Stay with Adobe or break the ties and move on?

I think Capture One is brill, especially if you shoot landscapes and portraits. Not so sure it's as good for sports. :)

.... I only shoot RAW and process in Capture One 12 and I mostly shoot wildlife but I don't understand why you think it's not so good for sports as sports subjects are usually action and wildlife often is as well. I don't understand how the post-processing is effected differently for sports subjects.
 
Why not get the standalone version of Lightroom?

I find that plus photoshop elements does everything I need.

Mind you I have never got into pixel level fiddling!

.... Hi Steve, as you are a Photoshop Elements user I would be grateful for answers to a couple of questions please. Your answers may save me from time spent downloading and installing a trial.

- Does Elements have Filters so it can support third-party plug-ins?

- Does it have selection tools to then be able to create layers?

- Does it have Clone, Healing, Blur tools?

- Does it have a History palette?

I have looked on Adobe's website but the whole application looks as if it's aimed at helping consumers play around with their family snaps rather than anything more serious.

At least it can be bought outright rather than a very unpopular subscription!

I'm a Capture One user rather than Lightroom. Many thanks for any help or advice.
 
The adobe subscription can be hard to justify, I know it took me a while to justify it. About a year ago I moved to LR CC. To justify the cost I dropped my zenfolio website in favour of creating an adobe portfolio website instead. I’ve been able to justify the subscription cost to myself because im now paying £70-80 (like others I buy a pre paid year subscription from amazon when it’s cheaper) a year for both LR CC and my online ‘web presence’.

Adobe portfolio does have its limitations. SEO is a little rubbish. Image display is only as a gallery and there is no blog function. I’ve created a blogging type function by embedding links to adobe spark posts on a web page. For the cost of the basic zenfolio package it’s nearly as good, or should I say good enough for me. When you take out the £60 I was paying to zenfolio the LR CC subscription costs me roughly £10-20 a year extra. Even if I pay the full cost it isn’t so bad (probably £40 more than I was paying). I’m happy with the cost I’m paying. I don’t think I would be as happy if I was paying for both LR CC and zenofolio at around £130-160 a year. If you use a lot of the features then it’s more cost effective than just using Lightroom. One thing I need to do is start using mobile. I just can’t work out how to do it :(
 
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Have you thought about Affinity Photo? I used it a while back and whilst it's certainly not a substitute for Lightroom I found it was for Photoshop.
I use Affinity, works for me, a very competent piece of software (y)
Stopped with P/S CS6 when they started the sudscription side of things but still use L/R 6 along side On1 Photo RAW 2019, tried Affinity Photo but they have very little in options to use third party plug-ins (List of working full and part working plug-ins http://www.miguelboto.com/affinity/photo/plugins-support/win/) Happy with On1, it's fast and once you get into it easy to use. Russ.

.... On the face of it, Affinity would appear to be a more comprehensive and powerful second-stage editor (Capture One would remain my RAW converter and adjustments editor) but Affinity's limited third-party plug-in support could be an issue for me.

Here is quite a comprehensive overview of Affinity which compares it directly with Photoshop :

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HhvRjZg8F8
 
.... On the face of it, Affinity would appear to be a more comprehensive and powerful second-stage editor (Capture One would remain my RAW converter and adjustments editor) but Affinity's limited third-party plug-in support could be an issue for me.

Here is quite a comprehensive overview of Affinity which compares it directly with Photoshop :

This is a rather old video of Affinity Photo, which from discussions elsewhere, has changed rather a lot since then, currently on version 1.6 with 1.7 coming soon. i don't use it, even though I have a copy, but it seems to be fairly popular with C1 users as a replacement for Photoshop, and it does get mentioned in the C1 webinars reasonably often in the same breath as PS when moving to a pixel editor is suggested.
Plugin compatibility has improved as well over the years, but it also seems that some might never work with AP, especially the more complex tools like Lumenzia, but that may depend on how popular AP becomes.

