Desperately seeking Lightroom replacement

[RichardMH]

If you're after photo management, Capture One Express has some functionality for RAW,DNG and TIFF files(Catalogue but no sessions) and is free for Sony, Nikon and Fuji. Editing is along the lines of AP Develop Persona. FastRawViewer is fast and works with RAW files but no editing. Adobe Bridge is also free.

[fde101]

On 5/1/2022 at 12:02 AM, Marshalleq said:

Capture one is one of the few products that's even more expensive than adobe at US$44 per month and it's a photo editor not a photo management product in that, it doesn't manage your library of photos.

Not sure where you are getting this from, but Capture One does indeed have photo library facilities.  It is a RAW developer, but is NOT an editor.  Also it can be licensed for a one-time fee - the subscription is optional.

 

On 5/1/2022 at 12:02 AM, Marshalleq said:

On1 is again a subscription which while is a reasonable price, it's again, not a photo management product but a photo editor.

Again, it can indeed be used to maintain a library of photos, which is its best feature.  It also does RAW development reasonably well (though not as well as Capture One or DxO PhotoLab, which in my opinion are the best two apps for raw development - on1 is better for maintaining libraries of photos than PhotoLab is though, while Capture One is good for both).  The editing facilities are there in on1, but not all that great.  I was using on1 as my primary photo library/developer tool until I purchased Capture One, which is what I am mostly transitioning to.  Both are able to do an "edit in external application" which works reasonably well with Affinity Photo when you need to do editing (as is PhotoLab).  I never really made any practical use of the editing features of on1.

 

On 5/1/2022 at 12:02 AM, Marshalleq said:

On1 is again a subscription

On1 Photo RAW is not a subscription.  They have add-on services which are subscription-based, but the photo software itself is not.

 

On 5/1/2022 at 12:02 AM, Marshalleq said:

Apple photo's is actually quite a good management system if it wasn't for the way it makes you store your photos.

Apple used to have the absolute best of these programs, named Aperture.  Sadly they discontinued it.  I would almost certainly still be using Aperture otherwise; everything that is on the market pales compared to what Aperture was when it comes to organizing photos (sadly it no longer runs on current macOS versions and obviously won't have updated camera profiles).  Capture One seems to come closest of those things which I have tried.

[Marshalleq]

Hey thanks for your post, I am wondering why we have different impressions, will get back and have a look at it when I get a moment as if you're right, I could be very excited.

[Snapseed]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

Not sure where you are getting this from, but Capture One does indeed have photo library facilities.  It is a RAW developer, but is NOT an editor.  Also it can be licensed for a one-time fee - the subscription is optional.

 

Again, it can indeed be used to maintain a library of photos, which is its best feature.  It also does RAW development reasonably well (though not as well as Capture One or DxO PhotoLab, which in my opinion are the best two apps for raw development - on1 is better for maintaining libraries of photos than PhotoLab is though, while Capture One is good for both).  The editing facilities are there in on1, but not all that great.  I was using on1 as my primary photo library/developer tool until I purchased Capture One, which is what I am mostly transitioning to.  Both are able to do an "edit in external application" which works reasonably well with Affinity Photo when you need to do editing (as is PhotoLab).  I never really made any practical use of the editing features of on1.

 

On1 Photo RAW is not a subscription.  They have add-on services which are subscription-based, but the photo software itself is not.

 

Apple used to have the absolute best of these programs, named Aperture.  Sadly they discontinued it.  I would almost certainly still be using Aperture otherwise; everything that is on the market pales compared to what Aperture was when it comes to organizing photos (sadly it no longer runs on current macOS versions and obviously won't have updated camera profiles).  Capture One seems to come closest of those things which I have tried.

l agree with you there. Apple's image software has effectively been dumbed down under Tim Cook to cater for Instagram and Snapchat users only. The least they should have done under those circumstances was to make the Aperture code open source so that others could continue the project.

It is worth mentioning that ex-Apple developer Nick Bhatt has since gone on to develop RAW Power which should look familiar to users of Aperture.

