Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

With Adobe you have a full ‘all in one’ pp solution with both a Data Asset Management ( Lightroom), raw processor (camera raw which is what Lightroom uses), and many bells and whistles. There are few other apps with both a Data Asset Management and development features. I’m an M1 Mac Mini user so the ones I know of are PhotoShop Elements, Luminar 4 and AI, and On1. I have them plus Affinity Photo, Adobe full creative suite (take a city college or college course and you should be able to rent them for $80 a year), and most of the Topaz products. I’ve also test run Capture one.

I got fed up with Adobe when they went to sass pricing. After looking around quite a bit I went to on1. I’ve been very happy with it. It is much easier to use than Adobe. It probably has about 85% of what the Adobe suite can do but then I use other products to expand it. I go out to Affinity for any stacking. I got a topaz for the noise and gigapixel and sharpening. On the Mac, it is a pretty reliable product. But I’m a bit upset with them because the reason I use plug-ins is that they put that on behind on updating some features. Then they bring it out there on the noisy product and want me to buy it. So I’m taking a serious look at moving back to Adobe I’m shocked at what Photoshop can do that I don’t seem to be able to do in any other product. Plus the fact they have been optimized for the M1. All of these products have trials and huge amounts of tutorials that you can check out before you buy that would be my suggestion. I think he will find the transition On1 to Lightroom to be easier than any other. Good luck

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Check out the Raw Power application/plug-in (can be used either way). $40 on App Store. It's written by the same basic team who wrote Apple Aperture, back in the day. It's fully optimized for M1.

It's important for folks to realize that there is a huge difference between Lightroom (the cloud-centric version) and Lightroom CLASSIC, the Desktop version most professionals use. They tend to serve different audiences. I'm in the Classic version daily. I've never used Lightroom (cloud-centric version).

kpmac Loc: Ragley, La

I've been using On1 for several years and I really like it.

Markag

Seems ON1 is a favorite.
I have a fairly robust PC with an NvMe boot drive. Adobe drops temp files constantly, whether I use their offerings or not. They don’t like it if you move the temp folder onto another drive as some of their filters will simply not function.
Further, their frequent updates often don’t complete requiring a support contact and reinstalls.
Thinking it might be my PC — 128ram lots of disk space, 8gb video card, I bought an M1 chipped MacBook Pro. While it is speedy, I discovered early on that Adobe has very few apps that are natively compatible with the M1. Tiresome!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Time to re-visit your M1 MacBook Pro. Adobe has updated most of their apps to Apple M1 native/universal status.

https://isapplesiliconready.com

The link above is a database of application statuses, whether M1-Native, M1-Functional via Rosetta 2, or Not Working.

For photographers: https://isapplesiliconready.com/for/photos

dsnoke Loc: North Georgia, USA

Most, if not all of the responses so far have been about software for purchase. I, being a miser, opted for Affinity Photo at a one-time cost of $50. NO recurring charges. And not that the free software has caught up a bit, the combination of darktable and GIMP is a good alternative. darktable works as the alternative to Adobe Camera Raw, and GIMP works as the alternative to Photoshop. darktable alone is an alternative to Lightroom. None of those costs a dime, although I do contribute a bit to keep the software going.

Markag

Went directly to my MacBook and it continues to want to install the intel versions of Bridge and Lightroom CC?

profbowman Loc: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

It depends somewhat on your camera. Most brands have software that will convert RAW files to something else that can be used to edit (such as a 0TIFF file) while the RAW file remains untouched. For my SONY A6000 it is "Image Edge Desktop" which is a free download from Sony support. This can be used to edit RAW files, too, However, I like getting down to more precision and appreciate the capabilities of IrfanView (freeware) from that perspective. While some see this only as a viewer, it really has loads of editing capabilities when one peruses the full extent of what it can do. I know this is anathema to many other professional photographers, but I use MS Paint (a free install from MS) whenever I must add or delete a group of pixels. MS Paint works with 24-bit BMP format image files which is deep enough for all the colors we can see. It stores up to 256 colors in the three (RGB) channels per pixel which is a total of 256^3 = 16,777,216 unique colors. --Richard

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

So what issues do you have with Creative Cloud? I'm using LR Classic and PS and I don't use Creative Cloud at all (other than downloading the program and updates). All my work is done locally. Can't you use PS, LR, Bridge without touching the cloud at all? All those programs can be run off-line although the programs want to touch base occasionally for subscription validation.

Win10 also works for me without major issues.

GLSmith Loc: Tampa, Fl

ACDSee Ultimate 2021, is as good if not better for PC & MAC…been around for ages, excellent tech staff

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

ON1 is a good alternative. It definitely hits a good price/performance point for a lot of folks. It's layering capability opens up lots of possibilities and sorely tempts me to switch. The biggest stumbling block for me is ON1's destructive re-touch tools. Different folks have different priorities. Vey high on my priority list is a non-destructive and non-linearly re-editable raw workflow. I want all my editing to be parametrically applied and I want to be able to return to any point in the editing sequence and make a change expecting that change to update the entire edit. ON1 comes close but monkey wrenches me with their re-touch tools. Once you use the re-touch tools you can't re-edit/remove them individually but have to remove them all and re-do them all if you want to re-edit just one of them.

jimmol

I've been using ACDSee for many years, currently the Ultimate version. A while back I compared it with Lightroom and found it definitely superior. The Light Equalizer tool is incredibly useful. Ultimate (the top version) has layers and most of the features that I have seen anyone use in Photoshop. The only other photo program I use is Franzis Sharpen Projects 2. This uses deconvolution and provides results as good as Topaz AI, 50 times faster.

David Martin Loc: Cary, NC

Then you should try Capture One Pro, which allows you to put edits on separate layers, which may then be individually readjusted in any nonlinear order you chose, or have their opacity of effect changed from zero to 100%. All non-destructive. Get the 30-day free trial and compare your results to ON1.

Markag

Capture seems to be the ticket here. Only lacks focus align/stacking?

Got any good promo codes to share?

maciej

I PHOTO coveres 95% of my needs. I use PSE2021, Affinity, Luminar and Topaz as required for the unique capibilites the other 5% requires.