Beginner: LR/PS or Darkroom/GIMP

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mushy

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I'm a beginner and have little to no knowledge of any post processing or image editing. I've done some research and concluded my options are:

1. Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop which costs £9.98 a month. The arguments for this seem to be that it is the industry standard and reasonably slick. But it's incredibly expensive (£1200 over ten years for some software...).

2. Darktable (I'm aware there are other RAW editors too) / GIMP: The arguments for this is that these are free and can do just about everything adobe software can do. But they may not be quite as slick?

There seem to be a ton of video tutorials online for how to use all of the above.

As a beginner, having something that is easy to use is important. But given I've never used any of these, is the learning curve for Darktable/GIMP really that much higher than for Photoshop? And once I've gone up the learning curve and invested the time, is it genuinely the case that the functionality (or at least the functionality that I'd need to use) is the same? Or am I really missing out if I don't use lightroom etc.

What I don't want to do is invest a ton of time learning to use Darktable and then find I've got to then learn Lightroom!

Thanks for advice
 
I found Lightroom pretty simple to use and learn, although with anything there is an unlearning / relearning phase. I remember this when switching from Paint Shop Pro to Photoshop.

So, if cost is a concern, try the free ones and go through a number of the tutorials.

Alternatively, for about the cost of one Starbucks coffee a week, you have the latest version of the top imaging editing system on your desktop,

I buy my Photoshop CC / Lightroom plan using the discounted versions which appear fairly regularly - black friday, new years, so top up my account with those. Also there are often surveys or other giveaways which give a months access here and or two months access there and can be used to extend the license period at no financial cost to you.

If you think £ 1200 per 10 years is incredibly expensive, think again - its pretty good for professional level software. If you are into 3D CAD design, Autodesk Inventor is licensed to you at £ 300 per month, or £ 6500 for a 3 year license. Even Microsoft Office is £ 9.40 per month if you want the desktop apps and some online sharing / backup capability. If you just want the home version its still retails at £ 59.00 / year for a one person license.
 
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I use LR / PS at home (photography is a hobby for me, not a business), and GIMP at work (where I'm using it to create / edit diagram style drawings).

I've not tried DarkTable, but that's partly because I'm a long term LR user, and so have already invested the time and effort to learn LR (though with anything this complex, there's always something new to learn).

What LR does for me, in addition to being a quick and easy RAW editor (because I'm familiar with it), is the image management side of things via it's organiser.
It tracks every image you import, and optionally copies them onto disk in a folder structure (and renames when doing this) - so I import from camera / card, and LR automatically reads the EXIF and puts the images in a folder structure of Year / Date - and prefixes the file names by a camera specific prefix (I have 3 cameras), so no issue with duplicate file names.
Once imported, you can group images into catelogues, as well as tag them with keywords, for subsequent filtering / searches. It's very powerful.

Note also that Amazon do 1 year bundles of the LR / Photoshop plans from time to time, typically at £70-80 for a year - these can be added to an existing subscription, and simply give you 365 days credit, with any monthly DD pausing until credit expires - but before it does, you can buy another year bundle, to get an additional 365 days credit, etc. This reduces the cost noticeably.
 
I struggled with the interface on Darktable and Gimp as a beginner. Photoshop Elements has 2 options - quick edit and advanced. Think of it as guided and full manual editing. About £80 one off charge - no catalogue system but then i use a file system instead that im happy with.

Capture One - depending on the camera you have or intended to have is similar price to the adobe subscription. I prefer its session method of cataloging rather than the Lightroom version (you can also do the lightroom version) There is express versions for Sony, Fuji and in told Nikon now that are free, there are then paid Brand only versions at around £130 and then full version for use with any camera at £300. Or Subscribed

On1 photo raw is another one. I had 2018 and a free upgrade to 2019. There are bits in each version that are really nice and I used but they are not in the other version so had to move images between the two. I havent used the latest version as im happy with Capture one currently

Affinity photo £25 currently and a lot of people using it. There is a lot more tutorials on youtube than there for Gimp and darktable. I quite like some of the features that are not in my version of Capture One.