Link: https://www.gentlemencoders.com/raw-power-for-macos/

[RichardMH]

Topaz Studio 2 is another option.

[Marshalleq]

2 hours ago, RichardMH said:

Topaz Studio 2 is another option.

Hey, thanks for this - I have a number of topaz products, are you sure this is a photo library management tool?  When looking it up on google, the first thing I'm met with is the below picture stating it's only purpose is photo editing.  Then browsing through this (albeit rather quickly), I didn't find a single entry, screenshot or otherwise saying anything about managing photo libraries, though lots about editing photos.  Perhaps this is my problem, the management part is taken for granted and not advertised?  Do you have screenshots or otherwise of it actually managing a library i.e. photo tiles etc?  I've downloaded a trial anyway and will get to the above mentioned ones and relook at them again also.  Thanks.

 

Edit: I've now downloaded and used it and I can't see any way that I can use it as a manager, only an editor.  Somehow I was already licensed for it, so I guess I'll keep it and have a play later, but I can only edit individual photos, not manage a library.  If you could explain what I'm doing wrong or what our difference might be in what we think a library manager is that might be useful.  Thanks.

 

[Marshalleq]

3 hours ago, fde101 said:

Not sure where you are getting this from, but Capture One does indeed have photo library facilities.  It is a RAW developer, but is NOT an editor.  Also it can be licensed for a one-time fee - the subscription is optional.

You're correct, it is indeed a photo manager, yay!  However I stand by my commentary on pricing.  the below (in USD) is one of the most expensive products and I note the one time fee suspiciously mentions one version, so it doesn't sound like a lifetime license which might have been worth it.  This is probably one of the top two most expensive photo editing tools I've ever seen.

 

4 hours ago, fde101 said:

Again, it can indeed be used to maintain a library of photos, which is its best feature.  It also does RAW development reasonably well (though not as well as Capture One or DxO PhotoLab, which in my opinion are the best two apps for raw development - on1 is better for maintaining libraries of photos than PhotoLab is though, while Capture One is good for both).  The editing facilities are there in on1, but not all that great.  I was using on1 as my primary photo library/developer tool until I purchased Capture One, which is what I am mostly transitioning to.  Both are able to do an "edit in external application" which works reasonably well with Affinity Photo when you need to do editing (as is PhotoLab).  I never really made any practical use of the editing features of on1.

On1 Photo RAW is not a subscription.  They have add-on services which are subscription-based, but the photo software itself is not.

Seems like I have to eat my words again, I don't know why but looks like I got this completely wrong and I even checked before I wrote that! This time I installed the apps to double check.  I don't know what the add on services are you mention, but it seems it does both purchase and subscription options.  Not particularly viable as a Lightroom replacement though considering it's the same price for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop with the Photographers plan.  (Assuming of course you left because you're sick of subscription model and that price range - which I am).  At least though there's a purchase option, though the devil is in the details with those.

I also just took a look at Raw Power, which is quite a hopeful for me, priced the lowest of them all at only $29USD, and has a lot of the necessary features, including auto detecting all my photo editor apps - which I've never seen anything do before.  I don't know will have a look at them all in more detail.  But it looks like Raw Power is the only viable one from a cost perspective.  Someone said something about free for Nikon on one of the apps which I can't find (I shoot Canon) but I've never figured out how that works.  How is it free for Nikon, do you plug your camera serial number into it or something?  Thanks.

Thanks again to @fde101 for pointing this out and @Snapseed for the raw power suggestion.

[RichardMH]

3 hours ago, Marshalleq said:

Hey, thanks for this - I have a number of topaz products, are you sure this is a photo library management tool?  When looking it up on google, the first thing I'm met with is the below picture stating it's only purpose is photo editing.  Then browsing through this (albeit rather quickly), I didn't find a single entry, screenshot or otherwise saying anything about managing photo libraries, though lots about editing photos.  Perhaps this is my problem, the management part is taken for granted and not advertised?  Do you have screenshots or otherwise of it actually managing a library i.e. photo tiles etc?  I've downloaded a trial anyway and will get to the above mentioned ones and relook at them again also.  Thanks.

