[Alnjpn]

I was recently in the same boat as you looking for a Lightroom alternative. I tried Raw Therapy, Dark Table and DXOs editor. In the end I found I got the best results with Raw Therapy. And for me it was the most comfortable after coming from Lightroom. So another shout out for Raw Therapy

[wanderer2]

While I also recommend Serif Affinity Photo, I'd point out that it doesn't do "pixel shift resolution", nor does it contain any kind of catalogue/organization function. I find that sensible use of Windows' file system with useful directory and file names is the best organization tool, myself, and DCU5 will process pixel-shifted images. If you look at the online documentation for Silkypix, you can find out what all the stuff in DCU5 does.

The Adobe programs don't do pixel shift resolution either, do they? AFAIK that is limited to DCU5/Silky Pix and RawTherapee. If I'm wrong about this someone please correct me.

[dvoth]

My current setup is Affinity Photo with GraphicConverter. GraphicConverter I find good for browsing files on the hard drive. It also has functions for editing, batch processing and more. You can also send the image to another program to work on. It may take some time to learn it, but it has plenty to offer and the developer gives excellent support. I use Photos for getting my pictures onto my mobile devices. I have used Photoshop Elements and also a photo editor called "Acorn" that is easy to use and inexpensive.

[robysue]

An update:

I've been downloading trial versions of just about everything that's been suggested as well as a trial version of Photoshop Elements 2020, which is a standalone program rather than a subscription.

And I've edited the same bunch of 15 K-3 photos in every piece of software that I've downloaded. The photos included a few jpegs with a somewhat difficult white balance problem and a need to clone out a bit of distracting background. The bulk of the photos are a bunch of outdoor raw photos recently taken up at Goat Island (part of Niagara Falls State Park) on a cold, grey overcast day with very flat light.

I've learned some basic lessons about post processing:

1) Different pieces of software do different things well, different things ok, and different things not so well.

2) Ease of use is important. (And ease of use is in the eyes and hands of the user!)

3) It can be remarkably easy to over process an image, sometimes without realizing it at the time. (It's easy to make those cold, grey flat photos taken at Goat Island look like they were taken on a partly sunny day.)

4) It will take time to become a reasonably competent user of any of these programs. But at the same time, it's possible to get decent, usable images from any of them even after only spending about 5 or 6 hours using them. And the time spent learning how to use any of these programs should make it easier and easier to get really good output images in a reasonable amount of time.


More specifically I learned:

I liked the results of post processing with Affinity, but I did not enjoy working with the program at all. It seemed to take forever to load the set of 25 photos that I was editing. Moreover, while it was loading the photos, everything on my Mac slowed down to the point where I really couldn't work on much of anything. I also did not like the fact that there was no "filmstrip" of the loaded images---just tabs with the image names. And the negatives of that editing environment out weighed the positives of the final results of the post processing. If I planned on just editing one or two photos at a time, I think Affinity would have won out. But since I tend to do "batch editing" of large numbers of photos, the difficulty of navigating through the list of open photos was a significant drawback for me.

While Darktable and RawTherapee both run on Macs, neither program is exactly "Mac friendly". Meaning---there's no menu across the top bar on the Mac and the keyboard shortcuts are Windows-style shortcuts: For example Control-Z to undo rather than Command-Z. I liked their editing environments well enough---except for the lack of that main menu. I did not like the fact that Darktable seems to presume the presence of a three button mouse and/or a mouse with a wheel, neither of which my MacBookPro's trackpad can emulate in a fashion that Darktable understands. Darktable seemed slower to work with than RawTherapee, but the results I got with Darktable seemed a bit better. But to be fair: RawTherapee was the first program I tested out, and some what I didn't like in the final results may be "post processing errors" on my part---i.e. the more times I started with the same original file, the more likely I was to know what I was really looking for as an end result. So for example, the batch white balance adjustment I did in RawTherapee for the Goat Island pictures was decent enough, but it didn't really capture the moodiness of the actual light. After lots of editing of those pictures on other pieces of software, I finally noticed that I'd subtly (and in once case not so subtly) shifted the temperature in a different way in other programs than I had done in RawTherapee. When I went back and re-edited a few of the photos in RawTherapee to make a similar change in temperature, I liked the RawTherapee output a lot more than the first time through.

While I liked the editing environment of On1, it was sluggish when loading the pictures and sometimes I had to wait for it to show the edit. I really like On1's AI mask tool, however. But in spite of liking the editing environment, I didn't actually like the output as well as that generated by most of the other programs I tried out.

Luminar was ok in terms of editing environment, but the output I got from Luminar was not as pleasing (to me and my tastes) as the output I got from other programs.

As for Photoshop Elements 2020: Things loaded exceptionally fast and I like the fact that it writes sidecar files for that are easy to locate (so do RawTherapee and On1). The editing environment is definitely aimed at nonprofessionals (like myself), but the tools under the "Expert" tab are not as well organized or as well labeled as I would wish. But I quite liked the output I got using Elements, almost as much as those I got from Affinity on about 60% of the photos and as much or slightly better than I liked from the ones from Affinity on the remainder of the photos. Adding layers to photos was not as easy as On1, but about the same as Affinity. (During my trialing, I was not able to figure out layers in either Darktable or RawTherapee, but I know that they must be there.)

So the upshot is that I bought Photoshop Elements 2020 this morning at 2:30 EST for $69.99, about 30 minutes before Adobe's holiday sale expired and the price went up to $99.99. I plan to keep Darktable and RawTherapee around since the are free and powerful. My guess is that for now I'll use Elements most of the time while using Darktable and RawTherapee if/when I can't do something in Elements. I also want to continue playing with DarkTable and RawTherapee enough to learn much more about editing in those programs so that if/when I either outgrow Elements or Adobe converts Elements to a subscription program, I'll have the know-how to gracefully switch to DarkTable and RawTherapee.

Finally: A great big thank you to everybody for all the suggestions that you gave me. It's been a very interesting week of intense post processing of the same 15 images over and over and over and keeping track of what I liked and didn't like about each of the programs I downloaded and tried out.

[gatorguy]

An update:

I've been downloading trial versions of just about everything that's been suggested as well as a trial version of Photoshop Elements 2020, which is a standalone program rather than a subscription.

And I've edited the same bunch of 15 K-3 photos in every piece of software that I've downloaded. The photos included a few jpegs with a somewhat difficult white balance problem and a need to clone out a bit of distracting background. The bulk of the photos are a bunch of outdoor raw photos recently taken up at Goat Island (part of Niagara Falls State Park) on a cold, grey overcast day with very flat light.

I've learned some basic lessons about post processing:

1) Different pieces of software do different things well, different things ok, and different things not so well.

2) Ease of use is important. (And ease of use is in the eyes and hands of the user!)

3) It can be remarkably easy to over process an image, sometimes without realizing it at the time. (It's easy to make those cold, grey flat photos taken at Goat Island look like they were taken on a partly sunny day.)

4) It will take time to become a reasonably competent user of any of these programs. But at the same time, it's possible to get decent, usable images from any of them even after only spending about 5 or 6 hours using them. And the time spent learning how to use any of these programs should make it easier and easier to get really good output images in a reasonable amount of time.

Finally: A great big thank you to everybody for all the suggestions that you gave me. It's been a very interesting week of intense post processing of the same 15 images over and over and over and keeping track of what I liked and didn't like about each of the programs I downloaded and tried out.

You went about it the right way too. Glad you found something that works for you, but now we'll be watching for some of your results