AP works well with C1 and you can round trip (using "edit with") from C1 to AP just as you can with PS (but you need to use the PSD option in C1 (not TIffs), and tell AP in the preferences to "overwrite" PSDs).

I've only played around a little bit with AP, and although I have found it to be very good, it's also much slower on my aged Mac than PS, and I use a few plugins (Lumenzia, BWArtisan and ColormapX) that won't work with AP, so I don't actually use AP, even though I tend to keep track of it, and indeed bought a couple of courses on it that I worked through

Overall it seems to be a excellent companion to C1 for someone looking for an Adobe free workflow, especially given its price.
 
Since the weekend I have also been playing with Capture NX-D which Nikon ship with all their cameras. As a RAW file editor it does everything you expect of it but in slightly different ways to the more popular/common packages. The results are, though, very pleasing as you might expect from a piece of software that is able to interpret the RAW data correctly. As I already use the other Nikon freebies (View-NXD and Transfer) to get my images from the memory card onto the computer and then to do the initial cull maybe going with Capture NX-D wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Trials are continuing :)

It's worth downloadling the current version if you haven't already - they've made some significant improvements lately:

https://nikonimglib.com/ncnxd/
 
Affinity photo and images stored on external hard drives and if you have Amazon prime you have free unlimited storage :)(y)
Also have Capture 1 and NX-2 NX-D & Fuji raw available still if needed.
 
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AP works well with C1 and you can round trip (using "edit with") from C1 to AP just as you can with PS (but you need to use the PSD option in C1 (not TIffs), and tell AP in the preferences to "overwrite" PSDs).

I've only played around a little bit with AP, and although I have found it to be very good, it's also much slower on my aged Mac than PS, and I use a few plugins (Lumenzia, BWArtisan and ColormapX) that won't work with AP, so I don't actually use AP, even though I tend to keep track of it, and indeed bought a couple of courses on it that I worked through

Overall it seems to be a excellent companion to C1 for someone looking for an Adobe free workflow, especially given its price.

.... This is music to my ears! Thank you Graham! The 'round trip' is a workflow which has suited me very well using Photoshop from within Capture One. Fortunately 2 of my 3 third-party plug-ins can be run as standalone when needed.

In spite of having 24GB Memory, my 2011 iMac was running Photoshop tasks very slowly but earlier this week I bought a 2018 Mac Mini i7 in which I just installed 32GB of Crucial Memory and so performance is of course improved and my whole system more future proof.
 
....
In spite of having 24GB Memory, my 2011 iMac was running Photoshop tasks very slowly but earlier this week I bought a 2018 Mac Mini i7 in which I just installed 32GB of Crucial Memory and so performance is of course improved and my whole system more future proof.

I'm on a mid 2011 Mac Mini, with an SSD and 16gb RAM and a 2.7ghz i7 dual core processor, for comparison. My bottleneck, I think, is only having 256Mb on the graphics card, and no way of adding any.
 
For anyone considering Affinity Photo, I'd strongly recommend also checking out Photoline. It's a very mature and well supported product, a similar price, and at least as capable. It looks slightly 'old fashioned' next to Affinity, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I ran trials of both and found it hard to decide which to buy - it will likely depend on your own particular workflow and requirements.
 
I'd love an alternative, but nothing I've trialled comes close. For me, it's asset management that's important (and tacking a file browser to the left hand side of the screen isn't what I mean). Most software has keywording but none have the power of Lightroom for filtering and displaying images based on keyword. Collections & smart collections are immensely useful to me, and after many months, I've finally got the print module doing what I want it to. Survey mode & flagging are also great tools for culling down images after a shoot.

Images go into Lightroom, then can come out for website, Flickr, screen wallpaper or Instagram in one click. I can soft proof then print contact sheets to A2 in a few more clicks and can find all the images I've taken of tree silhouettes or my favourite cat in seconds.

I just feel that Adobe have done pretty much nothing but collect subscription revenue since they went CC. No feature jumps like LR 4-5-6, just the occasional slider (Dehaze) and a juggling of UI elements.

