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I was paying the monthly subscription to have access to Adobe PS and LR but as an occasional user I can't justify the £10/month. I'm certainly not using either to their fullest potential!! The features I used were:
- PS - merging multiple shots into HDR
- LR - tweaking levels, colour balance, highlights, shaddows etc plus sharpening
Anything out there which is cheaper that would give me the same? TIA
GIMP, yes really, though pick your search term carefully. Surprisingly 'gimp photo' has it as the first result.
There's loads of free stuff that'll do what you want, it just depends whether it'll fit with your workflow.
As above. GIMP is a fairly capable PS replacement, though if you're used to how PS works it'll take some getting used to.
Darktable and RawTherapee are decent LR replacements but nowhere near as smooth to use in my experience. RawTherapee also doesn't do cataloguing which might be a dealbreaker.
If you're a really light user then you might get away with online apps like Pixlr, Photopea and Photoscape.
I've just written a fairly in-depth article about this for a client (I'm also an occasional photo nerd but I suck up the Adobe cost because I'm so used to them).
Affinity Photo - one off payment and there's a 30 day trial available...
I miss Aperture - not the answer you wanted but it's good to get it off my chest
I hate this kind of subscription software as a rule, but £10 per month for PSD and LR is not bad.
Having said that, I’m still using PS CS and LR6 because new versions don’t run on my MacPro workstation.
Affinity Photo here.
I keep meaning to treat myself to a copy of Affinity Photo. I should probably take advantage of that Black Friday deal, although not sure if my creaky laptop will run it.
Affinity photo here too. Version 2 is a lot better to use and get results with, version 1 was a bit limited.
I hate this kind of subscription software as a rule, but £10 per month for PS and LR is not bad.
Even better with a discount code on Amazon Black Friday - £70 for a year. I'm not a fan of Adobe in general but it's hard to beat that price considering what you get.
Thanks all - I've downloaded RawTherapy for a fiddle and will go from there 🙂
I'm freeware all the way for this. The current stuff I use...
Polarr for LR type stuff (but I'd say get your head round Darktable if you want to delve deeper or need catalogue features - I flipflop between the two).
Pixlr (E) for quick and dirty PS type stuff.
GIMP for anything more complicated in terms of editing or compositing.
This is GIMP and Polarr together doing a bit of arty farty stuff with the focus on process rather than outcome...
DXO Photolab, bit of an upfront cost (which over Black Friday weekend was much reduced) but I find it pretty good software. Read some reviews, but it's on a par with LR & PS or Capture One.
STW used to provide photo editing free through the "Jamie" add on. Shame its not available anymore 😟
I use Lightroom for free on my phone if that helps.
A quick question for you: do you use the photoshop phone app?
If you’ve got an Adobe subscription then you can just download and use the phone app with it.
I’ve been using it for a while now and have to say that it’s absolutely brilliant! Let’s you do a lot of what you’d do on your desktop on your phone. I use it all the time.
I’d recommend trying it out before you dump photoshop. I thought it might be just a bit of a gimmick, but it’s actually a really useful tool
I’m also not a fan of subscription models or companies like Adobe, who basically have a monopoly over an entire industry, but I think a tenner a month for a tool like photoshop isn’t bad
A useful thread. I've recently been trying the free trial version of Photopad which I quite like. As the trial period has gone on many of the functions have been withdrawn (reasonable enough I guess). Have been debating putting my hand in my pocket and buying it but this thread has introduced me the Affinity Photo 2 and I'm currently trying the trial offer. Looks good to me and a lot closer to what I've previously been use to with Photoshop. It's got a few quirks in the area of "cropping" which is non-destructive and means a bit of a workaround but generally I'm quite impressed.... and it opens GoPro Raw files as well which some editors don't.
In a similar position to the OP I switched to darktable for RAW processing. It is very powerful (and free) but being open source you do get lots of modules written by different people that do very similar things in slightly different ways, which can be confusing. Once you realise that you can do almost everything you want with just a couple of modules things get a bit easier. That said, I find I don't actually use it that much. Being a Fuji user who just takes the odd picture for fun I find I'm usually happy with the jpegs (especially as I shoot a RAW file as well and can do a bit of post-processing of that on the camera anyway).
