this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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We don't want to pay Adobe anymore, so my Dad is looking for an replacement for Lightroom Classic.

He has over 4500 photos in Lightroom and we want a basically drop in replacement.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT1: Also, how do we transfer photos out of Lightroom?

EDIT2: All photos are locally stored.

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[–] St-ivan@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Get a $6/month complete adobe suite subscription from turkey, problem solved.

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[–] elasticVirtue@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m trying out Luminar Neo in hopes of ditching the annual subscription for LR + Photoshop.

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[–] BarneyLaurance@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm curious about whether any of the competitors have a function to import from (or maybe even better sync with) a Lightroom catalogue. Do the laws anywhere protect the right to reverse engineer LRc in order to build that, in the name of free competition between software vendors?

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[–] createsean@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

On1 photo raw. Has catalogs, layers, and very powerful raw processing. Plus you own the software not rent it.

You can migrate directly to On1 by following instructions here.

https://www.on1.com/blog/3-steps-for-moving-from-lightroom-to-on1-photo-raw

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[–] Adventurous-Sell9358@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

LR just came out with a big update. I'd keep it.

[–] dropthemagic@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah plus if you have presets plug ins know the shortcuts. As someone who can drive blind in light room classic sadly it is what it is. Same with photoshop. Would I love a non subscription service sure. Am I going to throw away 17 years of training and learning to use it. No

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[–] Electronic_Cup_2042@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (9 children)

DXO Photolab 6 totally replaced Lightroom for me

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[–] jfriend00@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Moving your Photos to a new Tool

There is no such thing as a drop-in replacement for Lightroom. Most edits from Lightroom do not transfer to non-Adobe products because how they render is proprietary. You could export all edited files in Lightroom to 16-bit TIFFs and then you can put those TIFFs and the corresponding RAWs into some other tool. The TIFF will be already rendered by Lightroom so it will contain all the edits. You can then either edit the TIFF some more in another tool or you can go back to the RAW and redo your edits in your new editing tool.

Other Tools

Capture One Pro: If your father is using the Lightroom catalog to organize his photos, then the most similar (in concept) tool would probably be Capture One Pro. It has an excellent RAW editor, though not as many extra features as Lightroom. It is available either as subscription (like Lightroom) or as a perpetual license. One of the problems is that it's more expensive than Lightroom. List price for a perpetual license is $299, though it sometimes goes on sale for $179. You can use that license for as long as you have hardware that it runs on (e.g. many years). There's currently a new version coming (probably by the end of the year) so I wouldn't buy a new license right now unless it was a deal that includes the upcoming new version.

DarkTable: On the other end of the pricing spectrum is DarkTable which is open source and thus available without paying, though if you make regular use of it, you will probably want to support the ongoing project. DarkTable has a rich set of RAW editing tools and a catalog, but it is not known for its ease of use. When I'm frustrated with both Lightroom and Capture One (for one reason or another), I've played with DarkTable a few times, but never took the plunge to commit to really learning it.

DXO PhotoLab: Available as a perpetual license (non-subscription), the DXO products are known for their RAW processing, particularly their DeepPRIME denoising technology and their lens correction profiles. I've played with a trial version and found it very capable, but haven't used it day to day myself.

Affinity Photo: It's worth mentioning Affinity Photo because it is such high value ($69.99 for perpetual license). It's not a direct Lightroom replacement as it doesn't include a catalog, but it can edit RAW files. You essentially open a RAW file you want to edit, make the edits and then save the edits and they are saved to a sidecar file. Affinity Photo is more analogous to a replacement for Photoshop (tons and tons of pixel editing features), but it can also do RAW editing. I use it in conjunction with Capture One and go to Affinity Photo when I need occasionally need pixel editing capabilities beyond what Capture One Pro can do.

Photoshop Elements: If super advanced editing features are not a requirement and ease of use and perpetual license are the main driving needs, then you should consider Photoshop Elements ($99) which is kind of a mini-version of Lightroom.

[–] geezerhugo@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I bought DxO and it does the job very nicely. Bought it at a discount with Nik collection, and you can do whatever you want with the files.

[–] jfriend00@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does DXO have any type of catalog or is it just edit individual images?

[–] geezerhugo@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do not know what catalog means, but you can try it for free for a month and see what it does. It is mostly for color correcting, etc, not really for layers and extensive editing like Photoshop. Give it a try, you may just like it.

[–] jfriend00@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A catalog is a structure by which you can organize your photos, create collections, search, keyword, etc... Both Lightroom and Capture One have catalogs and it becomes your primary mechanism for finding and managing your images. The RAW files themselves can still be stored in the regular file system, but you don't generally access them direct from the file system - you access them through the catalog which you structure the way you want your images organized.

If you don't know what a catalog is, then I'll assume that DXO isn't offering one and you just open images one at a time directly from the file system (much like you would do in Photoshop).

[–] geezerhugo@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Found this : PhotoLab has its own internal database, which holds all image edits. There is no such concept as catalogues. Personally, I activate and us DOP sidecar files, which can then be transferred with the image file, to other locations on disk without messing up things like catalogues.

Even if the database were to ever corrupt, normally, these DOP files will ensure that your edits are safe

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[–] lordthundercheeks@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The direct competitor for Lightroom is capture one, which costs more than LR and Photoshop combined, but I think does a better job on the files. If you want free then you get what you pay for. Each manufacturer has their own RAW converter for free, and some are better than others. There are a bunch of others, but I can't say which is any good.

https://shotkit.com/best-alternative-to-lightroom/

[–] daBomb26@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I might get downvoted for this but I think a lot of people forget how expensive editing software was before subscription based services.

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[–] Thomos1950@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ART (another Rawtherapee) was big discover to me, there is learning curve for some advance features, but it is Very powerful. I enjoy it weary much.

It's completely free for use!

[–] stevewmn@alien.top 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I should take another look at ART but basic Rawtherapee and Darktable both lack something in their features for storing a lifetime collection of photos. They're pretty good at all the usual exposure/color correction features but not really a full replacement for Lightroom.

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