There's lots of options out there for Photoshop equivalents. Why no-one wants to have a (proper) go at asset management is beyond me. Maybe I'm just impatient...
 
Another option would be to cancel your subscription, keep using Lightroom as your DAM / basic editor, and another application as your more involved editor.
I believe that you still get access to most of Lightroom once the subscription ends, but you lose access to the develop module and maps. You can still use presets and the basic develop functions in the library module, all the DAM functions, export your images. (Note I last looked into this around a year ago so things may have changed since then...)
 
I'm on a mid 2011 Mac Mini, with an SSD and 16gb RAM and a 2.7ghz i7 dual core processor, for comparison. My bottleneck, I think, is only having 256Mb on the graphics card, and no way of adding any.

.... Hi Graham, I don't know enough to make a reliable suggestion but the 2018 Mac Mini has been criticised for lacking graphics card power too (although bound to be more than the 2011 Mac Mini). However, gamers and 3D app users are able to independently use their own choice of card, enclose it and connect via a Thunderbolt-USBc port. The new Mac Mini has lots of ports! It's early days but I am advised that for photo editing and 2D graphics the onboard graphics card is more than adequate.

If your 2011 Mac Mini has Thunderbolt-2 or USB-3 ports, I wonder if an external graphics card would do the job. But this adds expense and perhaps a new 2018 Mac Mini might be a longer term cost efficient solution. IF you decide to choose the 2018 Mac Mini option, a lot of money can be saved by installing your own extra Memory - It cost me just under £200 for 32GB Crucial Memory instead of Apple's £540 configured supply.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you think I may be able to help regarding any 2018 Mac Mini questions and I'll do my best to help or share my experiences.

Now it's time for me to trial Affinity Photo and I might even consider Affinity Design as an alternative to Adobe InDesign.
 
I'd love an alternative, but nothing I've trialled comes close. For me, it's asset management that's important (and tacking a file browser to the left hand side of the screen isn't what I mean). Most software has keywording but none have the power of Lightroom for filtering and displaying images based on keyword. Collections & smart collections are immensely useful to me, and after many months, I've finally got the print module doing what I want it to. Survey mode & flagging are also great tools for culling down images after a shoot.

Images go into Lightroom, then can come out for website, Flickr, screen wallpaper or Instagram in one click. I can soft proof then print contact sheets to A2 in a few more clicks and can find all the images I've taken of tree silhouettes or my favourite cat in seconds.

Capture One comes very close to this, and (although they are being a bit slow with it) have said that with the new plugin SDK (version 12) one -click to instagram flikr etc is on its way.

The process recipes in C1 are already very powerful for managing multiple output options and it has powerful keywording, smart album, filtering, search tools etc.

These features are not as robust or as fast as Lightroom, but they improve with every release, and some people are reporting being happy with image libraries of over 400,000 in a C1 catalogue.

I've run parallel catalogues in LR, C1 and Media Pro for several years (but changed recently) but with only 25,000 images or so. Neither LR or C1 are as fast or flexible as a proper DAM like Media Pro (now discontinued) and there is no doubt LR is overall better than C1 as a cataloguing tool, but there isn't that much difference in terms of functions. C1 is particularly flexible at culling, and certainly on my computer, much faster than LR.

Lots of reasons to still prefer LR over C1, but the image management/cataloguing tools are much closer to LR than you suggest.
 
....
If your 2011 Mac Mini has Thunderbolt-2 or USB-3 ports, I wonder if an external graphics card would do the job. But this adds expense and perhaps a new 2018 Mac Mini might be a longer term cost efficient solution.

As I understand it, external graphics cards need Mojave, and Mojave won't run on my Mac Mini, but I like the Mac Mini format, and an external graphics card was in my mind, should I have issues with speed on a new one. But my current Mac Mini, is actually running OK for most things. I can't run some of the latest plugins e.g. the new AI sharpen from Topaz, and complex editing in C1 is pretty well impossible, but I tend to move to PS for complex editing, and PS works fine for me.

