Interesting that Photoshop is now following Skylum's lead. They've been offering sky replacements for over a year - with no monthly fees. :)

That seller may have been so quick because they are efficient. Perhaps they decided a quick sale beats a long auction. Ebay also has a lot of protections in place for buyers. I would not assume that there is anything wrong with the camera. If you want it, and consider $1500 a good price, then just go ahead and get it and stop doubting yourself. Enjoy!

Wow - what a great resource that Picture Bird (and insect, animal, plant, etc.) is! Thanks!

If you play with your shadows and highlights in Photoshop (I tried in both Affinity and PS), you can at least show the beautiful smile of the boy and hint at his face, but if you push it too far, you'll get all that noise that you see above.

Sorry for the long response, but it's really a big question. I think the key word here for you is that you are trying to replace what Aperture does for you on a Mac. That basically means an excellent DAM program that also can do some minor editing on your photos. Most DAM programs do much more than minor editing these days. But as a Mac guy myself, who has been looking to replace Aperture for YEARS (nothing has been as good), I would say take a close look at ACDSee. It has some awesome DAM capabilities. I just purchased the program for only $45 because I had an online chat with one of their sales people and he gave me a break.

ACDSee has been around over 20+ years, so I don't think they're going away any time soon. Their program can easily manage your photos in place, which means you can keep them on your hard drives and it doesn't copy everything over (massive storage savings if you have as many photos as I do). You can Keword, color code, mark by location, but the two things I want most are not quite working on their Mac version: Facial recognition and virtual folders. That's the bad news. The good news is that they only introduced their Mac version a few years ago, and it is playing catch up. They are committed to making their Mac version as good as their PC software, and are working on the Facial Recognition and Virtual Folders for their Mac app. I bought it on the hope that they come through on that commitment and deliver sooner rather than later. Otherwise, I still have a good way to organize my photos and do some minor editing with this software, and it cost less than fifty bucks one time. Good luck settling on a solution that works for you. (PS - if you do talk with them, the more Mac people asking for those features the more likely they'll add them in the next update. Hint, hint.)

I have a question about this as well. A couple people mentioned using an extender. Apparently Canon has the EF 1.4xIII and 2xIII. Since the OP owns a zoom telephoto, and with the full frame camera, it won't zoom in as close as on his older crop sensor camera, are the extenders a good way to go to save money and still have a longer zoom? I've only heard people recommend the 1.4, not the 2x. Can anyone weigh in on this option that has experience with them? Thanks!

Awesome! I want to start comparing how well Affinity does vs. Photoshop. I still use 6 to avoid monthly rentals, and realize I'll need something to replace it when it gets too old. Thanks!

Hey - speaking of Affinity, I had a quick question you may be able to answer - does anyone know if there is the equivalent of the 'Auto Tone', 'Auto Contrast' and 'Auto Color' buttons from Adobe Photoshop in Affinity? Those are great 'quick fixes' if I'm in a hurry an/or don't want to spend a lot of time editing but want to make the photos look good.

Yes - call Apple. I'm not sure why you got a recording about no tech support during the lock-down, but they've been answering for me, and this is definitely something they should be able to help you with.

I second ACDSee - they have a very good DAM program. And it's only $50 - with no monthly rental payments. Their customer service is great. I just bought it and am going through all the ropes of learning, so can't speak too much yet about it's functionality, but they cross all the T's and dot all the i's. And - if you are running it on Windows, you can even have it automatically sort all your photos by facial recognition. That is an awesome function that will save you hours of key word tagging. I can't wait until they add it to their Mac version!

Hello All - I will suggest some that I haven't seen named yet. Based on your indication that you are coming from Picasa, and considering Photos, I'll assume that the features you are looking for are DAM related as opposed to photo editing software, which are really two very different things.

As a Mac user who has searched long and hard for something to replace Aperture's DAM features, here are some that come to the front of my research. And - let me say that I also avoid monthly rental software. Frankly, I have not landed on one yet myself, as nothing seems to have the main things I want. But you should take a look at On1 and ACDSee. (other than what has already been suggested) On1 probably has more editing features and not quite as good a digital asset management. ACDSee seemed to have a very good way to organize your photos.

Neither one had what I was really looking for, which are the kinds of things that make organizing so easy. One is facial recognition. After watching how magically iPhoto could find all the faces of the people in my library with such speed and ease, then help me mark and find them instantly, I was hooked. It was such a great feature, that - sadly, Photos re-made to be very clunky, counter-intuitive and basically unworkable.

Another feature that is hard to find is a good loupe in a DAM program. Strange considering how easy that should be. And finding things by location is awesome. Now I know that I can go through all the hundreds of thousands of photos I've taken and manually add all the keywords I need to find people, places and things, but boy - if there was a DAM that did half that work for me, I'd be thrilled. SO - if any of you Hedgehogs out there know of a software that can do those things, I'd be grateful for the tip. I can say that On1 would like to add facial recognition, and ACDSee HAS added it to their windows version, so maybe a Mac version is in the future, but not yet. Anyone know of other possibilities? Thanks!

Well - you're buying on eBay. You can also SELL on eBay. ;)

As someone who uses Photoshop 6 - the last 'stand-alone', I was happy to snap up Affinity @ half-price. I'm still learning it, since all softwares have their own idiosyncrasies. Assuming you have a raw-processor, how can we even compare a program that does pretty much everything you'd expect from Photoshop for the price of a one-month subscription to Photoshop? At some point, the masses that pay $600 a year for the privilege of renting Adobe software will realize they can have basically the same thing for only $25 and you own it. (or $50 if you wait until after the deal expires)

To answer this specific question, just drag and drop them onto the hard drive icon. You can drag folders full of thousands of photos or one at a time. They should copy over with no problem.

Macs don't have to be out of reach. If you are willing to get an older model off eBay, you can find some great deals - like this 17" (decent size for photo editing) for only $619. APPLE MACBOOK PRO 17 INCH MAC LAPTOP / 2.66GHZ / 1TB SSD / 8GB / 3 YEAR WARRANTY
HUGE 17" DISPLAY - GLOSSY HIGH RESOLUTION SCREEN - here is the link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/APPLE-MACBOOK-PRO-17-INCH-MAC-LAPTOP-2-66GHZ-1TB-SSD-8GB-3-YEAR-WARRANTY/143576432815?hash=item216dd280af:g:Zk8AAOSwfhtelJWC

And that was me just doing a quick search. Good luck. Come over to the 'dark' side. ;)