 

Edit: I've now downloaded and used it and I can't see any way that I can use it as a manager, only an editor.  Somehow I was already licensed for it, so I guess I'll keep it and have a play later, but I can only edit individual photos, not manage a library.  If you could explain what I'm doing wrong or what our difference might be in what we think a library manager is that might be useful.  Thanks.

 

Sorry I may have been confused as to what you were after. I use Capture One Express as I don't have a huge number of images. Just send tiffs to Affinity Photo. I know some people use Photo Mechanic to manage images.

[PaoloT]

Luminar is priced fairly (in the same way as Affinity apps), and looks modern and powerful. What makes it not a viable replacement of Lightroom for Affinity users?

Paolo

 

[fde101]

16 hours ago, Marshalleq said:

the below (in USD) is one of the most expensive products and I note the one time fee suspiciously mentions one version, so it doesn't sound like a lifetime license which might have been worth it.  This is probably one of the top two most expensive photo editing tools I've ever seen.

 

How did you get those prices?  Here is what I see (USD) - and I am not logged in on the site, so this is not the upgrade pricing:

 

Capture One is not cheap, but it is one of the best tools available in terms of tool set and image quality of the developed images.

Yes, the non-subscription license does mean paying for upgrades for new major versions.

 

16 hours ago, Marshalleq said:

I don't know what the add on services are you mention

They basically have two: On1 Plus, which is a training/resources site (teaches photography techniques, etc.), and the "Cloud Sync" thing mentioned on that page, which syncs images across devices (I have never used that).

 

16 hours ago, Marshalleq said:

Assuming of course you left because you're sick of subscription model and that price range

I never subscribed to Adobe.  I bought CS6 a few months before Adobe went subscription-only and never really took the time to learn most of the apps because as soon as they went subscription-only I knew the products were at a dead end and I would need to stop using them anyway due to the lack of upgrades keeping them working with newer OS versions, so I switched to alternatives as I identified them, or else stuck with what I was already using that I was planning on switching from or adding to.

[Marshalleq]

15 hours ago, RichardMH said:

Sorry I may have been confused as to what you were after. I use Capture One Express as I don't have a huge number of images. Just send tiffs to Affinity Photo. I know some people use Photo Mechanic to manage images.

Thanks for the Photo Mechanic suggestion, it looks like a reasonable product at first glance (I have downloaded it).  I need to figure out how to get it to stop showing the sidecar files as a failed image, but other than that, it's definitely a contender.  The contact sheet idea is certainly different.

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

 

How did you get those prices?  Here is what I see (USD) - and I am not logged in on the site, so this is not the upgrade pricing:

 

Thanks, I suspect what has happened is capture one has converted to NZD, but not said that's it done that.  Mostly sites that are in USD don't say NZD.  Bit of an oversight on their part.  Nevertheless an Adobe creative cloud photography plan is $17NZD or $10 USD per month including photoshop.  So that still makes capture one over 2x expensive as the product I'm complaining about having to subscribe to.  Capture one is definitely a no-go for me based on price alone.  And I wouldn't be risking a one time payment that only covers a single version - you can see they have a lot of versions when the current one is version 22.  Absolutely not value for money for the volunteer photographer, if you're a pro or something that's different.  The way I figure it is Lightroom & photoshop are the baselines upon which to judge others upon.

What sometimes I think these companies don't realise is NZ is not US.  Our salaries are not comparable, so what is $10 in the US equates to more in NZ.  I agree with you though, I am over subscriptions and avoid them like the plague now.  If a company offers a lifetime, I buy that - it pays off in the end.

9 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Luminar is priced fairly (in the same way as Affinity apps), and looks modern and powerful. What makes it not a viable replacement of Lightroom for Affinity users?

