![]() The Elephant in the Room Matthew Gore | Light And Matter ![]() While Adobe users have been languishing in front of their monitors while Lightroom loads previews or spends your lunch hour switching to the develop module (both issues addressed in Lightroom CC to some extent), ON1 Photo RAW has been a zippy fast file browser and editor, loading thumbnail images almost instantly and switching to the RAW module in just moments. ON1 has been a player in this game for a year already, and has made significant progress. Luminar (left) and ACDSee (right) are also competing for the DAM market that Adobe continues to abuse. ACDSee is now promoting a professional quality DAM and RAW editor as well. Skylum Luminar 2018 (formerly Macphun) announced that in early November that their 2018 version will be a complete, RAW processing engine with lens correction and look-up-table (LUT) support for color grading, with an emphasis going forward on asset management. The offer expires on this 16th of August.Replacing Lightroom has been a popular theme recently, especially after Adobe’s announcement that they’ll discontinue support for non-CC versions of the software, making perpetual periodic payments to Adobe the only option. If you want to use only one software, I would recommend you to have a look at ON1 Photo Raw 2018, which is currently on sale. GIMP is at the end of my workflow, but I rarely need it. Few photos that require more processing will be exported to DNG and passed to Darktable. My workflow usually starts with raw development DxO Optics Pro essential edition, which I got it for free. Based on my experience, there is no one perfect post-processing software to suit my taste. The drawback is, however, the limitation of that particular software that you use. ![]() You also do not have to worry about the loss of information when export/import from one program to another. The clear benefit of using one tool to do them all is convenience. You will not experience such a problem with Adobe suite, of course. Also, if your source program cannot export DNG or TIFF, your destination program may be limited to only available information in JPEG for retouching. As a consequence, it usually results in more steps in your workflow, which may demand more time as well as disk space on your computer. But this approach requires you to export the files from one software and passes them to another. One software may be excel at raw development, while another one is more convenient for retouching. You may use multiple programs to process your photos by picking the right tool for the right job. It all comes down to your needs and also preferences. There is no one size fits all solution for everyone. I'm not sure about digiKam, but it's worth looking into. My setup is running on Linux Mint 18.3, but I know Darktable and GIMP both have very capable Windows versions available, and they're well-maintained too. There's a learning curve to each tool, but the online documentation is excellent (you just need to invest a little time to read it and try things out for yourself), and the capabilities are - at the very least - comparable to the better commercial products. It might sound like a complicated setup, but it works very, very well. I also use a GIMP plug-in called G'MIC-Qt, primarily for film emulations. I now use Darktable 2.4.4 for RAW image development, GIMP 2.8 for Photoshop-style editing (including layers), and digiKam 5 for library management. But Adobe's move to a monthly subscription model really jarred with me, so I moved to open-source (and, hence, free) software. I was very happy indeed with that setup, and had built up quite a lot of experience in using it. I used to use Lightroom 6 (stand-alone / perpetual), occasionally with Photoshop Essentials (version 14, I think), and various plug-ins for both. It depends on how you think about the process, what you want to do and what works for you. Or is there a moderately priced (under $200.US) that can do both?I don't think it's necessarily better to use one "do it all" application or two (or more ). Is it better to use 2 programs, one for correcting color, exposure, lens distortion etc with the RAW file, and another for editing - dodging, burning etc - the converted file?
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