Lightroom 6 (stand alone) vs ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018

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wellyboot

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Name
Marcia
Edit My Images
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I wonder if you PP gurus can help me please? I have the stand alone version of Lightroom 6 and have been teaching myself over the last year, and enjoying what I do. However there are new things on the CC version I obviously don't get as they no longer provide updates for the stand alone product. I am not keen on the idea of paying the monthly subscription for CC, because at £120 a year, and retirement looming this will be one annual cost I can't really justify. So I have been looking around to see what else is available, and have downloaded a trial version of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018. I have only been playing at it for a few hours, but from what myself and my husband can tell it has more powerful noise reduction, but less powerful sharpening than LR. Having processed a fair few raws in both, we see those two differences in every image and to be honest we both prefer the results from LR.
Now it may be that I need to get more used to the package, but as an amateur I rarely use all of the bells and whistles in LR, just a few to get an image to my taste. Using a Panasonic G80, I find things quite noisy above 1600, so usually use a little sharpening and noise reduction. White balance tends to be spot on although exposure often needs a tweak.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had used both packages, or could anyone recommend any other package similar to LR at a reasonable cost. It would have to be user friendly as I am at the "can't teach old dogs new tricks" stage so struggle to pick things up!! My husband rarely does any PP having a Nikon 500 and 750, both of which cope with noise very well, but I think in retirement he too would like to play with "digital developing" as he calls it, but at a low long term cost.
Thank you for reading this, and I would be grateful for any advice anyone can give me please!
 
Fwiw it's possible there will be another standalone Lightroom release before the end of the year. That would be the latest feature snapshot from the CC stream, but would offer a bit longer support than most CC releases (you have to upgrade continuously).
 
drdocmatt said:
Fwiw it's possible there will be another standalone Lightroom release before the end of the year. That would be the latest feature snapshot from the CC stream, but would offer a bit longer support than most CC releases (you have to upgrade continuously).
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Well that would be good news, but according to a few sources I have read the answer seems to be no further stand alone versions. Nothing I have read is confirmed though, so hopefully your source has insider knowledge, and I will be first in the queue if Adobe do bring a new version out! Thank you!
 
I am retired and looking to get away from the monthly payment for PS and LR and am looking at Affinity Photo. I am not a LR user so I am not able to compare the two but iAffinity Photo will possibly suit my needs.
 
Realistically they are two different products. Lightroom is a workflow tool, not just an editing tool, hence the powerful library function, print module as well a as the develop module.

The thing is, only you can tell what your requirements are. I very rarely need to use sharpening or noise reduction as if the light is low, I use something to increase the light level, be it flash, a reflector, other light source.

I like lightroom for the whole package, with Nike software or photoshop as plugins if required. All mine are standalone editions.
 
Thank you to everyone for their replies. Much appreciated.
ACDSee does seem to be similar to Lightroom but as I say the results aren't to my taste so far. I understand that a lot will depend on what you shoot, where you shoot, and what you shoot with, so Im sorry for asking a stupid question (I do that a lot!!). Back to the drawing board for me it seems, and I lot of downloading of trial versions!!
 
It's also worth looking at "Rawtherapee", Marcia. Basic operation is very similar to LR and it's totally free and open source (which allows continued developement)

Bob
 
Canon Bob said:
It's also worth looking at "Rawtherapee", Marcia. Basic operation is very similar to LR and it's totally free and open source (which allows continued developement)

Bob
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Thank you very much Bob! I will certainly give that a go, especially if the rain continues. Thank you again.
 
jerry12953 said:
It is rumoured that Lightroom v7 will be announced later this month. I just hope it will be possible to buy an update to the standalone version because there is no way I will be subscribing to LR and Ps at £10 a month, particularly as I don't use PS.
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I'd read the same rumour Jeremy, so let's hope it's right! I am of the same mind as you about the subscrition, as I rarely use PS and I have a fairly up to date version of Elements should I ever need to do so. I have downloaded trials of all of the various LR equivalents, and while some seem to produce decent results, I have barely scratched the surface, and I think I would rather carry on with LR given all the tutorials and books out there for LR. Of course there is the other problem of how much a new standalone version might be!
 
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