But I would like to get C1 editing working a bit faster for me, and video editing is a pain, so some day a new Mac Mini will be on my shopping list.

Thanks for the offer of help.
 
Lots of reasons to still prefer LR over C1, but the image management/cataloguing tools are much closer to LR than you suggest.

Does it have anything like the Print module though?
 
@RedRobin i have the latest version of Elements at work (I did have a very old version of PS, which was fine for what i needed it for, but it failed some sort of security testing so I couldn't keep it and they wouldn't cough up for CC so i convinced them Elements was ok and with a one off cost it was achievable)

It has filters, but I can't see any way to upload new ones, altho its not something i'm used to doing so i could be missing something

It has select tools and you are able to make layers from them

it has spot healing, blur and clone tools

There is a history window you can bring up to track what you've done so far.

Your best bet is to DL it on a trial basis and have a play to see if it fits your needs. as I was on a v old PS, UI wise it's not too taxing to get used to. Some of the facial feature tools (making people smile, changing face shape etc) are quite scary. You're right it does seem to be aimed at holiday snaps and doing weird things that look pretty rubbish. (like this http://abubblylife.com/2016/01/photoshop-elements-guided-edits.html/ - why on earth would anyone want to do this?)

But so far it seems like a decent tool for the money, thinking about what i used to use PS for. If I ever stop being able to use the old PS at home then i wouldn't feel too bad about coughing up for this. it also has dehaze which is in Lightroom CC but not standalone so i might do a cheeky bit of playing with my own photos at some point...
 
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Does it have anything like the Print module though?
I'm not exactly sure what the print module does in LR, and I haven't taken full advantage of the print tools in C1.

Printing is done via a print menu that gives layout options, multi print options, sharpening options etc. But its also affected by the customisable output recipes, where you can match print sizes to output resolutions, paper profiles etc and then send directly to print, bypassing the print menu, but you can also save print menu templates, and of course the process recipes are saved and reused.

I print with Qimage, so I have a process recipes for different print options that send a file from C1 to Qimage, bypassing the print menu. I also have an editing layer called "printing" that I switch on for printing and keep any printing specific edits in that layer.

There is a lot of control of printing from C1, but whether it would do what you want, I don't know.

Is there something specific the LR print module does, that you feel might not be available. I could have a look and see how C1 might tackle it.
 
Is there something specific the LR print module does

Heh. Watching your Nan Goldin video.... Pausing to check....

I hate flipping into different software (PS is used mainly for game modding at the moment) and I don't get on with RIP software so Lightroom's printing tools are great.

Currently, I can grab an image, or a collection and go into the print module. From there, it's a 1-click-pick of a template and then a click to print.

My templates dictate paper size (and printer driver paper types), orientation, ICC, and image position on the page. So I have a "Tiny_Contact_Sheet_L" profile. When I click it, it gives me an A4 paper in landscape format with Fotospeed Platinum Lustre's ICC profile set, and all the printer settings done. The images are arranged in an 8x5 grid that works best for landscape images so 40 images will go on one sheet and if I've got more images in the collection it will auto add another page. I also have "A4_SilverRag_P" which will take a single image and put it on an A4 piece of paper in portrait orientation with Museo Silver Rag's ICC profile and print paper settings - including a wider platen gap because I need it for that paper. All these templates are put into template groups (Contact sheets, Gloss paper, Lustre paper, etc) to make things look tidy.

Also, C1 looks expensive! I was tempted by it with the Fuji offer, then I realised that unless I missed some small print somewhere I wouldn't be able to look at any non-fuji files, which is ridiculous. So it's £300 which is 2 and a half years of Adobe subscription which isn't an obvious benefit over Lightroom - especially when you consider upgrades over time.

