I’ve been using it for years and even though I teach Photoshop and Lightroom classes it is my go to app for both Data Asset Management and post processing. I’m on a M1 Mac Mini and have had no significant issues with 2023. That said no app does everything so about 5% of my work is done in Photoshop. On1 allows me to push a copy out to Photoshop , do the work and come back. It also supports Photoshop plugins so I can go to Topaz Studio 2 for artistic processing and it comes back as a layer. And since you can buy it or rent it like Adobe it fits both models.

Lightroom and Photoshop are the top of the heap but others you might consider are Photoshop Elements, On1 , Affinity Photo which all can be purchased not rented. As Canon said most have free trials.

I spent a lot of time researching the other options I have to replace Costco. The big difference will be shipping costs. While I can get standard photos up to 8x10 at Walgreens and CVS the quality isnt as good as Costco plus with them I could go to 20x30.

The other choices pretty much had the same issue - shipping costs were terrible. One went free after $100 purchase, others charged $10 (for a $3 8x10) etc.

The best solution for me is White House who ships for free after any $16 order. Prices are good, they have lots of options including fine art, large images, with backings, etc.

Photo Canvasland as mentioned by someone was interesting as they only print with backings and it is $10 flat fee for a purchase no matter how many prints in the order.

MPIX, Nations, SnapFish, Printique and Shutterfly all had awful shipping costs. The discount on Shutterfly makes them the lowest priced online print house but their shipping costs make up for it quickly.

So how is White House a print shop? Pros and Cons?

Same question about Photo Canvasland?

Wish I had a local camera store.. I live in Santa Barbara which used to have one of the premier photo colleges in the world with Brooks Institute ( before the non-profit bought them and destroyed them). We had six camera stores back then not including Brooks itself. Samy’s left before covid so the nearest store is now almost 90 miles away.

@ the guy that mentioned canvasland. I was interested especially because of the backings but their shipping is $11 and if they fail I have to send the image back to them and pay postage.

I logged my disappointment to them today via phone call. Useless gesture but made me feel a bit better. And no they are shutting down the entire photo group.

As far as Sam’s club don’t you have to belong to them like Costco. I do not have either a Walmart or Sam’s club within 30 miles of me so unless they do free shipping it would be no better than Shutterfly. I looked at their prices to compare to Costco. A 20x30 print is about $10 at Costco with free shipping. A 20x30 at Shutterfly is $22 so even with 50% discount it would be $11 then I have to pay for shipping which is $7! Whole process fails for me when I want to send a single print to a friend or family member. If I am printing a bunch of images for me then maybe $49 order to get free shipping makes sense.

I guess I can look into if I can print via sam’s or Walmart (which I suspect use the same print locations) and have them delivered to a local Walmart for free? I will report back.

They did centralize when they closed the in store printing. For the price they couldn’t be beat especially with free shipping. I got glossy or mat 8x12 for under $2. So I could print images for friends or family and have Costco deliver them. If the image was printed poorly I could return them at the local Costco for a full refund.

Even when Shutterfly or others have sales their shipping costs double the cost of printings. I do not have a local Walmart but Walgreens, cvs, and target don’t match the quality plus I can’t find ICC profiles for their printers like I could for Costco.

I got a letter from them today saying they are shutting down all photo processing Jan 28 and that I can switch to shutterbug (who I personally hate). It is too bad as they did a decent job on smaller prints at a decent price.

Backblaze

Jim is a great guy but unfortunately, he primarily uses Neo. If you Neo he has great learning videos.

I’ve been a user back to their origins in the MacPhun days owning all of their products. In the Skylum days, they continued to overpromise and under-deliver. Rather than fix issues they just announce the latest and greatest new feature in the next release. They promise to fix the issues in the older release but never do. They are kinda like the old Chrysler in the later part of the 21st Century in having great ideas but terrible reliability. Neo base is ok. The DAM is terrible but you can use them as plugins for LR, Photoshop, On1, etc. After they released Neo instead of adding what is normal functionality they packaged them in a bundle which if you want perpetual licenses is quite expensive or move to a subscription-based license discounted for the current purchase but more expensive than the adobe photographic suite!

To me they aren’t worth it and will all the broken trust issues I won’t be sending them any more money. Unfortunately, a lot of their people are based in Ukraine so rather than sending them money I’m donating it to charities that help Ukraine. I think there are a lot of other products that work better than Neo and don’t have the other issues.

A lot of their people are in Ukraine so my heart goes out to them but I won

that lens is a 1 to 2 ‘macro’. You can get RF extension tubes which will take you to 1 to 1 or better depending on the lens you put at the end (I use my 50mm 1.8), close filters or buy the RF 100mm Macro which is 1 to 1 and a super sharp lens for things beyond macro.

👍

Oh boy, we can join the church of raw! Are there t-shirts? Just kidding. I like your responses. Im not going to respond on this one for several reasons, I don’t shoot Nikon, I’m not on a PC so I don’t know PC products well but the first comment about easy and best not being compatible is right in my opinion. The one question unasked is what do you do with your images? Post them in social media? Send them to friends and family electronically? Print them and put them on the wall? Sell them?

On one hand you have very powerful software that has a steep learning curve but in the end run will probably print the most professional images. In my opinion, these are the Photoshop , DxO, Capture1 etc. The basic processing software provided by your camera company fits here as well based on what I see from Canon. On the other hand are ‘consumer-level’ software like Photoshop Elements and maybe Skylum Neo or Skylum AI (which is more stable than Neo). Products like On1 fit in the middle.

Good luck

Skylum is offering Luminar AI for free? https://skylum.com/de/l/chip-luminar-ai

Without knowing what platform you use it is pretty hard to recommend any. Best paid for value is Affinity Photo 2 which you buy for about $40 on sale. The learning curve is high if you don’t have experience in processing images in a product like adobe creative raw, etc.

You can get gimp for free.

If you are a mac user photos are an adequate choice.

The Skylum apps are user-friendly but buggy. I'm not sure about the older versions like Luminar 3, Luminar 4, or luminar ai are still available. Neo is a cluster on pricing and is buggy.

Photoshop Elements is good

But my choice is On1 as it is the closest thing to LR/Photoshop and can be purchased either as a subscription or a perpetual license.

Most apps have free trials.

It does?