After Photoshop

[Tom dinning]

Since my downsizing I no longer have Photoshop as an editing program.

Can any well advised photographer give me either a free or one-off purchase for an alternative.
I’d like it to edit raw files (although I’m likely to continue using ACR since it’s free) and have some layering feature.

Any suggestions?

 

[Jerome Marot]

Affinity photo seems to be the best alternative at the moment. Or you can use gimp, which is free but with an interface that is unusual to say the least.

 

[Tom dinning]

Affinity photo seems to be the best alternative at the moment. Or you can use gimp, which is free but with an interface that is unusual to say the least.

Thanks Jerome.

I’ve got a trial of Affinity at the moment. Seems OK and reasonably priced. I do a lot of editing on the iPad when travelling and I like their iPad editor.

As for Gimp, I’ve had a few goes and still get lost.

 

[Michael Nagel]

Maybe you should try Gimpshop. Gimp with UI similar to Photoshop.

 

[Jerome Marot]

Maybe you should try Gimpshop. Gimp with UI similar to Photoshop.

Maybe not. According to https://www.heise.de/download/product/gimpshop-52236, that software has not been developed any more since 2006 and the domain gimshop.com offers a version with malware.

 

[Robert Watcher]

Not free - but the closest you may get to PS is Affinity Photo. I have it on my MacBook as well as my iPad. Recently though, I have basically abandoned my laptop as I process almost everything on my iPad - so that version gets used most.

The only free software that I really value, is Snapseed and it will also handle raw files. It’s not built for layers however. And it is only for tablets and phones as far as I know. For me that is good because I figure that most people are viewing my images on portable devices. So that is all I have to worry my pics looking good on, unlike the old days when there was no way to tell what your photos would look like on others computer/graphics card/screen combinations.

I only tried GIMP a couple of times years ago on my Windows workstation when I was considering something other than Corel Photo Paint which was my go-to software, and couldn’t afford Photoshop. I personally did not like it and deleted it. Probably it’s changed a lot in those years.

 

[Michael Nagel]

In this case certainly not - gimpshop.com is not from the original maintainer and heise mentions this.

There are many themes for gimp to make it look and feel like photoshop, so it is up to anyone to have a look,

 

[Asher Kelman]

@Tom,

Robert has invested a lot of daily effort for some time in the practicality of reducing weight and costs to taking lots of images in the streets of South American communities. So forgive me for the diversion to get more details from his experience.

@ Robert,

Kudos for slimming down your requirements.

1. How do you handle storage: capacity of iPad and links to hard drives. Do you have one that links with the tablet via a built-in local network it broadcasts from or some special adapter. Or do you have the patience to send them WI-FI directly from your camera?

2. How on earth do you clone parts of the image and overcome the obvious limitations of Snapseed’s simple Repair tool.

3. Can you select and cut out an element?

Asher

 

[Robert Watcher]

@Tom,

Robert has invested a lot of daily effort for some time in the practicality of reducing weight and costs to taking lots of images in the streets of South American communities. So forgive me for the diversion to get more details from his experience.

@ Robert,

Kudos for slimming down your requirements.

1. How do you handle storage: capacity of iPad and links to hard drives. Do you have one that links with the tablet via a built-in local network it broadcasts from or some special adapter. Or do you have the patience to send them WI-FI directly from your camera?

2. How on earth do you clone parts of the image and overcome the obvious limitations of Snapseed’s simple Repair tool.

3. Can you select and cut out an element?

Asher

storage and processing as you describe above, are done on my laptop. They are not part of my normal daily workflow.

 

[Kevin Pinkerton]

You might want to investigate RawTherapee https://rawtherapee.com/
It is free. I have no experience with Gimp, but everytime I hear it mentioned, I see faces that seem to think it is rather cumbersome to use.

 

[Tom dinning]

You might want to investigate RawTherapee https://rawtherapee.com/
It is free. I have no experience with Gimp, but everytime I hear it mentioned, I see faces that seem to think it is rather cumbersome to use.

I had a look at raw therapy and needed a bit of therapy myself afterwards.
As far as raw converters are concerned ACR surpasses most things. Since it’s free I’ll stick to it. I do most of my editing there anyway, sometimes all of it.

 

[Tom dinning]

Not free - but the closest you may get to PS is Affinity Photo. I have it on my MacBook as well as my iPad. Recently though, I have basically abandoned my laptop as I process almost everything on my iPad - so that version gets used most.

