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Modern alternative to Adobe Lightroom (without a sub)

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firestorm

pfm Member
I've got a paid for copy of Adobe LR5 and I've recently found out that LR without the cloud services is not available anymore.
I don't want to pay a subscription for LR and be subject to upload limits etc.
I use it for viewing, cropping, editing, indexing, applying plugins to raw images when necessary.

I have Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm and Sigma raw photos.

I didn't get round to installing LR5 when I last changed from a PC to MacBook. So have been hunting for the software and license code.

What other alternatives are there? Or there is no other viable alternative and I need pay Adobe's ransom?
 
I think Adobe creative cloud photography plan at £9.98 a month is an absolute bargain. It includes Lightroom Classic, which is the full desktop Lightroom, Lightroom which is the desktop version which can access your folders directly without needing to use the library module and uses the cloud, Lightroom mobile and the cloud version of Lightroom together with Photoshop, All of the Lightroom Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw plus a number of other free creative cloud apps.The tools in Lightroom are now comprehensive and it has excellent denoise plus it's very easy to master these days. All of which can be synchronized with each other so that you can use it anywhere on any of your devices. It can be run on two at a time and it's easy to swap to another device by disabling it on the one you don't want to use. I Find I can do almost everything in Lightroom that I need to do and hardly ever find it necessary to go into Photoshop. When I do it's Photoshop beta which has just added much simpler adjustment brushes. I also sometimes make use of the huge range of other tools available in Photoshop. Also, for your sub you automatically get every update, which happen very regularly. So you get a very comprehensive set of editing, cataloguing, sharing, storage and publishing tools for less than a tenner a month and Adobe promised a long time ago not to increase the price. What more could you want?
 
By comparison you can £299 for a Capture One perpetual license...so one-off cost. But that won't get updated, and as the product moves on you will need to buy it again to get the up-to-date version. So I think Lightroom is well worth it. You can get Capture One on subscription for £14.92 per month, so it will be kept up-to-date - but 50% more expensive than Lightroom.
 
I bought Microsoft Office back in 2010, I'm still using it. LR cloud will cost £1680 over the same period.
As long as I find the functionality sufficient for my needs, I don't need the thing updated every month.
If there is a compelling feature I need, I'll pay up. The sub feels like a tax.

I don't need the cloud storage for example, I'm not interested in Photoshop. Not interested in using the generative AI editing for example. If I was using it for commercial purposes or if I used all the features, it may be justified. For someone who doesn't actually do much raw conversion and is really just using it for local storage and local indexing, it's very expensive. Even if I only use raw conversion 5 times over the year, I still need to pay for the year. If it was pro-rata, I might consider it. Or if I could opt out of the cloud storage, AI and PS, pay £2 pcm for example, I may be more inclined.

Basically I'd like a stripped down classic Lightroom Adobe used to sell. Where I can crop, resize, convert, apply curves, plugins, geotag map, denoise, change contrast, colour, sharpening etc. That'll run on my current MacBook.

Gingerbread - thanks for the heads up to Affinity
Alanbeeb - I'll also take a look at CaptureOne, it may be a better option for me

Hopefully I won't have to downgrade my IOS to High Sierra to run Lr5 as I suspect it won't run on MacOs Sonoma M2 MacBook (I know High Sierra won't run on an ARM M1/M2 CPU)
My last option would be to capitulate to Adobe and its sub model.
 
I have an Adobe sub but tend to use On1 Raw 2023.5 over it. Also been using DxO PureRaw as a first step with either.
 
I've started looking at On1 RAW and ACDsee.
Just found out what I'm after is a DAM, Digital Asset Management, RAW conversion essentially.
Let's see how things pan out ...
 
I pay for LR - very relectantly. Once you're in it's very hard to get out as you lose all of your edit history. They've not put the price up at all...
 
