Alternatives to Photoshop Elements

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Billy McK

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Name
Billy
Edit My Images
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I am looking for recommendations for alternatives to Photoshop Elements to organise and edit images.

I am a relative beginner, having upgraded my camera recently and spending more time on photography as a hobby. However, I have been taking photos casually for a long time though and have a library of about 25,000 images which I have built up over decades because I haven't put enough effort in to culling duff images as I loaded them. I could probably get rid of half of them without losing anything of value, and have started working through them to sort out the wheat from the chaff. (I am now using BreezeBrowser to cull photos before I import them, so I will keep the size of the library under control, in future.)

Currently, I manage the images in Photoshop Elements 2020 on Windows which probably has all the features that I need, though it is likely that I have adapted my workflow to PSE so it may be that there are better things out there.

What has prompted me to look at alternatives is a series of time-consuming and anxiety-provoking problems with the Organiser function in PSE. (These have become increasingly more difficult to deal with and, right now, it completely fails to open and I am going to have to restore from backup. I am not looking for advice on fixing them here, I am just explaining why I am looking at alternatives.)

I do not, currently, do much editing of photos - just cropping and basic adjustment to lighting levels. I might do more on that now that I am taking photography more seriously, but basic editing is probably all I will ever need. Mostly, I am photographing wildlife and want to keep the images as close to the original subject as possible, In addition to the recent wildlife photographs, I have the family archive of snaps of holidays, celebrations etc. and I am trying to get that organised so that I can find the gems in amongst the dross. I take some short videos, but still images are definitely the focus.

What is important is finding a solution that will be reliable and that will make managing a catalogue of images as easy as possible, I would also prefer software that I buy outright, rather than a subscription solution - I am always concerned about what happens when the supplier ends the service - but am open to reconsidering that.

Does anyone have any recommendations that I should look at?
 
The obvious answer is Lightroom, but that's subscription only, and therefore I will NOT recommend it.

On1 photoraw is available as an outright purchase, offers cataloguing, image development and more powerful tools like layers, masking etc. The interface isn't too different from Adobe products.

You should also look at Capture One software - IIRC that has cataloguing too.

DXO photolab does the development side really well, but IIRC it doesn't catalogue.

There are free trials available for all these, so might be worth a download and try out.
 
Not sure if it meets all of your criteria but Affinity Photo is currently available for £49.99 through their website. Its a buy to own rather than subscription

It's a lot like Photoshop (apparently, I have it but have rarely used it as I get Photoshop free through uni) so it shouldn't need much learning if you are already OK with the basics.
 
I was massively reluctant to move the Adobe subscription from the standalone, but it is actually not bad as the software is always kept bang up to date automatically and there's a fair amount with the package including both Photoshop and Lightroom (desktop and cloud based versions plus beta versions) and a whole load of other stuff. It's less than a tenner per month, so not far off the price of what a single pint costs these days.
 
I had On1 but I wouldn't recommend it as if you want any updates after the year in which it is released, you will have to buy the next year's version. When I had it, I wanted to use lens information for a Sigma 14-24mm Art (my version didn't have it) but was told by the authors that basically, what I had bought was all I was going to get and if I wanted updates, I'd have to buy it again. This philosophy led me to purchase a Lightroom subscription since if I was going to have to pay every year anyway, I might as well get my updates immediately they are released with LR. So long as the price doesn't go up too much each year, I can't see me moving from Lightroom.
 
ShinySideUp said:
When I had it, I wanted to use lens information for a Sigma 14-24mm Art (my version didn't have it) but was told by the authors that basically, what I had bought was all I was going to get and if I wanted updates, I'd have to buy it again.
Click to expand...

This is true for most stand-alone software. My copy of Lightroom 6 doesn't support my A7III or later cameras and lenses. Adobe had a longer release cycle than On1, but both provide updates until the next release.
 
Billy McK said:
I am looking for recommendations for alternatives to Photoshop Elements to organise and edit images.

I am a relative beginner, having upgraded my camera recently and spending more time on photography as a hobby. However, I have been taking photos casually for a long time though and have a library of about 25,000 images which I have built up over decades because I haven't put enough effort in to culling duff images as I loaded them. I could probably get rid of half of them without losing anything of value, and have started working through them to sort out the wheat from the chaff. (I am now using BreezeBrowser to cull photos before I import them, so I will keep the size of the library under control, in future.)

