HatsuoHiga Loc: Hawaii

I use apple photos and it is free and have layers. Polarr and photoscape x and many others.

Majik4 Loc: Racine, WI

Hi;
Very few people talk about Corel's Aftershot Pro and Paint Shop Pro. I've used both for a number of years and I have no real complaints. The price is reasonable and they offer deals. I wish they had more specific tutorials, but they do have plenty listed. Plus I own it. I don't rent it. Give it a look.

LewSpecker

What can you not do with Nikon-D. For the most part did you really check out what "D" can do for individual images. Did you download and read the manual? If you images are that bad throw them away. If you need to add or subtract parts of images, or merge images Photoshop works.

rochephoto

CaptureOne for image rendering, color and archiving, etc. and Photoshop for when you just gotta put wings on a pig or making a sailboat fly over the moon at night. That'll cover you for 99.9999% of what you want to do.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

I'm a Photoshop Elements user and I'm happy with it. I also bought a number of "how to" books to get the most out of it and I'm not even scratching the surface of the program!

augieg27 Loc: Central California

Take a look at FastStone.
It is free, easy to learn and does most of what other programs do except layers.

JDefebaugh

Exposure. Try it for free and decide for yourself if you want to buy. I have tried most of the well known PP programs and find Exposure to be the best for my needs. Comes with a few hundred extremely realistic film and other presets. So often you are just one click away from a great image.

sscnxy

Hello Linda,
I have always liked your terse, yet pithy advice. Hope I learn something directly from you again. I am thinking about getting Elements vs PS. I learned some basics on PS in a community college photo class and liked how powerful all the features were. However, I'm sure I would not use many of the features that are available. What I need to be able to do is to be able to mask, lasso, erase, clone, etc, to "clean up" photos to just make them look a bit better. I also would like to work with layers and do focus stacking. Thus, my editing would be to take my photos to a nicer, more polished level, not to create something out of nothing. Will Elements allow me to do those things? Over the long run, it would certainly cost a lot less than PS. Thanks a lot for your input.

NMY

R.G. Loc: Scotland

The usual problem with advanced pro level software is that it's not always user friendly and often has a difficult learning curve. If you're not having that problem with Capture One then I suggest you stick with that. From a technical point of view it's at the forefront of software capabilities, and that being the case, there's nothing to be gained from looking elsewhere. The full Capture One Pro isn't cheap, and I suspect they wouldn't get away with that if it had weak points.

The other (cheaper) versions that are available are brand-specific in the sense that they'll only open raw files from specific camera manufacturers. If that isn't a problem for you then I would definitely suggest sticking with Capture One.

Carusoswi

Totally agree with this post. I have Capture One Pro for Sony, and like it very much. It is a RAW editor (meaning that you can edit or develop RAW images and then export them as .tiff or .jpg for final use or for further editing in applications like Photoshop. Photoshop cannot work on RAW files, but has front-end applications where you can develop your RAW file and then export or open it in Photoshop for further editing.

Lightroom has become very popular as a RAW file editor as much for its ability to catalog photos as for its usefulness for developing RAW files.

As dearroz mentions, darktable is a very powerful RAW file editor (note that all these RAW editors can also be used to touch up jpg image files if necessary). For me, darktable's most powerful feature is its quick, but very flexible masking capability. If one area of your image is too light and another too dark, you can mask those areas separately and make corrections as you deem necessary. Capture One can also do that, but, I like darktable's implementation better.

I used to have the Adobe subscription plan, but recent upgrades to the GIMP coupled with darktable have convinced me that I can get along just fine without PS, and, I, personally, never cared for Lightroom so much. I work first in darktable, then, if (and this is usually rare), there is some task that I cannot accomplish in darktable (or a task that is more easily accomplished in GIMP, I will export that photo as a .tiff and finish up in GIMP.

Both these applications are very powerful, and, it they are unbelievably good considering that they are free and open source.

To the OP, you sound as if you are making good progress with C1, and, if it is working for you, I would stay with it until you get really comfortable working with it. If you need to do some intricate cloning, I find that exporting to applications such as PS or GIMP are more efficient. PS will cost you some money, GIMP is free, so, if I were you, and felt the need to further touch up your developed RAW files, I try GIMP. You have nothing to use.

Contrary to what I hear all the time, there is no shortage of useful tutorials on using darktable and GIMP. You only need to go through one or two of them per application, and you will be on your way.

I could not master darktable until I went through a couple of video tutorials. GIMP took me a while to find the controls because I had extensive experience using PS. As editors, GIMP and PS work basically the same way, you just have to become familiar with the GIMP interface (which is no harder or easier than starting with PS from scratch.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the many other applications mentioned in this thread. It is almost as hard to find a bad editor as it is to find a bad camera these days.

It sounds to me as though you are off to a good start.

Good luck, and have fun!

Caruso

Ryeley Loc: Springfield, Ohio

I use Photoshop Elements, but have started using ACDsee Ultimate 2020. ACDsee has a lot more RAW editing options. With most software you can google a video to teach you how to do something. I found some free online classes through my Library when I was learning Photoshop Elements.

Guzser02

Earlier I suggested Affinity Photo and it's book. ACDsee is also good. In terms of organizing your pbotos(RAW+) it has an amazing Data Asset Manager (DAM) like no other I have seen.
I know your question is about processing but organization is part of it.

Guzser02

Earlier I suggested Affinity Photo and it's book. I still stand by the by that suggestion. ACDsee is also good. In terms of organizing your pbotos (RAW+) it has an amazing Data Asset Manager (DAM) like no other I have seen.
I know your question is about processing but organization is part of it.

CGephart Loc: Mechanicsburg, PA, USA

I have owned and used Lightroom (many years ago), Luminar 4, On1 Photo RAW 2020, and DxO PhotoLab 3. My go-to's, in order of preference, are PhotoLab 3 with Nik plugins followed by On1 Photo RAW 2020. Luminar just got too AI-focused for me and I'm not a fan of the interface.

I have really come to enjoy working with the U-point technology in PhotoLab/Nik ecosystem and PhotoLab's Lens/Camera profiling is stellar. Both PhotoLab and Photo RAW 2020 feel intuitive for me but I suspect the interface could be a bit overwhelming for some.

grcolts

If you are using a Mac, ACDSEE Photo Studio 6 is quite nice. It does not have all the bells and whistles of some of the other software but is stable and quick. It also exports to Affinity Photo easily from within the program. It has a wonderful cataloging system.