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Life after Adobe?

JemHayward

JemHayward

pfm Member
I'm hoping to be able to retire soon, partly on health grounds, so this has clashed somewhat with the financial side of things so I'm examining various 'incremental' cost savings.
One could be to cancel my Adobe Photography Plan monthly and use some 'permanent' software (that also works off grid, as I found that you need an internet connection to validate your Adobe apps, and we were holidaying deliberately without an internet connection!).
However, my whole, massive collection of photos are all stored via lightroom, so I'd need something that would be able to seamlessly interpret the lightroom stuff.
My workflow nowadays is 90% Lightroom, 10% Photoshop, mainly used for cloning, and preparing files for (remote) printing.

Has anyone actually done this, and if so, how did it go?
 
You could look at DXO. They do a free trial to see how much of what want to do it for you. I don't do enough post processing to answer your question properly.
 
I you are only a light user of Photoshop/Lightroom you could try older CD versions of PS Elements and LR (cheap on eBay, etc)
I found that I rarely used most of the CS suite and very few of the PS filters/features so I dumped it yonks ago when Adobe moved to subscriptions.

Get along just fine with Lightroom 3 (64 bit) and an ancient copy of PS Elements 10 (32 bit)

I have succumbed to a DVD version of PS Elements 2020 (circa £80) but only because Mac Catalina no longer supports 32 bit apps ... :(
 
You do not have to have a valid licence to use the edit features in the Library part of Lightroom see
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/cancel-cc-subscription-photos/
in the Lightroom Queens web site.
I have thought over this problem for my self and decided that for the cost of the annual subscription it was worth avoiding the hassle learning a new editing and DAM process. If you are skilled LR user you may find the frustration of learning a a different program not worth the saving.
 
I used to use Lightroom on a Mac, but when I changed to a PC a year or so ago I found I couldn’t buy a standalone licence for a one-off payment. It appears Adobe now only offer subscription-based licences for LR (?). Having done a bit of research and read reviews I went for a basic package from ACDSee for a one-off payment. Rather different from LR and a fairly steep learning curve, but perfectly ok for my rather basic needs. I believe ACDSee offer various packages so one might suit your requirements? Seem to be relatively cheap too. Worth a look perhaps.
 
Used to use Lightroom 3 but now use ON1 Raw and for £50 or thereabouts it is very impressive. New 2021 version just been released.
 
I do use quite a lot of Lightroom features and I like the way it works. I the absence of anyone saying - I moved from LR Classic to XYZ and it imported all the Lightroom modifications, preserved my RAW files and all was easy, I think I may just carry on with my subscription and find savings elsewhere. Thanks for all the input folks, helped clarify my thinking.
 
I could happily live with just Nikon’s capture NX-D.

I get the full Adobe CC free as I work at a university, but rarely use it.

Pete
 
I suspect that NX-D won't make much sense of Fuji RAF raw files!

I'm not sure that Lightroom has them fully sorted. Iridient developer does a slightly better job on occasion, but for the sort of stuff I do, the difference isn't worth paying for. I seem to manipulate less and less as time goes by, but when I have more time on my hands I have some projects in mind that will make much more use of LR and PS facilities, so burning my boat now may not be wise.
 
ON1 Photoraw plus Affinity when needed, I cannot justify £10 out of our pensions even though we can afford it.

Dave
 
JemHayward said:
I'm hoping to be able to retire soon, partly on health grounds, so this has clashed somewhat with the financial side of things so I'm examining various 'incremental' cost savings.
One could be to cancel my Adobe Photography Plan monthly and use some 'permanent' software (that also works off grid, as I found that you need an internet connection to validate your Adobe apps, and we were holidaying deliberately without an internet connection!).
However, my whole, massive collection of photos are all stored via lightroom, so I'd need something that would be able to seamlessly interpret the lightroom stuff.
My workflow nowadays is 90% Lightroom, 10% Photoshop, mainly used for cloning, and preparing files for (remote) printing.

Has anyone actually done this, and if so, how did it go?
Click to expand...

I managed to buy a disc version of Lightroom 6 on Amazon.de a few months after Adobe went digital only.
I didn't (and still don't) even use Lightroom but bought it for that exact same purpose: freedom from the pay-as-you-go tyranny and full off-grid functionality.
One of the problems with the older software (at least with PS CS6 when I used it) is that you no longer get updates for new camera RAW support and files of those cameras are unreadable.
One can always download the free RAW to DNG converter but if I remember correctly there are limitations in DNG files.
 
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The closest PS clone in looks, tools and workflow is Affinity. I now dropped PS for Affinity photo and miss nothing at all. I can't however comment on the LR connection since I never ran LR. However Affinity do a trial, have a very good and helpful service team for questions and since it's a simple one off payment for life, and rarely updates, will certainly wok off grid. It seems frighteningly cheap but although it isn't quite as seamless as PS the results are every bit as good i think.
Have a look here:
https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/ph...MIwOvY-N337AIVw7HtCh3ekQdOEAQYASABEgJfjPD_BwE
 
I have had a play with Afinity, it is different and has a different way of working - I do not consider it a replacement for Lightroom, it is a Photoshop contender. Ie for working on one image not a days worth of pictures.
 
Darktable worked OK for me. I ended up preferring ON1 or Luminar as stand alone packages. They do annual updates, though it is up to you to choose if you want to update them. I have a stand alone copy of LR6 (that last version before subscription) which, if you like LR will fulfil most needs. Unfortunately it is before the latter improvements to Fuji RAF handling (I think). If you are using Fujifilm there is a free (limited functionality) version of Capture One.
 
Photoscape X ( free version) is what I use, it covers the basics very well and to be honest I'm not overly creative with my editing.
The paid for version doesn't really offer that much more but I was taking a peek at Affinity for its Photoshop like abilities now that I'm handling some straight forward advertising work.
I do despise subscription software so always go for a free or one time payment if possible.
 
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