(Edit to add I missed out the soft proofing step which I don't do any more because I know what I'm getting from the various papers I use. But soft proofing allows you to see what the image will look like on your paper choice, allowing you to make specific edits based on paper)
 
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@RedRobin i have the latest version of Elements at work (I did have a very old version of PS, which was fine for what i needed it for, but it failed some sort of security testing so I couldn't keep it and they wouldn't cough up for CC so i convinced them Elements was ok and with a one off cost it was achievable)

It has filters, but I can't see any way to upload new ones, altho its not something i'm used to doing so i could be missing something

It has select tools and you are able to make layers from them

it has spot healing, blur and clone tools

There is a history window you can bring up to track what you've done so far.

Your best bet is to DL it on a trial basis and have a play to see if it fits your needs. as I was on a v old PS, UI wise it's not too taxing to get used to. Some of the facial feature tools (making people smile, changing face shape etc) are quite scary. You're right it does seem to be aimed at holiday snaps and doing weird things that look pretty rubbish. (like this http://abubblylife.com/2016/01/photoshop-elements-guided-edits.html/ - why on earth would anyone want to do this?)

But so far it seems like a decent tool for the money, thinking about what i used to use PS for. If I ever stop being able to use the old PS at home then i wouldn't feel too bad about coughing up for this. it also has dehaze which is in Lightroom CC but not standalone so i might do a cheeky bit of playing with my own photos at some point...

.... Thank you, Dan - That's very helpful. However, I have now looked at Affinity Photo and I think it will suit my needs much better and it will fit into my Capture One RAW editing round-trip workflow.

I'm not primarily driven by the cost difference but it so happens that Affinity Photo costs about £50 whereas Photoshop Elements is about £80, both perpetually licenced rather than the 'orrible subscriptions model which we *all hate! [*most of us who are amateurs rather than fee earning professionals].
 
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As I understand it, external graphics cards need Mojave, and Mojave won't run on my Mac Mini, but I like the Mac Mini format, and an external graphics card was in my mind, should I have issues with speed on a new one. But my current Mac Mini, is actually running OK for most things. I can't run some of the latest plugins e.g. the new AI sharpen from Topaz, and complex editing in C1 is pretty well impossible, but I tend to move to PS for complex editing, and PS works fine for me.

But I would like to get C1 editing working a bit faster for me, and video editing is a pain, so some day a new Mac Mini will be on my shopping list.

Thanks for the offer of help.

.... You're correct, Mojave won't install on older Macs - That's partly why I have moved from my beloved 2011 iMac 27-inch but I essentially moved because it was developing an occasional fault whereby it wouldn't start up from being shutdown. The very weird solution is to unplug the mains cable at both ends and leave for about 36 hours (to sulk?) and then reconnect and she continues as if nothing had ever happened! This is equivalent to a wifey telling her hubby to sleep in the spare bedroom until her mood changes!! :LOL:

I can tell you already that C1 version 12 absolutely flies on the 2018 Mac Mini. [Please be warned that I am good at getting other people to spend their hard earned money!] But, as you doubtless already know, each new version of C1 has speed and efficiency improvements - They do seem to listen to their users in spite of not appearing to.

If/When you do decide to update your Mac Mini system you will at least already have a monitor.
 
.... The very weird solution is to unplug the mains cable at both ends and leave for about 36 hours (to sulk?) and then reconnect and she continues as if nothing had ever happened! This is equivalent to a wifey telling her hubby to sleep in the spare bedroom until her mood changes!! :LOL:

Mine sulks as well ! but I think its because I have a Elgato thunderbolt USB hub that gives me several USB 3 ports plus extra monitor connections. Sometimes, one monitor can't get any signal, and even weirder the wake up sequence regularly changes, to the extent it won't wake up at all, and I need to reboot.
 
Some people find the free software GIMP, Rawthearpee and Darktable work well. You could try those.

Tried all of those and not particularly impressed. I think this is one of those areas where you get what you pay for :)
 
Tried all of those and not particularly impressed. I think this is one of those areas where you get what you pay for :)

.... I have looked at them too and am also not particularly impressed.

The Adobe subscription model and the 'iceberg' extent of what Photoshop offers only makes financial sense if someone uses it in their business or badly needs a feature which only Adobe's products can offer. But in recent years other serious players have entered the market with highly competitive photo editing applications both in features and price and importantly without the very unpopular subscription model.
 
