Alternatives to Lightroom for someone who isn't locked in to it yet?

Valvebounce

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Hi Steve.
Thank you for that explanation, most enlightening.

Cheers, Graham.

SteveM said:
I honestly can't see a high quality alternative to Lightroom. Using the 'Adjustment Brush' in Lightroom is using layers. For any cloning/ healing (above the very basic that Lightroom offers) you would need to open the image in Elements.
Yes this is an 8 bit operation, but all of your tonal editing (it is this which causes banding) would be done in Lightroom. You shouldn't experience any detrimental effect to your image in this way. Elements wouldn't sell a single copy if people's images were routinely ruined through banding and they sell a lot of this software.
I had a play yesterday where I edited all the tonal changes in Lightroom, converted the image to 8 bit and did some cloning and healing....no problems at all. Many of us spent a lot of years editing entirely in 8 bit before 16 bit was introduced....again with no problems.
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi LDS.
Thanks for this info, and it was UFRaw which I couldn't get working, seemed like it worked in some limited way but not as a plugin or access route to GIMP.

Cheers, Graham.

LDS said:
Valvebounce said:
I have had GIMP in the past, but a lot of what I tried seemed counter intuitive! Can GIMP work non destructively on raws? I seem to recall the need for thingy's raw plugin which I also recall I couldn't get to work.

If you use GIMP, be aware 2.8 it's still a bit too tied to the sRGB colour space. It may not matter much if you output into that color space and/or doesn't edit much colors, but if you do and/or print on many pro photo printers it may become an issue, depending on the images.

Also AFAIK 2.8 doesn't support 16 bit image editing, which again may be an issue for your images or not - depending on how you convert RAWs for input.

AFAIK GIMP can use Darktable and UFRAW as RAW converters - but some of them don't work on Windows, and may need other pieces to work.

Version 2.9 - which is not a "stable" one yet - improves color management and adds 16/32 bit file processing.

Adjustment layers I'm afraid are planned for a future version (see https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap), and GIMP development is not really fast... my take on GIMP is "if it does what you need, use it, but don't expect missing features to be added quickly".
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi Steve.
Yes I just responded about this on the notification thread, but thanks for mentioning it here anyway.

Cheers, Graham.

SteveM said:
Canon have just released a new version of dpp which supports older models, so no need to have 2 versions open at once....for me at least as the new version supports the original 5D as well.
I'll be downloading that tonight.
That should be worth another look at - principally because it is free.
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi Diko.
Thanks, I just had a look at it, seems competitively priced and a big thing about no subscription needed!

Cheers, Graham.

Diko said:
Valvebounce said:
... is there any other software I should be looking at before going ahead with Lightroom?

Yes there is the new On1 Photo RAW and it's layer feature. However have in mind it's a new program just released.

As general alternatives you will always have the faster Capture One, which is faster and with better IQ output, but harder to learn and with less of the Adobe LR catalog power.

I hope I helped ;-)
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi Jack.
Thanks for this, have you tried it at all, any thoughts?
I see, no subscription needed, but please join our subscription model. (You will be less troubled than when we force it on everyone?) ;D

Cheers, Graham.

Jack Douglas said:
I bought ON1 Photo RAW when it was offered just before Christmas but haven't had time to get seriously into it yet. They are making a great to do about what they will be adding and if they follow through it will be impressive. It seems more directed towards landscape though. They are also trying hard to draw folks into their subscription ON1 Plus community.

Jack
 
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Jack Douglas

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Valvebounce said:
Hi Jack.
Thanks for this, have you tried it at all, any thoughts?
I see, no subscription needed, but please join our subscription model. (You will be less troubled than when we force it on everyone?) ;D

Cheers, Graham.

Jack Douglas said:
I bought ON1 Photo RAW when it was offered just before Christmas but haven't had time to get seriously into it yet. They are making a great to do about what they will be adding and if they follow through it will be impressive. It seems more directed towards landscape though. They are also trying hard to draw folks into their subscription ON1 Plus community.

Jack

Graham, unfortunately I am probably behind you when it comes to PP expertise. I have found that DPP has served me very well for a basic conversion with adjustments but I don't have a sophisticated file system and I haven't been doing the type of mod that your thread is addressing. In essence, I'm still where you are in spite of that impulsive moment when I purchased ON1. I previously bought the latest Corel Paintshop Pro X8 but when you don't have time it's easy to purchase and then do little with it. Corel's software appears to allow everything a person would want to do and I think it suffers from a lack of "name" more than anything. I have a hunch it's better than PS Essentials but....

So, get this sorted out so you can advise me! ;)

Jack
 
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LDS

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Jack Douglas said:
I previously bought the latest Corel Paintshop Pro X8 but when you don't have time it's easy to purchase and then do little with it. Corel's software appears to allow everything a person would want to do and I think it suffers from a lack of "name" more than anything. I have a hunch it's better than PS Essentials but....

PaintShopPro had a "name" when it was still owned by Jasc. Back then, it was a leaner, cheaper alternative to PhotoShop for many users - but the most demanding ones (sure, it lacked many of the advanced features of Photoshop).

Unluckily when it was bought by Corel it became more a "you press a button, we do the rest" product aimed at the casual user, and quality decreased, disappointing many old time users.

I used it from version 5 until X3, which I removed when I found it was installing junk services scanning your disks (and which were active even after PSP was closed!), and the product quality/features weren't up to competition. Then I started to use Lightroom.

Hope those issues have been addressed in later releases - surely it has more features then Elements, but may require the same skills as Photoshop (unless you use the pre-built filter/effects) - there's a trial, and may be still worth a look.

But this graph explains what happened to it...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hLkTI-UeXeU/TxmdV_tD07I/AAAAAAAAAFA/E1C1-wuGr0k/s593/rippsp.png
 
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Jack Douglas

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Thanks for that LDS. Well, maybe you'd like to take a look at the latest Paint Shop Pro and comment. I know that's asking a lot. ;) I get the feeling ON1 might be taking a similar approach - pre-built effects.

Pressed for time, I tried to play with it and didn't find it all that intuitive and so it's on the back burner. It's more fun shooting than sitting in front of a computer. DPP, it's a little exposure and color correction and it's tweaked as long as the shot is decent to start with, so that's what I've been doing.

Jack
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi Jack.
Well I downloaded On1 Photo Raw having already been trying ACDSee, and having had a go at Lightroom, all I can say is it took me about 5 minutes to get bored with trying to do anything with it, it just did not seem to have the ease of use to get me hooked, no software is right for all users, this one didn't seem to be the right one for me.
However ACDSee just made it impossible to say no with a special offer of $89 for the Ultimate Pack, cheaper than Ultimate on its own! As I seemed to be getting along with ultimate reasonably well and there is a 30 Day money back it seemed like a no brainer! ::)
Ask me in a while how this turns out. :)

So thank you to all who have given ideas for me to pursue I really appreciate all of your help and time you took to respond.

Cheers, Graham.
 
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Jack Douglas

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Jack Douglas said:
Graham, I can relate to that. I'm hoping they follow through with half of their promises.

Jack

Just responded to an email linking to an ON1 Photo RAW blog and watched a tutorial. it was pretty good so noticing that there were more videos I started scanning through what is offered, and it's impressive. I think it would be worth your while to look at a few because it appears to me that this software can do a lot. Here's the last one I viewed on masking.

https://www.on1.com/blog/using-the-different-masking-tools/

They really seem to be bent on producing a top product with great support.

Jack
 
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