Happy Adobe user here, as others have pointed out other systems are availble but they can cost at least as much if you upgrade. There are very limited options if you want a combined catalog/editing facility. yes it is a tenner a month, but that is lost in the noise of my photograhy hobby (and indeed is a fraction of what I spend in photography days out in a month) - its just about a pint of beer and a coffee a month!!

Inevitably you have to upgrade to either use new features or gain camera support for your latest and greatest purchase (camera or computer).

Also there is familiraity with sticking with the same system, and you get into the swing of a suitable workflow that meets your requirements.

@Colinb 's post sums it up very well.
 
I'm with gingerbeard. Affinity is the way to go. people seem nervous because it's so cheap hahahaha. Basically it seems to me that Affinity looked at Adobe products and rebuilt them. The interface is very very familiar ( I taught and used photoshop and designer for years), with a dedicated raw processing 'room', you get updates free, and you pay less that £50 for a lifetime product. I've been using it now for 8 years or so and never ever needed more. I tried lightroom last year and capture one this year to see if they were better and I didn't see a thing they did that Affinity doesn't. A must try IMO.
 
I'm in the same boat ... used LR for years (since LR2 or something crazy. I was paying to upgrade every other version or so. The subscription model kicked in just as my free time decreased due to kids, so I cancelled that after a year or so. I bought Capture One perpetual, and I am sure it is great, but I just can't seem to navigate, and don't have the headspace to try to learn.

One thing I have learnt ... before switching to a new platform, see how many support vids are on youtube, or how much traffic on the forum. I like to know if I get stuck that there is a lot of help available. E.g. when I was using Adobe there was lots of support, and people like Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski doing vids and books.
 
I have never used Lightroom but I do use Darktable which is free and easily good enough for me.

It will run on Windows, Mac and Linux I have used it on all 3 (it seems to run very fast on Linux) and has good video support on youtube, you can download and see if you like it (and if it supports your cameras) - once you get to grips with it it's very powerful - I don't use Darktable for cataloguing though so I can't comment on that I just use it for processing and editing most of my Jpegs and Raw files from Nikon, Ricoh, various Phones, Panasonic, Fuji, Sony etc. It has limited built in lens correction for some cameras.
It is a bit of an investment in time and a learning curve (as all things are) - I have probably only scratched the surface but IME it has been worth the effort.
 
Last edited:
firestorm said:
I've got a paid for copy of Adobe LR5 and I've recently found out that LR without the cloud services is not available anymore.
I don't want to pay a subscription for LR and be subject to upload limits etc.
I use it for viewing, cropping, editing, indexing, applying plugins to raw images when necessary.

I have Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm and Sigma raw photos.

I didn't get round to installing LR5 when I last changed from a PC to MacBook. So have been hunting for the software and license code.

What other alternatives are there? Or there is no other viable alternative and I need pay Adobe's ransom?
Click to expand...
That's absolutely unfair forcing people to use the cloud service.
When last time I upgraded my Microsoft Word I found out that I have no autosave option anymore without being connected to their cloud :oops: .
So silly.
 
stony said:
That's absolutely unfair forcing people to use the cloud service.
When last time I upgraded my Microsoft Word I found out that I have no autosave option anymore without being connected to their cloud :oops: .
So silly.
Click to expand...
Adobe don’t force you to use the cloud. Lightroom Classic included in the bundle works as normal (not cloud based)
 
Update
So far I've looked at Affinity - the DAM aspect is lacking. However I've found that Adobe Bridge may do the job and Adobe Photo Elements is available on a purchase once basis. So I may be able to use PE or Bridge to do the job, especially as my editing requirements are basic. If I can use plugins/presets with PE, I'll buy it.

Thanks for your input so far, a single person can only try out a limited amount of software at any one time.
Keep them coming.
 
Have a look at ACDSee.
I've been using it for as long as I've been taking digital photos and so upgrade every few years.
I can't compare it as I've never used anything else but it seems pretty good to me.
www.acdsee.com

Store | ACDSee

Shop amazing ACDSee products for all of your photo editing, video editing, and digital asset management needs.
www.acdsee.com www.acdsee.com
 
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