Paolo

 

Hey, thanks for this - I looked at it previously and I'm trying to download a trial but it looks like I have to buy it first then refund it through the App Store.  Can you confirm for me that Luminar has an actual photo library management function in it?  Reading on their web site, there is not one mention of this feature that I can find.  Perhaps this is the issue, perhaps companies are overlooking the value of the management side and just not talking about it.  I have to say the feature comparison between Luminar Ai, Luminar is a mess.  I have no idea where each of their products are set.  There's one called AI, that's missing all the AI features that another one has.  There's one called Neo which appears to be the flagship but is missing things such as 'basic masking tools' and one called luminar 4 which I honestly don't understand what it's there for.  

 

Any enlightenment would be appreciated before I press the button.  I wish affinity would do one as they clearly know how to make a good product.  Otherwise, Exposure in time may be good.

[RichardMH]

NeoFinder/abeMeda seems another option for image management. Think I looked at it in the past.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Marshalleq said:

Can you confirm for me that Luminar has an actual photo library management function in it?

Luminar 4 has the photo library features.  I have used older versions from before that was added and had mostly abandoned it because I was not too thrilled with the quality of the results it produced; I had various other programs by then which all did much better.

Here is the page for Luminar 4: https://skylum.com/luminar-4

If you scroll down under the header "Browse beautifully. Without importing" there is a video which demonstrates the library feature.

I'm not sure how Luminar AI fits in and am not really paying much attention to that product line any more, but if I am looking at the page correctly it looks like Luminar Neo is slated to replace AI and 4 at some point in the future and is currently in beta testing?

The company's other major product, Aurora HDR, is an awesome HDR photo app (which I rarely have a need for but am glad to have in my toolbox for the occasion when I do), but I don't particularly recommend Luminar at this point - YMMV.

[PaoloT]

Maybe I've asked this somewhere else, but I'm not sure I received an answer. For Mac users, isn't Apple Photos a nice alternative? I see that you can modify photos using Affinity Photo tools from there. Image ordering seems powerful to me, and the UI is much more modern than Lightroom.

I heard Apple Photos may be underpowered in managing RAW files. It for sure can sort my own, but I ignore which may be the limitations for advanced users.

Paolo

 

[Marshalleq]

I use it extensively, but because it doesn’t manage local files well (or maybe at all) to be honest after my last few judgemental decisions about this topic im going to check. 
 

my belief is i cannot integrate a local set of files with a cloud set, but if I can that could be the best solution of all. Checking!

[Marshalleq]

3 hours ago, fde101 said:

Luminar 4 has the photo library features.  I have used older versions from before that was added and had mostly abandoned it because I was not too thrilled with the quality of the results it produced; I had various other programs by then which all did much better.

Here is the page for Luminar 4: https://skylum.com/luminar-4

If you scroll down under the header "Browse beautifully. Without importing" there is a video which demonstrates the library feature.

I'm not sure how Luminar AI fits in and am not really paying much attention to that product line any more, but if I am looking at the page correctly it looks like Luminar Neo is slated to replace AI and 4 at some point in the future and is currently in beta testing?

The company's other major product, Aurora HDR, is an awesome HDR photo app (which I rarely have a need for but am glad to have in my toolbox for the occasion when I do), but I don't particularly recommend Luminar at this point - YMMV.

Thanks. I’ve now installed it. They had a 7 day trial in the App Store. They had two of their products in the App Store, both had sort of library management features. The first one. Ai had the fastest library scan I have ever seen, the second one I suspect doesn’t have a catalog or does it in batches or similar it was relatively slow. Neither of them have quite the attention on the library that I’m looking for at first glance. But I will have a second look when I get some more time. 
 

thanks for the suggestion. 

[PaoloT]

On 5/4/2022 at 2:58 AM, Marshalleq said:

I use it extensively, but because it doesn’t manage local files well (or maybe at all)

What I can say is that I keep all my Apple Photos files referenced to the actual position in my drives. This comes from the time when I used Canon's own database app, and I've continued to prefer to get full control on the original files.