Some people find the free software GIMP, Rawthearpee and Darktable work well. You could try those.
That's what I use. Gimp (2.10), Raw Therapee and Digikam DAM. And I'm very pleased with the results. As good as LR/PS.
It's not that they are free, it's that they are busy striving to make better software. Adobe don't seem to care. Hence this thread, and other threads like it.
 
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I'm impressed with my trial of DxO, looking at comparisons I think it processes my raws better than Lightroom, but it does add changes when you load the image. you can of course switch those off. Only thing thats stopping me buying is the keystone tool is an extra, about £60 extra :eek: I dont mind them charging extra for nonessentials such as the film pack, but keystoning is a critical part of processing your images and for that reason, I'm probably gonna look at something else.
 
That's what I use. Gimp (2.10), Raw Therapee and Digikam DAM. And I'm very pleased with the results. As good as LR/PS.
It's not that they are free, it's that they are busy striving to make better software. Adobe don't seem to care. Hence this thread, and other threads like it.
Excellent I am glad that they are working for you. Do you have any tutorials to follow? Or examples of what you have done?
 
Heh. Watching your Nan Goldin video.... Pausing to check....

I hate flipping into different software (PS is used mainly for game modding at the moment) and I don't get on with RIP software so Lightroom's printing tools are great.

Also, C1 looks expensive! I was tempted by it with the Fuji offer, then I realised that unless I missed some small print somewhere I wouldn't be able to look at any non-fuji files, which is ridiculous. So it's £300 which is 2 and a half years of Adobe subscription which isn't an obvious benefit over Lightroom - especially when you consider upgrades over time.

I don't see anything in your LR set up, including soft proofing that you couldn't do in C1. I build the QImage link into a C1 processing recipe, so running it from inside C1 isn't that different from clicking on the C1 print dialog.

But there is an obvious attraction of doing everything inside one program, even though I have taken a different approach (I use Photo Mechanic and Fast Raw Viewer for culling, C1 with sessions rather than a catalogue for Raw Processing, Photoshop for editing and Neofinder for cataloguing).

C1 "is" very expensive, and always has been, originally it only worked with Phase One cameras and Pro level Nikons and Canons, and even though people have moved to C1 because of not liking the adobe subscription or its better rendering of Fuji files (especially now that Fuji have "partnered" with Phase One), Phase One still obviously see their main customer base as professional photographers, and they still don't automatically provide support for more consumer orientated cameras/lenses: but will do if enough customers ask for it.

The now annual C1 upgrades are more than the Adobe annual sub, so its a very costly program to keep up. Every year at upgrade time, I have another go with Lightroom (as I already pay for it to get Photoshop), but always decide the C1 upgrade is worth the money - for me anyway.

The Fuji upgrade was aimed at people using the free Fuji only version of C1, which I assume is subsidised by Fuji in some way. You can get the Fuji only version at half price and then upgrade to the full version for $99, which does reduce the cost from buying the full version outright, but you still end up with expensive annual upgrade. Unless you don't bother upgrading. I have always found the upgrades worthwhile, but not everyone does.

But if you are happy with LR, I see no burning argument to change to c1. I prefer the workflow, and think it has an "edge" on image quality, but only when I directly compare images, but LR is still an excellent, and much cheaper, option.
 