A quick question for you: do you use the photoshop phone app?
No but I use the iPad app and also the Lr iPad app. In fact the Lr iPad app was the main reason I got a subscription so I can just take my iPad on trips and leave my laptop at home.
I’m also not a fan of subscription models or companies like Adobe, who basically have a monopoly over an entire industry, but I think a tenner a month for a tool like photoshop isn’t bad
They've won that right though. Quark was King at one stage and no-one ever thought that would be toppled. But complacency go to them.
Adobe bought Pagemaker, chucked a load of money at it and created InDesign so they then had the whole package.
I'll always hate them for killing Freehand though! That was my go-to software. 🤣
And if you're professional user the whole suite is only £43.00 a month when you take tha VAT off.
I think my issue with the £10/month subscription is twofold - firstly, I hardly scratch the surface of what LR & PS can do and secondly, there are months go by when I don't use it so it probably costs me about a tenner an hour to use it!
I don't need all the catalogue stuff and my workflows are pretty simple. Most commonly merge 3 (or 5) RAW files into HDR image in PS. Open in LR, do a few tweaks to colour / WB / sharpening, sometimes ad a grad filter. Then export and save in my OneDrive folder.
STW used to provide photo editing free through the “Jamie” add on.
There were the MrsToast filters too for added pizazz.
I’ll always hate them for killing Freehand though! That was my go-to software.
Freehand! Showing your age there. Think I started on CricketDraw in the late 80s.
I don’t need all the catalogue stuff and my workflows are pretty simple. Most commonly merge 3 (or 5) RAW files into HDR image in PS. Open in LR, do a few tweaks to colour / WB / sharpening, sometimes ad a grad filter. Then export and save in my OneDrive folder.
Sounds like Affinity Photo is the app for you !
I use Photoshop Elements, and Aurora HDR. Neither are free, but you can purchase a lifetime license so you're not paying monthly. Elements has all the functionality I need for RAW processing etc, and Aurora is excellent for HDR workflow.
They’ve won that right though. Quark was King at one stage and no-one ever thought that would be toppled. But complacency go to them.
Adobe bought Pagemaker, chucked a load of money at it and created InDesign so they then had the whole package.
I’ll always hate them for killing Freehand though! That was my go-to software. 🤣
Quark was always ****ing horrible. Proper Mickey Mouse shit! How it got to be industry standard, I’ll never know. Like most people I was glad to see the back of it. Indesign was a million times better right from day one.
I did think freehand was far better than illustrator though. And after they killed it they never even bought the best features into Illustrator
Overall though, Creative Suite is an absolute bargain for what you get for fifty quid a month
Quark was always ****ing horrible. Proper Mickey Mouse shit! How it got to be industry standard, I’ll never know.
Because it was the first DTP system that could really handle large scale print production. Quark was complacent though, and Indesign really did sneak in and steal their lunch!
I did think freehand was far better than illustrator though.
I started with CorelDraw on a 286x66 PC, with probably about 8Mb of RAM, it would take ten minutes to refresh the screen! Corel was really intuitive to use, I hated Illustrator when I went over to a Mac, having to use dialogue boxes to make adjustments when producing text on a curve, for example, when Corel gave you little handles/nodes on each character so all you had to do was select a node and use the cursor keys - just a shame the Mac version never really worked very well. Got to grips with Illustrator after a while, but Photoshop was my main thing, ‘cos I was trained to run a Crosfield drum scanner and retouch images for clients like Titleist golf equipment.
Loved that job.
As I understand it, with the subscription systems Adobe use, if you cancel the subscription, you’re locked out of all your data? My former studio manager still has my old Mac, from about 2001/2, one of the Anthracite and silver ones with dual processors, and one of the last paid-for copies of Ps with a license, and all of the original Quark, Ps and Illustrator files for jobs the company did, and he still has former clients contacting him asking for amended versions of jobs I worked on twenty-odd years ago!
I hate this kind of subscription software as a rule, but £10 per month for PS and LR is not bad.
It's not bad if you use it all the time. I was paying £20pm for the full suite because I wanted premiere as well, but in the end I was only using it once every 6 months. Wouldn't be half as bad if they didn't penalise you for cancelling.