No idea of the details, but in general it seems to work fine. I think Photos makes a copy of the original file in its own format, and applies any edit to both its copy and the original.

Searching in Photos is extremely powerful. I use very much tags and smart folders, but the AI features it automatically use to scan the images content do produce results that I can use. The UI can disconcert at first, if one is looking for an exact replacement of an older-fashioned software, but it is easy to get accustomed to it.

I sometimes suspect that Photos is very much undervalued for the bad press it received when Aperture was abandoned (and then partly integrated in Photos). The same happens with Pages, that many still think to be "much worse than the old one". It's not this way, but a bad reputation is hard to remove.

Paolo

PS: Extension menu in Apple Photos:

 

 

[thomaso]

On 5/3/2022 at 7:24 PM, fde101 said:

How did you get those prices?  Here is what I see (USD) - and I am not logged in on the site, so this is not the upgrade pricing:

Your $ 299 are interesting. Currently it says in Germany € 349 (which would be ~ $ 370, means +70 $, +25 %).
The difference between $ and € feels even more odd since the headquarter of the company is in Denmark, Europe.
Finally I am surprised by any of these prices because I purchased it in end of 2020 for € 244, which means an increase of +50 % after 1.5 years.

[Jany]

I tested all of alternatives. Best is DxO Photolab 5. Beware of luminar, its crap.

[thomaso]

17 minutes ago, Jany said:

Best is DxO Photolab 5.

How "best" is best? – Aside personal favours & habits with interfaces: I can't find an info whether it opens / imports Lightroom Catalogs. Does it?

Though adjustments / colours in Capture One are not identical to those in Lightroom it can help a lot to get existing catalogs imported, not only because of adjustments but also for metadata like keywords, ratings etc.

https://learn.captureone.com/blog-posts/10-killer-tips-for-switching-from-lightroom-to-capture-one/

[Jany]

23 minutes ago, thomaso said:

How "best" is best? – Aside personal favours & habits with interfaces: I can't find an info whether it opens / imports Lightroom Catalogs. Does it?

Though adjustments / colours in Capture One are not identical to those in Lightroom it can help a lot to get existing catalogs imported, not only because of adjustments but also for metadata like keywords, ratings etc.

https://learn.captureone.com/blog-posts/10-killer-tips-for-switching-from-lightroom-to-capture-one/

I dont care about adobe and lightroom catalogs. Functionality wise is best alternative. You are Capture One fanboy or what? If you need alternative, deal with it and move on, i did switch i one evening and i used lightroom way to long.

[KC Honie]

On 11/7/2021 at 4:59 PM, Snapseed said:

This is where initial clarification would have helped if you see what l mean. Does the OP want a photo organiser, a RAW editor or something that does both like Lightroom?

Sorry to resurrect a nearly dormant thread, I think he wants what most of us want (wanted) a credible replacement for LR and C1.  So yes, a photo organizer and raw developer.  Everything is there on the developer side, Affinity Photo  has all the tools except an organizer...

[Marshalleq]

Yeah, I looked at all the examples given to me in this thread and a few others, downloading them all to try out and for my need there really doesn't exist a solution today.  Some people will argue with that but my justification is as follows: there is always something major wrong or missing.  The best is still Exposure, but it's very slow and therefore also is not a good fit given the primary task is to be able to quickly dive in and filter, sort and scroll hundreds of thousands of images.  The rest are either the same or have something else wrong, the better ones that come close to Lightroom are just too expensive (and surprisingly not just a little bit more expensive, a lot more expensive).  It is not a solution to want to leave Lightroom to get away from  the cost of a subscription to then end up with an even more expensive product.  And these surprisingly expensive products were only replacing half of the suite that you get with adobe lightoom portion only not photoshop.  So either the Adobe photography plan is a very good deal or the other products are very expensive.  You choose.