The only free software that I really value, is Snapseed and it will also handle raw files. It’s not built for layers however. And it is only for tablets and phones as far as I know. For me that is good because I figure that most people are viewing my images on portable devices. So that is all I have to worry my pics looking good on, unlike the old days when there was no way to tell what your photos would look like on others computer/graphics card/screen combinations.

I only tried GIMP a couple of times years ago on my Windows workstation when I was considering something other than Corel Photo Paint which was my go-to software, and couldn’t afford Photoshop. I personally did not like it and deleted it. Probably it’s changed a lot in those years.

Your opinion is valued highly, Robert. I have a copy of Snapseed on the iPad and use it on your recommendation. Mind you, I also have Ps express. But it’s so limiting. Presets galore. Ech.

I, too, use the iPad a lot more than my Mac. I can take it anywhere. I do carry a small hard drive I can load all my images onto for storage and backup to save space on the iPad. iCloud takes care of the images I edit on the iPad.

I’m going with Affinity. Seems to get the vote. For $100AU I can get it on the Mac and the iPad. At the value of the AU dollar at the moment I better buy it soon or I’ll be using the money to wipe my arse on.

 

[Kevin Pinkerton]

I have only used Rawtherapee to fix some pdaf banding issues I occasionally see in my Nikon Z6 full spectrum camera. But as a side note, I recently (a couple of months ago) switched my main editor from ON1 Photo Raw to Capture One. I downloaded all of the trial packages of everything I could find to compare the raw processing portions. I did not download PS, but I did download the DNG converter from Adobe figuring that the raw processing done in that should be as good as their main editors. I found that Capture One was hands down the best for the initial raw processing of my Nikon NEF files. C1 does not do any blending modes, nor does it allow for images to be placed in layers, and that is a shortcoming. But other than that, I found it to be amazing at turning a raw image into an almost completed end product extremely quickly.

 

[Tony Anderssen]

Since my downsizing I no longer have Photoshop as an editing program.

Can any well advised photographer give me either a free or one-off purchase for an alternative.
I’d like it to edit raw files (although I’m likely to continue using ACR since it’s free) and have some layering feature.

Any suggestions?

If your main issue with Photoshop is its expensiveness, you can find many free tools and plugins that will make it more affordable and just as great for editing. For example, I'm currently a fan of these free Photoshop filters. They deal with a number of editing needs such as corrections, textures, and special effects.

 

[Tom dinning]

Today I made a decision.
I returned to Photoshop.

After 20 years of using it, and then going cold turkey, I realised how hard it is to withdraw.
I tried Detox, Therapy, other drugs, other hobbies; all to no avail.
I am a weak person.
It’s easier to give in than to subject myself to continuous frustration.

 

[Robert Watcher]

This is so funny Tom. Yesterday, I revamped my MacBook including updating to the current OS Catalina from Mojave - and made the decision to pay up to Adobe for the PS and LR bundle. Anne gulped a little for me doing it in these financially challenging times for us. The $9.99/month $USD price ended up costing $195.00 CAD with our poor exchange rate and 13% tax. Probably something similar in Australia.

I have kept hoping over the last couple years since I purchased Affinity Photo, that it would replace my PS workflow - and it doesn’t. In fact I have never caught on fully to how it works and so have found that I don’t open it that often. It is a powerful software that comes close to PS in abilities, and I’m not discarding it obviously.

More important to me was that even with many competitors providing huge upgrades to their software recently, there is still no replacement for Lightroom. For me LR simply is the best for organizing all of images in catalogues, and also providing 90% of the processing features I require on a daily basis. I have been using an older version that I bought just before Adobe changed to subscription. They havent supported it for a few years now. As well software are becoming less compatible and even incompatible (like the old copy of PS6 that I had) with new operating systems.

It feels so natural to be able to work in those programs again. I will continue to use Snapseed on my iPad for my quick and easy processing for social media.

 

[Tom dinning]

I’ve not been so relaxed since Xmas.
Everything works, I know where everything is, everything is connected, my favourite workflows feel like old friends revisited.

I knew we were the smart ones here, Robert. A bit slow at pearling our lessons but we get there in the long run.

I have been using Snapseed on the iPad and I’ll keep it there but I still have LR and PS Express there as well.

Life is good again

It’s less than a cup of coffee a week. I’m saving that just by being in lockdown.

 

[rketoimg]

Explore the develop persona along with Affinity Photo, It has the workspace dedicated to editing RAW images. There are some features like lens distortion correction, highlight recovery, shadow boosting, and noise reduction. Very helpful, thanks.

 

[Globalphotoedit]

Off course alternative avail with various resources as given below and these are just free and you can finish work through it easily.

PhotoScape X
Fotor