Currently, I manage the images in Photoshop Elements 2020 on Windows which probably has all the features that I need, though it is likely that I have adapted my workflow to PSE so it may be that there are better things out there.

What has prompted me to look at alternatives is a series of time-consuming and anxiety-provoking problems with the Organiser function in PSE. (These have become increasingly more difficult to deal with and, right now, it completely fails to open and I am going to have to restore from backup. I am not looking for advice on fixing them here, I am just explaining why I am looking at alternatives.)

I do not, currently, do much editing of photos - just cropping and basic adjustment to lighting levels. I might do more on that now that I am taking photography more seriously, but basic editing is probably all I will ever need. Mostly, I am photographing wildlife and want to keep the images as close to the original subject as possible, In addition to the recent wildlife photographs, I have the family archive of snaps of holidays, celebrations etc. and I am trying to get that organised so that I can find the gems in amongst the dross. I take some short videos, but still images are definitely the focus.

What is important is finding a solution that will be reliable and that will make managing a catalogue of images as easy as possible, I would also prefer software that I buy outright, rather than a subscription solution - I am always concerned about what happens when the supplier ends the service - but am open to reconsidering that.

Does anyone have any recommendations that I should look at?
Click to expand...
I use after jumping ship from Adobe https://www.faststone.org/ along with Affinity Photo. does what I need and Faststone is FREE. Russ.
 
For Image organisation I use Digikam which is free open source software and does that job very well, it also has image editing but I don't use that as I use On1 Photoraw for editing.

Another opensource free program is Darktable, which is like lightroom, but I have not used it.

Rawtherepi and Gimp are other opensource free products you could try
 
ancient_mariner said:
This is true for most stand-alone software. My copy of Lightroom 6 doesn't support my A7III or later cameras and lenses. Adobe had a longer release cycle than On1, but both provide updates until the next release.
Click to expand...

I think it was the A9's RAW files that my standalone copy of Lightroom didn't support. I think there may have been some obscure update that could act as a workaround, but I couldn't get it working or find it, so gave up and took the plunge! lol
 
:plus1: for Digikam. This is a great free tool for organising your images. Using Digikam you are able to hold your images in the standard file system using your preferred folder structure. It works well combined with Affinity Photo or Darktable for raw processing/editing.
 
I just leave a name to each files on a couple of spare drives and an extrnl drive for backup Each file is named in alphetical order automatically. So if I want "air show" for example I go straight to that file and open it up. then all photos under that file name open up. Doing it on backup drives frees up the main "c" drive
 
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Wow, thanks so much for all this advice.

To sum up, there are recommendations for several tools:
  • On1 photoraw
  • Capture One software
  • Affinity Photo
  • Faststone along with Affinity Photo.
  • Digikam which is free open source software gets two votes.
I'll try out Digikam (because it got two mentions) and On1 Photoraw. Capture One looks good but pricey, so I'll maybe look at it after those two.
I don't see file management in Faststone and Affinity (a review notes the lack of library management in Affinity) so I'll put these lower on the list.

Also, there are arguments for subscriptions services and I'll think about Lightroom as an option,

Also, someone is paying a lot for beer.
 
Billy McK said:
Wow, thanks so much for all this advice.

To sum up, there are recommendations for several tools:
  • On1 photoraw
  • Capture One software
  • Affinity Photo
  • Faststone along with Affinity Photo.
  • Digikam which is free open source software gets two votes.
I'll try out Digikam (because it got two mentions) and On1 Photoraw. Capture One looks good but pricey, so I'll maybe look at it after those two.
I don't see file management in Faststone and Affinity (a review notes the lack of library management in Affinity) so I'll put these lower on the list.

Also, there are arguments for subscriptions services and I'll think about Lightroom as an option,

Also, someone is paying a lot for beer.
Click to expand...
Hi, Just be aware that On1 photo Raw needs a hefty lifting computer, I had to upgrade my Graphics card to Gforce 2060 from a 1020TI and it still lags when using the sliders on more than one layer it is a reason O now use Affinity photo.
(a review notes the lack of library management in Affinity) that is where Faststone viewer comes into play as you can arrange your images into folders of your choice and export from that to any app on your computer once you set it up. Russ.
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I used to use Faststone, and fair do it worked well enough. These days I use Lightroom (the older version) although with a new build PC planned I'll probably go the latest version then.
 
