burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Amen!

Bob Yankle Loc: Burlington, NC

Affinity Photo, by far. It handles RAW files and will allow you to install Photoshop Filters in its interface.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

It's like asking "Of the hundreds of features in a digital camera, which one(s) do you use most?"

HardwareGuy

I "discovered" ACDSee a while back and cannot find a thing wrong with it. No one seems to speak much to it here, but what a great program.
What I REALLY like is that cataloging is intuitive, and does not create a learning curve in itself like LR.
It also has all the necessary photo editing features in a nice look.
I may humbly suggest you download a free trial and try it. I am very impressed so far.

jwn Loc: SOUTHEAST GEORGIA USA

Canon DPP 4 & Topaz

DanielJDLM

I use Elements as my main editing program; plug ins are On1, Topaz Adjust and the Nik suite. Used Photoshop for years but discovered Elements had everything I needed.

Ted d Loc: Green Valley, AZ.

I use ON1 it does everything Photoshop and Lightroom do faster and easyer and a lot cheaper!

d56flash

Guess I am the oddball here but I really like Corel Paintshop Pro 2018. I find it more user friendly then Photoshop or Lightroom. Also Topaz and Nik filters work well with it.

Bob Locher Loc: Southwest Oregon

I will say, this is not an easy choice to make. There are a LOT of partisans, and a fair amount of emotion involved. It is significantly more controversial than what camera should you buy!

Anyhow, here are my suggestions:

For Windows Computers, Faststone is free and does a lot of what the expensive programs will do. Poor docs, but pretty easy to use. For heavy lifting, look at Affinity, which is $50 and no subscription; it will do everything Photoshop does except for some three dimensional stuff.

Good luck and try to have fun working this question out.

Cheers

Ted d Loc: Green Valley, AZ.

and it has tuterals, coaches ect.

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

Sounds like the consensus of the group is that you should buy one of each and use them all.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with the subscription model. The Adobe price is reasonable (even for an amateur like myself) and gives you good value for the money.

drmike99 Loc: Fairfield Connecticut

I tried Affinity Photo about a year ago and haven’t looked back. At least for me it does everything I need (except catalog) and the online tutorials are excellent. Originally written for Mac OS it’s available also for Windows.

dino21 Loc: McAllen, TX

I agree with frjack...I am just learning but I have tried most of them mentioned ones. I have alot to learn but my pictures using Capture One Pro are just so much better in my opinion.

Veggylady

AARP newsletter suggests Gimp (free) for photo editing. Anyone know anything about it? Used it?

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Lightroom/Photoshop is now ONLY available via subscription. The last version of Photoshop available with a perpetual license was CS6 and Adobe stopped supporting that three or four years ago. Just last year they did the same with Lightroom 6, discontinuing support of that, too.

LR/PS is a powerful package, but ONLY the "CC" or "creative cloud" subscription version is now available. There no longer is a stand-alone option.

I used PS since around 1995 and LR since it was first introduced (2008?)... keeping them up to date myself and upgrading to new versions approx. every three years. The cost of that worked out pretty close to the same $360 it now costs to subscribe to the CC versions.

HOWEVER, LR6 and PS CS6 will quite likely be the last versions I'll ever use. I'm looking at the alternatives because I won't go the subscription route. And the older versions I'm using now can no longer be updated to accommodate any newer camera gear I might buy. Other than becoming a software renter with Adobe as my software landlord, my only choice will be to switch to one of the alternative software.

My complaint is simply that the way s'ware is delivered via download these days, there's actually no good reason for Adobe to NOT offer customers a choice: Buy the s'ware outright and do occasional updates/upgrades OR subscribe. Adobe could easily have done both, but instead chose to force everyone onto subscriptions and push out updates at their convenience (some of which have been MAJOR screw ups). Why would they do that? Well, what's happened with other subscriptions models you've been forced to use... such as cable TV, cell phones, etc.? Rent an apartment? Leased a car? How often have you seen the cost of subscription or rent go down? How often has it instead gone up? And what have you got to show for it when the subscription or lease period ends?

Sooner or later Adobe will increase the price of the subscription. In fact, when they first offered Creative Cloud they wanted 3X the current monthly "rent" and that was for Photoshop CC alone. No one bought at that price so they reduced it to 2X the current price... And still no one was stoopid enuf to buy! So they finally dropped it to the current price and added LR to the package... a good deal which has brought them a lot of new customers (and filled forums like this with "how to" questions) and earned Adobe HUGE PROFITS. Just wait until those profits plateau, but Adobe investors still want more and the only way to do that is increase prices. Their initial pricing makes it pretty clear what Adobe would LIKE to be able to charge for the subscription.

I like Adobe software and often recommend Elements (now version 2018), which it the only one still available with a perpetual license. With that you may need/want to upgrade occasionally... every few years for new features or when you buy a new camera that the old version doesn't support. Which brings me to a final point.... a lot of software upgrades are bought to get new features, improved software. When a company switches to a subscription-only model to market software, do they still have the same incentive to improve their product and innovate? Or, since most subscribers are going to pay their rent anyway (BTW, you have to prepay a year's worth to get the $10 a month deal), why not just do the minimum future improvements necessary?