initially appears exactly as in Lightroom, but with all the OnOne sliders at "0" (or midpoint).
If I then hit "Reset all" in OnOne, the file has all the Lightroom information (including any cropping) removed and the image reverts to "out of camera" ready to work on in OnOne.
Overall I prefer the result I get using Lightroom much more than I can get with OnOne, which may be more to do with being more used to Lightroom than anything else.
Masking seems to be one of OnOne's greatest strengths and one I find very useful and I must say I like some of the selective edit tools in OnOne, (like the "Prefect Brush" and Refine Brush).

I've also noticed something that all the Lightroom/Photoshop replacement candidates I've tried lack.
At our club, when we have a projected image comp, a lot of people (myself included) like to add a "keyline" or thin (1 pixel) border to some of their images.
I haven't yet found a LR/PS replacement that can do this and whichever program I'm using I find myself importing the result into PS to resize and add the border.
I must admit I haven't explored all the options available in OnOne, so it may be possible.
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Interesting - thanks for that.

You should be able to add a keyline in the print section of On1, where images can be exported with a canvas wrap, or using the borders tool in the effects module (there is a keyline setting).
 
ancient_mariner said:
Interesting - thanks for that.

You should be able to add a keyline in the print section of On1, where images can be exported with a canvas wrap, or using the borders tool in the effects module (there is a keyline setting).
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Thanks for that.
i believe that's similar to the method of adding a border in Lightroom - something I have never tried.
I usually go into Photoshop to add an outline, but I'll have to take a look at doing it in OnOne.
 
ancient_mariner said:
DigiKam was my go-to for several years, though IIRC it's destructive and not the same type of software as LR etc for image development.
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Digikam excels at managing large collections of photographs very easily. And is fully featured. Download, raw, panorama, blending, tags, geo tags, face recognition, fuzzy search and direct upload. Its own raw processing tools I don't find that great, but it let's you plug in other ones such as LightZone, Darktable and Raw Therapee. So you can choose the best solution for your preferred way of working.
 
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Digikam looks to be just what I have been looking for regarding editing the metadata and geotagging using the map module (and price) by sadly when I try and install it on my W7 64bit pooter all I seem to keep getting is the BSOD!

Oh well, the search continues.
 
I was a long term lightroom user that has recently switched.

I tried lightroom CC, and the web version (whatever its called) and I just didn't like it. I also didnt want to be paying yet another monthly subscription as i feel i have enough of those already.

Now, before I comment on what i am now using, im going to preface this with, im just someone who takes photos for fun. No business like photography at all, but I DO like good quality images.

I've switched to Apple Photos!

I've imported all 35,000 images (from many different cameras) into Photos and now have them sitting in icloud syncing with my iPhone/iPad. I always had a disconnection between my camera images and images I had taken on my phone. I'd never do anything with the phone images and wouldnt import them to my PC to transfer over to lightroom. Well now, I dont need too. As i'm importing all my images from my camera into Photos' I can now easily add photos take on my iPhone into the newly created album :)

Also, we have 3 iphones (soon to be 5) in our family and I was already paying for additional storage on each of those phones (£1 each phone). I've now linked those under the same family plan and have purchased just the one 2TB family plan for £6.99 per month.

The photo organisation is quite good. Its got basic smart albums, but unfortunately no tagging i believe. For the basic photo editing I do, the Photo's editing pane is really good, with all of the features I used in lightroom.

Fory hobbyists, if your already in the apple eco system, i'd say its definitely worth a look
 
Yes, people scorn iPhoto and now Photos but they are really useful for sharing both with other apps on a Mac an for family etc. Though I like Aperture I’ve always used i/Photo/s for family members Photos I’ve put on my computer and for accessing photos for newsletters etc. I store other things like maps for similar use.
 
jamin100 said:
The photo organisation is quite good. Its got basic smart albums, but unfortunately no tagging i believe.
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(Apple) Photos does have tagging - but you need to tag using Photos under macOS you can't do it on iOS.
 
jamin100 said:
I was a long term lightroom user that has recently switched.

I tried lightroom CC, and the web version (whatever its called) and I just didn't like it. I also didnt want to be paying yet another monthly subscription as i feel i have enough of those already.

Now, before I comment on what i am now using, im going to preface this with, im just someone who takes photos for fun. No business like photography at all, but I DO like good quality images.

I've switched to Apple Photos!

I've imported all 35,000 images (from many different cameras) into Photos and now have them sitting in icloud syncing with my iPhone/iPad. I always had a disconnection between my camera images and images I had taken on my phone. I'd never do anything with the phone images and wouldnt import them to my PC to transfer over to lightroom. Well now, I dont need too. As i'm importing all my images from my camera into Photos' I can now easily add photos take on my iPhone into the newly created album :)

Also, we have 3 iphones (soon to be 5) in our family and I was already paying for additional storage on each of those phones (£1 each phone). I've now linked those under the same family plan and have purchased just the one 2TB family plan for £6.99 per month.

The photo organisation is quite good. Its got basic smart albums, but unfortunately no tagging i believe. For the basic photo editing I do, the Photo's editing pane is really good, with all of the features I used in lightroom.

Fory hobbyists, if your already in the apple eco system, i'd say its definitely worth a look
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I don't understand this urgency to abandon Lightroom.
If you have a paid "perpetual" version of Lightroom, it's not going to suddenly stop working just because Adobe have chosen to go CC.
I still believe that LR is the best solution for me at the moment, and I'm not going to give it up until either I get a new camera that's not supported, or the Windows operating system will not support the program.
Having paid for a "perpetual" version, I refuse the pay again in order to hire what I already have.
 
Brian, just in case you were wondering I think Lightroom is great software but there are things it can't do, so I'm going to dip my toe in the AffinityPhoto water and take it from there.

I'll still be totally reliant on LR for most things for quite some time to come.

I
 
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