.... I only shoot RAW and process in Capture One 12 and I mostly shoot wildlife but I don't understand why you think it's not so good for sports as sports subjects are usually action and wildlife often is as well. I don't understand how the post-processing is effected differently for sports subjects.
Using layers for edits can be time consuming. I am up against time, I shoot and have to wire from pitchside, maybe two or three minutes to get my card out of the camera, anything up to ten images, edit, resize and send. My biggest gripe and the reason I've not renewed is that you cannot resize to a particular size. The quality is great, cannot fault the finished product. :)

I use PS for editing sports. I ingest into Photomechanic, cull, then drag and drop images into PS. I might adjust curves quickly, then I have an action to sharpen, save to a specific folder and close the file down. Time taken to edit one image, maybe 20 seconds. Back into Photomechanic to caption and send. Time, time, time and time :)
 
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Using layers for edits can be time consuming. I am up against time, I shoot and have to wire from pitchside, maybe two or three minutes to get my card out of the camera, anything up to ten images, edit, resize and send. My biggest gripe and the reason I've not renewed is that you cannot resize to a particular size. The quality is great, cannot fault the finished product. :)
Photo Mechanic doesn't really have any competition for this sort of thing, but you could "possibly" have got C1 to work better than you suggest.

You could just ignore the layers aspect of c1. In fact the customisation capability of C1 means you could remove all trace of them from the C1 interface. You can set up custom sharpening and editing presets, you can set up custom process recipes that would resize files and save to specific folders based a wide range of file or caption, or folder criteria, and you can drag files from PM into C1, just as you do with ACR/PS. You may well have tried these things, and I realise that subtle ways of working can make a big difference in practice when you are pushed for time, so I'm not saying C1 would be suitable, but there are things that "might" make it work better for your use, especially as you seemed to like the quality it gave you
.
Having said that, I'm not sure what you mean by "particular size" do you mean it must be a specific number of kilobytes.
 
Having said that, I'm not sure what you mean by "particular size" do you mean it must be a specific number of kilobytes.
Graham, I loved C1, the end result was lovely. What I needed was a file ... longest edge 1500 pixels and file no bigger than 1.5MB. I did post on the C1 forum asking if it could be achieved but unfortunately I was told it couldn't be achieved. :(
 
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Graham, I loved C1, the end result was lovely. What I needed was a file ... longest edge 1500 pixels and file no bigger than 1.5MB. I did post on the C1 forum asking if it could be achieved but unfortunately I was told it couldn't be achieved. :(

So, if I am doing the sums right, that makes a maximum size of 1500 x1000 pixels, with long edge always 1500 but the 1000 edge cropped to suit each individual image.

There may well be a reason why this wouldn't work, but you can set up the long edge to be a fixed 1500 pixels in a process recipe, and then as you crop, look at the pixel read out on the other crop line, on the image, and keep it under 1000 pixels. The longer edge regardless of how you change the crop will always be 1500 pixels.

So the final image should never exceed 1.5Mb. Of course I might be missing the obvious, but I will give it a try tomorrow.
 
I'm impressed with my trial of DxO, looking at comparisons I think it processes my raws better than Lightroom, but it does add changes when you load the image. you can of course switch those off.
Yes, you can switch them off. So it's not an issue! Another aspect is that though it uses sidecars by default to record changes, if you find those irritable as I do you can switch them off too and use the database function alone, and this is back-uppable.

Only thing thats stopping me buying is the keystone tool is an extra .. keystoning is a critical part of processing your images.
If you like the basic program enough to think that it works for you better than LR, then why not reconcile yourself to shelling out the extra?

My main reserve about Photolab at present is that I want to expand the width of the right-hand adjustments panels beyond their current limits, in order to lengthen the sliders & thus make them more sensitive. So far in that respect, they're inferior to LR by an amount that isn't huge, but is significant.
 
For anyone considering Affinity Photo, I'd strongly recommend also checking out Photoline. It's a very mature and well supported product, a similar price, and at least as capable. It looks slightly 'old fashioned' next to Affinity, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I ran trials of both and found it hard to decide which to buy - it will likely depend on your own particular workflow and requirements.
Well worth a look.

My baseline for an editing program is that it has 16-bit editing with adjustment layers. CMYK capabilty is a handy bonus if you might be headed for print-press output.
 
... I might even consider Affinity Design as an alternative to Adobe InDesign.
I tried that in a beta version (Win) but found it buggy, & having an immediate requirement got a standalone version of Quark 2018 for about £350 discounted if I remember rightly. Very well featured - a mature program including pdf export options without needing Adobe Acrobat Distiller as of old. A program of solid heritage with a modern demeanor.