For these reasons there is still not a decent replacement for Lightroom available in the market today unless you want to pay more than the Lightroom bundle.  I'd challenge anyone who said there was to explain (I'm interested, but am jaded by what I've seen so far).  I'd pay more if it was a one off cost of course, but again the example shown for a one off cost, was not actually a one off cost.  It was a one off cost until the next version came out and was still more expensive than the adobe plan as well.

There really is an opportunity here for affinity to add this to their portfolio of apps.  I think the problem is that many people don't understand the market positioning - even my cousin a pro photographer didn't know why he needed Lightroom.  When you look at the above apps that are shown, a general trend of all of them was to market their photo editing features, I don't think any of them marketed their library management features.  It's surprising because the amount of photo's being taken these days is insane and you'd think some product owner / manager somewhere would recognise this as the opportunity that it is.  I could think of a lot of things to do using A.I and such to sort your photos so that they can easily be found.  Integrations with desktop apps to include e.g. Apple photos push / pull / library sync, scene recognition, etc etc.  Hopefully one of them reads this.

[KC Honie]

5 hours ago, Marshalleq said:

Yeah, I looked at all the examples given to me in this thread and a few others, downloading them all to try out and for my need there really doesn't exist a solution today.  Some people will argue with that but my justification is as follows: there is always something major wrong or missing.  The best is still Exposure, but it's very slow and therefore also is not a good fit given the primary task is to be able to quickly dive in and filter, sort and scroll hundreds of thousands of images.  The rest are either the same or have something else wrong, the better ones that come close to Lightroom are just too expensive (and surprisingly not just a little bit more expensive, a lot more expensive).  It is not a solution to want to leave Lightroom to get away from  the cost of a subscription to then end up with an even more expensive product.  And these surprisingly expensive products were only replacing half of the suite that you get with adobe lightoom portion only not photoshop.  So either the Adobe photography plan is a very good deal or the other products are very expensive.  You choose.

For these reasons there is still not a decent replacement for Lightroom available in the market today unless you want to pay more than the Lightroom bundle.  I'd challenge anyone who said there was to explain (I'm interested, but am jaded by what I've seen so far).  I'd pay more if it was a one off cost of course, but again the example shown for a one off cost, was not actually a one off cost.  It was a one off cost until the next version came out and was still more expensive than the adobe plan as well.

There really is an opportunity here for affinity to add this to their portfolio of apps.  I think the problem is that many people don't understand the market positioning - even my cousin a pro photographer didn't know why he needed Lightroom.  When you look at the above apps that are shown, a general trend of all of them was to market their photo editing features, I don't think any of them marketed their library management features.  It's surprising because the amount of photo's being taken these days is insane and you'd think some product owner / manager somewhere would recognise this as the opportunity that it is.  I could think of a lot of things to do using A.I and such to sort your photos so that they can easily be found.  Integrations with desktop apps to include e.g. Apple photos push / pull / library sync, scene recognition, etc etc.  Hopefully one of them reads this.

I chose to go with C1 because IMHO the raw engine is much better than Adobe's and I prefer AP to PS.  But to your point I pay a premium for using C1 instead of LR.

As primarily a photographer, I am keenly aware of the library features of both LR and C1.  An application such as PS or AP is not useful for a high volume photographer, you have to have the basic DAM functionality of LR or C1 (et al).  I think most photographers are also very much aware of this.

I am not sure why Serif has not created "Affinity Develop" to compete with the other RAW developers out there (the RAW developer functionality is already present in AP, write a DAM already!!!).  But that in my opinion is the huge factor in photographers not switching to Affinity apps.

If C1 keeps raising prices like that are then I might head back to Adobe...  Then PS would also replace AP on my machine.

Edit:

As an aside, I don't think Serif has any intention of releasing a LR/C1 competitor.  It is a glaring hole in their lineup and should have been released concurrent with Affinity Photo.  There is some strategic reason for not competing heads up with Adobe that we are not seeing.  Very unfortunate...

 

[Marshalleq]

Agreed and you raise another good point I did not above, the equation may be different if you're a pro photographer.  I'm not, nor do I intend to be, so for me the way I weigh it up is different to those that are.