swanseamale47 said:
I used to use Faststone, and fair do it worked well enough. These days I use Lightroom (the older version) although with a new build PC planned I'll probably go the latest version then.
Click to expand...
Hi, you don't need IMO to get the newest Lightroom, my workflow now consists of Faststone to DXO pure Raw as I shoot a lot in wooded darker areas so high ISO ( set export as DNG and to open image in L/R 6 Watch Folder (perpetual licence like you old version) can then open in your chosen app to edit (for me Affinity photo) or just edit in Lightroom. I think we over compensate when it comes to image editing, yes if you are a pro who makes a living out of photography then you need the best tools to do so (or maybe not :whistle: )
 
An example of where a LR subscription paid for itself was just a few months ago. I was about to buy either TOPAZ or DxO when Lightroom came out with their Denoise feature. I'm not going to get into a discussion as to which is better, just to say that not buying proprietary software and using LR's instead saved me just about the total cost of next year's Lightroom subscription.
 
Regarding the Lightroom subscription, it's worth noting that although the standard price is £10/month for LR Classic, Photoshop, 20Gb storage (NB: You have to commit to 12 months at a time, and it auto renews in 12 month blocks), Amazon also sell is as a 1 Year bundle for £120 - but then periodically discount this, typically to £80 (sometimes lower, sometimes higher - you can never be sure with Amazon).
You can buy the Amazon bundle, then enter the code on the Adobe site, and it gives you 12 months credit, pausing any direct debit until you are out of credit. You can add another 12 month bundle before the credit expires (which adds credit, so if you had 3 months left, you woudl have 15 after adding a 12 month bundle).
This makes the LR bundle quite competetive when compared to the 'purchase and update' option with other software, if you like to keep up with the latest features.
 
I use Capture One Pro, as a fugitive from the late lamented Aperture, and probably have a similar number of images, although probably 2/3 of them got migrated from Aperture, so were already somewhat organised. I do (now) like the editing features of C1Pro, and almost never jump into Affinity Photo for any further edits (which I'd have to look up anyway). The Digital Asset Management/organiser features are... OK, though nowhere near as good as Aperture's were. Importing photos is a bit of a PITA: move the files to the right place in my Master Folders file structure, create a Project of the same name in the C1Pro Catalog/Library, create an Album within that Project, then finally Import the files into the Album. (Should have said, there are two completely different workflows in C1Pro: the Catalog whose import process I've just described, and Sessions, which are... different and very much oriented to the Pro photographer doing commissioned "shoots".)

One big difference between DAM-oriented non-destructive-editing software like C1Pro and Lightroom (and Aperture), is that your image file is never changed, so if you want the changed file you have to Export it. This is in contrast to PS, Elements, Affinity Photo etc. It is good in many ways, but has implications; you can never get the edited version of your images unless you have access to the software. I think this has big implications for subscription NDE systems, as you need to have an exit strategy in hand. When I migrated from Aperture there was a tool called ApertureExporter that basically invoked Aperture to export each image with all the edits and metadata in place. I don't know whether similar tools are available for C1Pro or LR. C1Pro is a little better than LR, as it's available stand-alone, so you can give yourself time to manage your exit. If you suddenly can't afford your LR subscription, then as I understand it, all your edits are... gone!
 
ChrisR said:
...

One big difference between DAM-oriented non-destructive-editing software like C1Pro and Lightroom (and Aperture), is that your image file is never changed, so if you want the changed file you have to Export it. This is in contrast to PS, Elements, Affinity Photo etc. It is good in many ways, but has implications; you can never get the edited version of your images unless you have access to the software. I think this has big implications for subscription NDE systems, as you need to have an exit strategy in hand. When I migrated from Aperture there was a tool called ApertureExporter that basically invoked Aperture to export each image with all the edits and metadata in place. I don't know whether similar tools are available for C1Pro or LR. C1Pro is a little better than LR, as it's available stand-alone, so you can give yourself time to manage your exit. If you suddenly can't afford your LR subscription, then as I understand it, all your edits are... gone!
Click to expand...
You still have access to the library functionality, including import and export, once your subscription to LR ends.
What you cannot do is access the Develop module, to edit any new images from raw.
 
Faldrax said:
You still have access to the library functionality, including import and export, once your subscription to LR ends.
What you cannot do is access the Develop module, to edit any new images from raw.
Click to expand...
Thanks Jonathan, good to know!
 
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