Lightroom alternatives?

Depending on what I do darktable is an option. Nothing exists with exact same function as lightroom
 
So I bought Affinity Photo on Black Friday sale...so tired of paying Adobe.

Haven't used it until but finally wanted to edit a Timelapse I shot in Namibia last year and just realised there's no way to batch edit RAW files...that's a big bummer...or is anyone aware of a plugin or something that can do it for me in Affinity?

Edit: I seen ON1 has a Timelapse mode for RAWs...sigh...should've done my research beforehand :D
 
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prOd said:
So I bought Affinity Photo on Black Friday sale...so tired of paying Adobe.

Haven't used it until but finally wanted to edit a Timelapse I shot in Namibia last year and just realised there's no way to batch edit RAW files...that's a big bummer...or is anyone aware of a plugin or something that can do it for me in Affinity?

Edit: I seen ON1 has a Timelapse mode for RAWs...sigh...should've done my research beforehand :D
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Affinity Photo is good at some things - bulk processing raw files isn't one of them. But it's still worth having.

On1 is pretty good but also frustrating at times.
 
A bit late to the party, but I'll throw in another vote for CaptureOne. I'm still learning it after two years (don't have much time for photography these days) but so far it does everything I need. It performs well on my i5 MacBook Air, and you get subscription and once-off licensing options. I went for the once-off. Will know in a few years how good compatibility is sustained as newer versions are released.

Background: When Apple abandoned Aperture, I tried out all the things and settled on Adobe Lightroom (original, stand-alone, hereafter referred to as "Original Lightroom"). Lightroom CS was either not a thing yet, or new and limited, and LR CS Classic wasn't a thing yet. When Adobe announced Lightroom CS Classic, they stated that Original Lightroom (version 6.x at that point) would receive no further updates but would continue to benefit from CameraRAW updates. Up until this point, I still vaguely planned to one day subscribe and move to Lightroom CS Classic. But they lied. Exactly one year later they discontinued CameraRAW compatibility with Original Lightroom. I swung a cactus.
 
koffiejunkie said:
A bit late to the party, but I'll throw in another vote for CaptureOne. I'm still learning it after two years (don't have much time for photography these days) but so far it does everything I need. It performs well on my i5 MacBook Air, and you get subscription and once-off licensing options. I went for the once-off. Will know in a few years how good compatibility is sustained as newer versions are released.

Background: When Apple abandoned Aperture, I tried out all the things and settled on Adobe Lightroom (original, stand-alone, hereafter referred to as "Original Lightroom"). Lightroom CS was either not a thing yet, or new and limited, and LR CS Classic wasn't a thing yet. When Adobe announced Lightroom CS Classic, they stated that Original Lightroom (version 6.x at that point) would receive no further updates but would continue to benefit from CameraRAW updates. Up until this point, I still vaguely planned to one day subscribe and move to Lightroom CS Classic. But they lied. Exactly one year later they discontinued CameraRAW compatibility with Original Lightroom. I swung a cactus.
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What’s the capture One work flow like relative to LR?
I still use LR because it has no equal in terms of work flow but C1 has the potential to give better images from the little I’ve used it, I am a bit tired of the LR develop module, meh but it works.
 
koffiejunkie said:
It's hard to say - in the two years I had LR I did prescious little photography, and mostly just imported, a little metadata, and exporting the odd image. I would recommend looking at their tutorials to get an idea of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/c/CaptureOneDK/videos
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How's the Auto processing on it?
With LR I could get pretty good results just selecting auto WB and Auto exposure for 90% of my images. Rawtherapee is not in the same league with the few images I tried today.
 
It's just a matter of time that Lightroom and Photoshop will be able to edit your images by just describing what you want done similar to how AI image generators work
 
Barbarian Conan said:
How's the Auto processing on it?
With LR I could get pretty good results just selecting auto WB and Auto exposure for 90% of my images. Rawtherapee is not in the same league with the few images I tried today.
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Rawtherapee is an absolute turd in my experience. Maybe it's good I don't know but I can't invest the next 30 years of my life into learning how the UI works. Lightroom is good for batch processing. If you don't need batch processing (which to be honest is probably only really useful for timelapses), you can get by with photoshop without compromising anything. For me, photoshop + the nik collection is where it's at
 
Harmonic said:
Rawtherapee is an absolute turd in my experience. Maybe it's good I don't know but I can't invest the next 30 years of my life into learning how the UI works. Lightroom is good for batch processing. If you don't need batch processing (which to be honest is probably only really useful for timelapses), you can get by with photoshop without compromising anything. For me, photoshop + the nik collection is where it's at
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The advantage of Lightroom et al over PS is non destructive editing.

I'm still using Photo Mechanic for importing - it does a great job with the metadata. Jpgs usually get worked on in Affinity Photo and raw files still go to On1.
 
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bwana said:
The advantage of Lightroom et al over PS is non destructive editing.

I'm still using Photo Mechanic for importing - it does a great job with the metadata. Jpgs usually get worked on in Affinity Photo and raw files still go to On1.
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To a point, yes I agree. Photoshop is also non destructive once you get comfortable with layers and smart filters. Granted though, storage goes up dramatically compared

EDIT: I guess a "good" alternative very much depends on your style of photography and then your needs
 
Harmonic said:
EDIT: I guess a "good" alternative very much depends on your style of photography and then your needs
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Of the 10k photos I took last week, approx 10% were raw and [still] need to be post processed.
 
bwana said:
The raw files? Fortunately there are many that can be batch edited.
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For example, lightroom doesn't care if they're raw or jpeg, the workflow is the same. If you can apply the same changes to many files, I don't know of anything better than light room for it.

I know you posted this almost a year ago, have you had luck with anything else? The subscription model does suck
 
Harmonic said:
For example, lightroom doesn't care if they're raw or jpeg, the workflow is the same. If you can apply the same changes to many files, I don't know of anything better than light room for it.

I know you posted this almost a year ago, have you had luck with anything else? The subscription model does suck
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ON1 or C1 seems to be the only 2 viable options when I looked but they didn’t have the lightning fast workflow of LR so I didn’t take it further. I think C1 has improved batch processing recently and would probably be the best of the bunch, it has some very nice develop controls.
 
Harmonic said:
For example, lightroom doesn't care if they're raw or jpeg, the workflow is the same. If you can apply the same changes to many files, I don't know of anything better than light room for it.

I know you posted this almost a year ago, have you had luck with anything else? The subscription model does suck
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Lightroom is probably fine for working with raw files, there's rarely a rush for those, but it's too slow when I'm working with jpgs. 99% of the time I just need to crop and straighten those before I work on the metadata. Photo mechanic is pretty much the gold standard, unfortunately.
 
bwana said:
Lightroom is probably fine for working with raw files, there's rarely a rush for those, but it's too slow when I'm working with jpgs. 99% of the time I just need to crop and straighten those before I work on the metadata. Photo mechanic is pretty much the gold standard, unfortunately.
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I think you need one of these mate. PM me your size and closest postnet and I'll send one on the way
 
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