Lightroom alternatives?

bwana said:
Plopped down R2097.60 for another year of Photoshop and Lightroom. Hope 2025 will be the year someone catches up. :eek:
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Would be nice to get a Lightroom alternative that is a once off cost like affinity, ON1, Affinity, Capture one is all nice, but lightroom still just feel the best for my needs and can do all work in Lightroom and Photoshop.

2025 the year for a Lightroom alternative
 
Sicarius404 said:
Would be nice to get a Lightroom alternative that is a once off cost like affinity, ON1, Affinity, Capture one is all nice, but lightroom still just feel the best for my needs and can do all work in Lightroom and Photoshop.

2025 the year for a Lightroom alternative
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I have on1 and I find the overall look of the raw conversions tend to look over-processed.

I'm shooting mostly JPG but when I shoot raw lightroom feels too clunky. It would be nice if Affinity came out with something to compete with lightroom but they seem unenthusiastic about developing anything atm.
 

I'm installing On1 now.

In the past I used Darktable, which turned out to be a waste of time. It just took me too long to learn.
At the moment I'm using Adobe Bridge and Affinity Photo which works better for me, but I still really miss Lightroom's "Auto" button.

In the past I tried RawTherapee, but found it not really an LR replacement.

LR (not classic) is priced a bit better, but the cloud centric thing won't work for me.
 
I think On1 + Affinity photo are the winners.

On1 has a perpetual licence, and a 30 day trial that doesn't require payment details.
1751728469452.png

Plenty of sliders and easily accessible presets, which should take care of 80% of my needs. Affinity photo will take care of curves or any other edits.

The white balance auto seems to be linked to the brilliance AI, so I'll have to see how well it really works.

As a bonus it reads Adobe Bridge's rating data, so I don't have to re-rate all my photos.
 
RedViking said:
Doubt it. More like something AI.
And then everything will now be covered by one licence. Probably subscription based.
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Everything already is covered by one license, if you want it.

As far as subscriptions go... it's one of the main reasons why people switch from Adobe but who knows what's going to happen since the merger with Canva.

I use Affinity Designer and Publisher way more than Photos because I still rely on Photoshop. Both of those apps are v2 while Photos is still on v1.
 
I went to have a look at the speculation on their forums and it turns out they're making those read-only as of October 6th.
 
bwana said:
Giving this a go now. https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW
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Very interesting: "RapidRAW is a modern, high-performance alternative to Adobe Lightroom®. It delivers a simple, beautiful editing experience in a lightweight package (under 20MB) for Windows, macOS, and Linux."
But not quite there for Fuji users, for some reason many editing apps struggle with this, even LR did for years: "Find a better X-Trans demosaicing algorithm"
 
airborne said:
Very interesting: "RapidRAW is a modern, high-performance alternative to Adobe Lightroom®. It delivers a simple, beautiful editing experience in a lightweight package (under 20MB) for Windows, macOS, and Linux."
But not quite there for Fuji users, for some reason many editing apps struggle with this, even LR did for years: "Find a better X-Trans demosaicing algorithm"
Click to expand...
I tried the Linux version, which seems to handle the demosaicing OK, but they may be using a different routine to the other OSs. Interestingly it does not give the same degree of highlight and shadow recovery as some other software, although the demosaicing does not affect the dynamic range so it can't be blamed for this.
 
My Lightroom was working fine... and it still does, like 90% of it. But now as I click the "mask" function it hangs then crashes...

Nothing I can do, I've reinstalled and tried defaulting everything, my GPU drivers are all updated, I've even turned GPU support off.. nope!

Mask = crash!!!

WTF, this is insane and I have no idea what to do :sick:
 
I've taken a long break from any photo related activities but recently did a mini shoot and have to edit some photos. I got back into Affinity and realised I'm still using version 1 that I bought yonks ago. I see the latest version is 'free' now with some AI features locked behind a Canva sub...why do I have a bad feeling about this lol?

At least I can use both, trying out the new one but kind of concerned they will just end up being like Adobe.
 
Wrath of Khan MD said:
My Lightroom was working fine... and it still does, like 90% of it. But now as I click the "mask" function it hangs then crashes...

Nothing I can do, I've reinstalled and tried defaulting everything, my GPU drivers are all updated, I've even turned GPU support off.. nope!

Mask = crash!!!

WTF, this is insane and I have no idea what to do :sick:
Click to expand...
Message Support
 
Without warning from Adobe, Photoshop popped up with this right at the start of an assignment the other day - it took me 45 minutes to subscribe for another month (while I find a suitable replacement).

Screenshot 2025-12-31 at 13.34.32.png
 
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