[acoufap]

It depends on what aspects of Lightroom one uses. There are several good suggestions above for RAW processing, but for LR's broader functionality, I found no realistic contenders when I did full market research about a year ago. Missing or inadequate from the competition are:

• Digital asset management
• Comparable virtual copy functionality (probably LR's strongest suit)
• Soft-proof for publication
• Color management for editing and publication
• Integration with external editors
• RAW processor performance (not universally poor, but some contenders are slower than molasses and quite simply suck overall despite having attractive interfaces and pricing)
• Migration tools that are able to leverage LR processing metadata to the new environment

Yes, Adobe is (traditionally) in league with the Devil in regards to their sales model, but a realistic replacement remains elusive.


Steve

I used Capture One Pro - I guess - starting with version 7. Now it has reached version number 12 and I doesn‘t see, what‘s missing of the list. Runs greatly on my Mac - even on my Mac Mini late 2012 (quadcore i7). If I need specialized functionality it can directly connect to other software like PTGui, Helicon Focus or Affinity Photo. The only downside IMO is price.

[rdenney]

When I tried Affinity last year, I found its printing module undermined detail in the file, while Photoshop did not. And it provided monitor calibration only on the primary monitor, which would have required reconfiguration of my system. My high-end (ish) editing monitor is the second monitor so I can be working an image there while dealing with text-based stuff on the primary monitor.

I also tried On1, but its catalog management annoyed me.

I preferred DxO Photolab, which works in a straightforward manner and provides a lot of decent features.

I do not use software to organize my photos—I do that by how I build folders. Photolab allows that model, and does not require adding photos to a catalog.

I also tried the Pentax cut-down version of SilkyPix, and it has a couple of nice features in terms of inherent lens corrections.

When I put together an Alaska book, I used Photolab to process all the photos, and it did everything I needed with a lot of useful time-saving features. I’m finding that with the Pentax, I’m not needing all the power of Photoshop, or even much in the way of masking and local edits. But I did use Photoshop (I still have the last ownable version installed) for a couple of images where I needed a particular tool.

Where Photoshop has no equal among these other programs is in prepress. I cannot soft-proof with the other programs nearly as flexibly as with Photoshop, and its printer control is still unmatched. When I target those Alaska images for big prints, I will probably end up using Photoshop.

But for preparing images for on-demand printing, Photolab was perfect.



I don’t and never have used Lightroom, but have used Photoshop for about 20 years.

Rick “needing to resume the search for a publisher” Denney

[2351HD]

The 645z is an old camera now, so why don’t you just pick up an old non-subscription copy of Lightroom to load your 645z images into then export them as TIF files to use in your chosen software.

You can still load camera profiles into the old versions of Lightroom for raw processing of the 645z files.

If you don’t shoot much with it then this is the best way in my view.

[kaseki]

The 645z is an old camera now, so why don’t you just pick up an old non-subscription copy of Lightroom to load your 645z images into then export them as TIF files to use in your chosen software.

You can still load camera profiles into the old versions of Lightroom for raw processing of the 645z files.

If you don’t shoot much with it then this is the best way in my view.

Raw Therapee and Darktable are "free" and can convert PEF to TIFF. RT reportedly uses the inferred white balance that generated the embedded JPEG files to convert the raws; I'm not sure what Darktable does. Also DCU5 that comes with the 645Z will certainly read the PEFs. I didn't try conversion yet, so I can't testify that it can generate TIFFs, but what good would it be if it couldn't?

[BigMackCam]

The 645z is an old camera now, so why don’t you just pick up an old non-subscription copy of Lightroom to load your 645z images into then export them as TIF files to use in your chosen software.

You can still load camera profiles into the old versions of Lightroom for raw processing of the 645z files.

If you don’t shoot much with it then this is the best way in my view.

The downside with that approach is that you'd need to deal with any shadow and/or highlight recovery in Lightroom before exporting. Once the files are converted to TIFF, any data below the black and white points is lost. It's an extra processing step, and one that can't be easily automated... But, yes - it will work.

[Breakfastographer]

I'm still partial to 31 RAW converters compared – breakfastographer

Yes, I wrote it.

[Kerrowdown]

It depends on what aspects of Lightroom one uses. There are several good suggestions above for RAW processing, but for LR's broader functionality, I found no realistic contenders when I did full market research about a year ago. Missing or inadequate from the competition are:

• Digital asset management
• Comparable virtual copy functionality (probably LR's strongest suit)
• Soft-proof for publication
• Color management for editing and publication
• Integration with external editors
• RAW processor performance (not universally poor, but some contenders are slower than molasses and quite simply suck overall despite having attractive interfaces and pricing)
• Migration tools that are able to leverage LR processing metadata to the new environment

Yes, Adobe is (traditionally) in league with the Devil in regards to their sales model, but a realistic replacement remains elusive.


Steve

+1, all wot he said.

[Rondec]

If you are just fixed on using Capture One, I wonder if you could use a script to change the camera shot with from 645z to Fuji GFX 50. The sensors are (I think) the same or at least close enough that I would think it would work. We did something similar with the K1 II. Simply editing the exif to say K-1 allowed Lightroom 6 to open its PEF files.