Quite often I would watch a tutorial or vlog and the editing would be in lightroom, i found it difficult to swap it directly into darktable but easily into Capture one (or could easily find a how to guide to do so)

There are a lot of fors and againts the subscription model but i dont want to be forced to pay monthly. I have paid the equivalent of a years adobe subscription for the 2019 Fuji version of Capture one and 12 months in do not feel i need to upgrade to the current 2020 version so will save myself £120. I may update to the 2021 version if i start to feel something is easier to use or a new must have feature is added
 
I'm a big supporter of FOSS (free open source software) but ... you really need to be fairly tech savvy with most of it and the documentation, tutorials etc. usually lag a long way behind, to the point that the current version might not work the same way as the tutorial describes.

Adobe know what they are doing and there is a symbiotic relationship between them and the camera manufacturers. The subscription model means that you always have the latest features. So whilst I keep thinking of ditching Adobe I never quite do it. Think if you were buying film and processing it would cost you a lot more than the LR subscription.
 
Thanks everyone.

To Andrew's (very fair) point, I do pay subscriptions to some websites that I really value (Strava and veloviewer as I'm a cyclist, Athletic for sports news etc) as well as streaming services like Spotify/Netflix etc and am not someone who expects a 'free lunch'. But in general I just haven't been in the habit of paying subscriptions for software (I don't use Office 365 and use Google docs instead for example). In reality I suppose there's no difference between paying for a website to paying for software so maybe it's a mental block thing. But if Darktable is as good as LR once you learn it, maybe I should invest at least a day in learning that and see how i go

The information about the discounts and offers is very helpful should I decide Darktable isn't easy enough to use. I shall look at Capture One etc

Thanks for advice
 
From your previous posts you use Canon - it's a shame there's no Capture One Express (the free version) for Canon, or even a Canon-only cheaper version of the full £300 product. And you'll also need to pay to update C1 in future if you buy a camera that's only supported in a subsequent major version release (unless you get a subscription, as with Adobe).

You might want to look at DPP, Canon's own image viewer, raw processor and editor:

https://www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer_products/software/digital-photo-professional.html

Supplementing this (or Darktable, etc.) with Affinity Photo is a no-brainer at the moment. The normal price is really good value for what it does, but the discounted price of £23.99 (until 20 June) is a real bargain:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo

Affinity lacks the image management features of LR or C1 and raw processing isn't its strong point, but it's an excellent image editor that's competitive with PS in many respects (and even does some things better).
 
Hi

My Canon got stolen sadly. I now use Olympus em10 mark iii

Thanks very much for info
 
Thanks. It got stolen around 5-6 years ago. I then did zero photography since then. And am now starting again...(my 11 year old daughter is interested too so may get her a micro four thirds camera too so we can share lenses)
 
andrewc said:
If you think £ 1200 per 10 years is incredibly expensive
Click to expand...

Well, it is if you consider that you used to be able to buy a legit full copy of PS+LR for a third or so of that, which could easily do you for ten years. I'm on PS version 12 (from 2010!!!), and LR 5.6. On a 14 year-old computer. Ancient. Still all works fine, although I do have to do a bit of a workaround to get my Z6 files to work in LR. I'm planning to spend most probably well in excess of £3000 for a new computer, to bring me up to date, and will need replacements for my software, as they will inevitably not work under the newest OS. I intend for that computer to last at least half as long as my current one. I'm not a 'professional', so can't offset the cost of PS/LR subscription against income. So it all adds up over time. I appreciate photography etc can be an expensive activity; I used to do a lot more biking and bikes can cost silly money. But if there's any way of reducing the cost, I'm all for it.

Plus there's Adobe's less than admirable attitudes towards paying proper taxes....
 
Try Lightzone. Its very similar to LR and if you get used to that, and then want to subscribe to LR, it wont be so much a steep learning curve.
 