Precise layout (& image) handling and text formatting tools along with multi-page document capability.
 
I tried that in a beta version (Win) but found it buggy, & having an immediate requirement got a standalone version of Quark 2018 for about £350 discounted if I remember rightly. Very well featured - a mature program including pdf export options without needing Adobe Acrobat Distiller as of old. A program of solid heritage with a modern demeanor.

Precise layout (& image) handling and text formatting tools along with multi-page document capability.

.... Golly, I didn't know that Quark still existed! It was the go-to for all professional graphic designers back in the day. InDesign (via Pagemaker) completely took over and killed Quark (XPress?) and I was then a pre-release tester for Adobe InDesign for the next 4 years and received all the Creative Suite free as a gesture of thanks. I was an Art Director working with a variety of specialist professional photographers back then but not taking photos myself and so when Adobe told me they were introducing a new program called Lightroom and invited me to test I said no thank you. Being involved at its birth I will feel some sorrow IF I decide to leave InDesign but I resent the subscription model.

Affinity Designer looks more like Adobe Illustrator.
 
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Adobe Photoshop is my preference. Been using it for 14 years and in my opinion, it's still the best out there. It's a very very featured packed program and I think a lot of the time people just miss things with it.

As I said, I've been using Photoshop for a long time now. I get that a lot of people think $9.99/mo is a lot of money for it but back in the 00s you would pay more for the latest version and that didn't entitle you to future updates. I think if the alternative is paying hundreds and hundreds for a single version - give me the subscription all day. It's not a big expense for an essential part of our business in my opinion. If it's just a hobby yeah fair enough it might not be an expense you can justify, but my retard kid spends $50 on a s***ty game at least once a month *shrugs* and that's his hobby lol
 
Adobe Photoshop is my preference. Been using it for 14 years and in my opinion, it's still the best out there. It's a very very featured packed program and I think a lot of the time people just miss things with it.

As I said, I've been using Photoshop for a long time now. I get that a lot of people think $9.99/mo is a lot of money for it but back in the 00s you would pay more for the latest version and that didn't entitle you to future updates. I think if the alternative is paying hundreds and hundreds for a single version - give me the subscription all day. It's not a big expense for an essential part of our business in my opinion. If it's just a hobby yeah fair enough it might not be an expense you can justify, but my retard kid spends $50 on a s***ty game at least once a month *shrugs* and that's his hobby lol

.... Hi Daniel, in response to your words which I have highlit in bold, whereas I agree that it's a minor expense for a business (my daughter has the full package on subscription for her creative business), I think that Adobe should be charging about 50% of what its subscription model currently is so that the 'hobbyist'/amateur is better catered for.

Photoshop is indeed a very very feature packed application and that is part of the problem in that many users only use a relatively small part of what it has to offer - It's an iceberg app. And so, unless being used within a profit making business, I do not think that Adobe's subscription model is good value for money.

The alternative is not paying hundreds and hundreds for a single version - Enter centre stage a very very real young but fit contender called Affinity Photo which costs 50 squid with no subs. Plus as posted in this thread by others, there are several real contenders.

Adobe Lightroom is also under attack from Capture One and ON1. Word in cyberspace is that so many users resent the subscription model and will move away, hence this thread! People are fickle and markets can change. Do you remember QuarkXPress? - Adobe InDesign killed it but QuarkXPress is back. Photoshop is not immune.

But of course the bottom line is that we each have our own individual needs and preferences, as it is with cameras.
 
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Excellent I am glad that they are working for you. Do you have any tutorials to follow? Or examples of what you have done?
The web is full of video tutorials for gimp. Be sure to look at version 2.10 or later. Raw Therapee too. With Digikam (Digikam.org) as your DAM for managing albums and thumbnails, you can "open in" Gimp or Raw Therapee or whatever else you wish to integrate. Here are some of my pictures. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ianp5a/.
But it's easy just to try them out for yourself.
 
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