Lightroom alternatives

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 Sam W 30 Jun 2022

Adobe have just cancelled my Lightroom subscription (I bought codes from a reasonably legitimate looking online reseller, but it turns out they were iffy).

I could just resubscribe at £10/month, but I'm not doing loads of photography at the moment and it's a lot of money for occasional use.  I also find the Adobe subscription frustrating, not the subscription part, but things like there not being an option to avoid auto-renewal, you either have to cancel there and then (and pay a fee) or remember to cancel manually on the day the subscription is due to renew.

As a result I'm happy to look around at other products, but keen for first person experience of two things:

  1. Which alternatives are similar enough to Lightroom that I'll be able to pick it up quickly?
  2. If you've got a product you like, have you successfully imported an existing Lightroom catalog into it?  I've got 20,000 photos with edits and tags, very keen not to start again
 craig h 30 Jun 2022
In reply to Sam W:

I've just canceled my Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop package. Pre signing up to the monthly package I was Using Photoshop Elements for editing my photos in raw and jpg, I just updated my Elements from 2015 to 2022 version.

The joys of Elements is it is just a one off payment of about £70, but you then own the program and is up to you if you want to upgrade the version. Not too much difference between the 2015 and the 2022 versions tbh.

In reply to Sam W:

Too early to recommend, but I bought ON1 Photo Raw having been looking out for something to cover my needs since last year when my pc became useless. I’m just a keen hobbyist btw so bear that in mind for my comments. I wanted something to view, catalogue, import LR catalogue, minor edits, something for noise reductions, re sizing, and possibly more complex things like layers if and when I wished to learn/use that. ON1 PR met all those needs (except in my “unique” case the importing LR cat - see below).

https://digital-photography-school.com/lightroom-vs-on1/
It’s in summer sale till 1st July btw. I actually paid more as I bought last month!

Still getting used to to it, but happy with the choice I made so far and I’ll be able to grow into for all I want to use it for.

It is stated that LR catalogue can be imported into ON1 easily, but unfortunately for me I was going from LR on a dead pc to ON1on a new pc. My now reading post buying, is I can only import the LR cat via a migration from a live LR program on the same pc (which as mine was a bought online version of LR and I’ve move from windows to Mac I don’t have access to on my new pc). I’ve still to contact their support to find out if I can use my backup LR catalogue or not somehow, so this maybe incorrect.

I am prepared to continue though without migrating/importing LR backup catalogue as ON1 can be used just as a browser/editor (with my tests so far the sidecar with keywords, etc, is still searchable without importing to ON1) and you don’t have to import photos, but can allow ON1 to catalogue the photos anyway no matter where they are stored on various external drives. I know I have lots of photos in the LR cat that are useless from my beginner days and I want to bin anyway so intend to only selectively import as time goes by.

ON1 would not be the obvious choice for a complete beginner I think looking at it, but there are many familiar aspects coming from LR so make basics feel natural. Yes, still a learning curve as they have “several ways of doing the same thing” for some aspects, but I’m enjoying the process. ON1 provide a large database of videos/e-guides etc for learning if that’s your thing. Word of warning, with the latter, some/many are through a one year payment to access, though there are free ones for all the basic stuff (if albeit shortened/more simplistic versions only of the to be paid for full versions).

If you subscribe rather than buy the PRaw I think you get everything included as part of the package, plus cloud storage and possibly to sync with mobile devices, etc. I went paid to be able to try out and if it turned out not to be what I wanted it wasn’t a lot of money I’d spent.

The only “annoyance” so far is ON1 seem to make money by selling add ons, so marketing emails come “thick and fast” even for things that are actually in my bought package. In due course I’ll be unsubscribing!!

My 2p but hope that is of some help.

Post edited at 12:30
 65 30 Jun 2022
In reply to Sam W:

I use Phase One Capture1 Pro. It isn't cheap, but it's superior to Lightroom and you buy it outright. The resources and backup are good, though you won't get a swathe of manuals to have own beside you while you use it.

Also have a look at Affinity Photo. It is a Photoshop rather than Lightroom alternative so if you want the catalogue function then it's not much good. If you want it for photo editing though it's the business, and very cheap.  

In reply to Sam W:

Something to consider/remember is if you intend to upgrade to a new camera and or new lenses, Adobe is one of, if not the fastest to support new cameras and lenses after release I believe. Some software companies can take along time to update their support I have read. Check the supported equipment details for any software you are thinking of buying/subscribing to and even for your current camera/lenses just in case!

I’m just being fair to A btw; I chose not to subscribe to their software as I couldn’t see I would use it enough to get value.

Post edited at 13:17
 Ciro 30 Jun 2022
In reply to Sam W:

LightZone is free, and while it's not quite as intuitive as Lightroom, it's very good once you get going with it.

GIMP is a good Photoshop alternative for when you want to do more involved work on images.

nikkormat 30 Jun 2022
In reply to Sam W:

I use Darktable and I'm happy with it. It's not particularly intuitive, but there are plenty of tutorials online and doing the basics is easy.

 Dark-Cloud 30 Jun 2022
In reply to Sam W:

I'm using Exposure X7 and its pretty good, is pretty much a Lightroom clone but without the stupid catalogue thing.

https://exposure.software/?gclid=CjwKCAjwk_WVBhBZEiwAUHQCmWsJUY8wyOgusaIPGe...

Actually juts looked fact they have a tool to migrate from Lightroom to Exposure:

https://support.exposure.software/hc/en-us/articles/360009233573-Lightroom-...

OP Sam W 01 Jul 2022
In reply to Sam W:

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'm going to download free trials of a few of them and see which I get on best with.

Sam.

 Murderous_Crow 01 Jul 2022
In reply to Sam W:

You could have a look at Luminar. I'm really happy with my old version of it (2018). 

I think it supports Lightroom import, not sure as I've never tried. 

In reply to Sam W:

And, as if there weren't enough options for you to try....

I went for DXO photolab. Generally intuitive, pay outright. Seems there are maybe better alternatives mentioned above.

I find it slightly frustratingly slow sorting through images, but quite nice when making adjustments. To the point where I try really hard to whittle the number of photos down on camera every day when on a trip, so I have less to deal with when I get home. 

 Marmolata 03 Jul 2022
In reply to Sam W:

I am trying out Luminar at the moment. I had only an older Lightroom version before, so my comparison might be not really true.

I like that it is based more on using presets and toy to change the look of an image than each value by itself.

Even though all manual control is also available you can quickly make great looking pictures with the presets. 

 The Lemming 03 Jul 2022
In reply to Sam W:

> Adobe have just cancelled my Lightroom subscription (I bought codes from a reasonably legitimate looking online reseller, but it turns out they were iffy).

I'm using Lightroom 5.7 and have no intention to get ripped off paying a monthly rental fee.

You are most welcome to a copy of it.

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