Thanks. Am going to spend an evening immersed in darktable tutorials to see if I can get a feel for it, and make a decision after that
 
How many of you actually use all the things available in Photoshop?
For creating my YouTube videos I still use Serif PhotoPlus X2 which is very old now (and only cost me about £12 years ago when Serif discontinued it) and for processing my kind of photos it was all I really needed for years.
I also use GIMP for a few things which X2 can't do, and although it has quite a learning curve it's been around for many years so isn't likely to suddenly cease working.
So I would say definitely start using GIMP if you're fed up with Adobe.
 
Has anyone found a good processing guide for lightroom users moving to Darktable?
I've tried a couple of times now and can't get the colours/highlights looking right in DT (e.g. sunsets). There are soooo many options in DT but can't find the combo that works as well as the basic LR highlights slider.
 
There is a lot of software around that can edit jpg and Raw files but it also depends how you may wish to work with your photos. LR is also very powerful when it comes to cataloging and working with collections. I have many thousands of photos and LR makes it very easy to find anything. It also has other modules apart from the Library and Developing. I think you will also find it more intuitive than some other software around. Sure the price adds up but £10 a month is a small price to pay in my opinion for the power of both LR and PS.
 
Just to report back that after a good few hours immersed in darktable and Gimp youtube videos, I think I've got the hang of the basics. They are amazingly powerful and much more user friendly than I expected. So I'm going to use them for now.

Really appreciate all the advice. Thank you
 
mushy said:
Just to report back that after a good few hours immersed in darktable and Gimp youtube videos, I think I've got the hang of the basics. They are amazingly powerful and much more user friendly than I expected. So I'm going to use them for now.

Really appreciate all the advice. Thank you
Click to expand...
Here is a good set of tutorials for darktable Youtube Tutorials for Darktable
 
mushy said:
Hi

I'm a beginner and have little to no knowledge of any post processing or image editing. I've done some research and concluded my options are:

1. Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop which costs £9.98 a month. The arguments for this seem to be that it is the industry standard and reasonably slick. But it's incredibly expensive (£1200 over ten years for some software...).

2. Darktable (I'm aware there are other RAW editors too) / GIMP: The arguments for this is that these are free and can do just about everything adobe software can do. But they may not be quite as slick?

There seem to be a ton of video tutorials online for how to use all of the above.

As a beginner, having something that is easy to use is important. But given I've never used any of these, is the learning curve for Darktable/GIMP really that much higher than for Photoshop? And once I've gone up the learning curve and invested the time, is it genuinely the case that the functionality (or at least the functionality that I'd need to use) is the same? Or am I really missing out if I don't use lightroom etc.

What I don't want to do is invest a ton of time learning to use Darktable and then find I've got to then learn Lightroom!

Thanks for advice
Click to expand...


Use FastStone it's free. https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm
 
mushy said:
Hi

I'm a beginner and have little to no knowledge of any post processing or image editing. I've done some research and concluded my options are:


What I don't want to do is invest a ton of time learning to use Darktable and then find I've got to then learn Lightroom!
Click to expand...


For the time being, I would suggest you go for Darktable (I've never heard of it) and GIMP (have heard of this one, but not tried it) and see how you feel.

I pay £49 for Adobe Creative Cloud, and I find Lightroom and Photoshop suited for my needs. But as you pointed out you're a beginner and have barely any experience in post processing, it would help if you opt for Darktable/GIMP to start with.

As you become more familiar, you can always decide if one day, you want to opt for LR and PS.

Most basic skills is transferable. You could learn to drive in a car, then one day, decided to drive a truck. You may still end up learning how to drive a truck, but it would be a lot easier if you had driving experience than none. If one day in future, you decided you feel you want to move up to LR/PS, you may still learn how to use those, but it could be a lot easier if you already got some form of experience with GIMP, etc.
 
FWIW.
I class myself as a very old beginner.
Just moved from free Darkroom to the free Capture One 20....for Nikon in my case...and after initial Import/Export hiccups I find it excellent and very intuitive.
It is actually easier than my ancient Adobe Elements 5 which is very simple and 15 years old.
5 denotes the year as they produce a new version every year which I think is a bit much...in fact a typical Adobe thing!
 
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