As for myself, I enjoyed renting videos from the local store and returning the disks, but I've never liked the idea of paying to rent a downloaded stream (especially since they don't match the fidelity of a BluRay).īut I've had the basic Photoshop/Lightroom subscription for a few years now, replacing my old copies of CS3 etc. It's hard to shell out money for something you can't really see or touch. I understand the rationale behind griping about Adobe's subscription model. But since LR isn't costing me anything (for home) that's where most of my photography work is still done. On1's DAM being browser based is so much easier to manage than Lightrooms which requires importing into specific catalogs. Major kudos to On1 for one immediately obvious advantage over LR. Other than speed of some operations, and sometimes less than clear menus I do like a lot about On1 even if it's taken years now for them to finally have what I consider a fully-usable package for semi-professionals. DxO makes a great plug-in for certain tasks (and I did end up upgrading to v.4) but falls short of LR. With that said I have current versions of On1 and DxO and neither of them so far are perfect replacements for LR. Fortunately I had an extra seat for the home install too or I wouldn't be using it there. It was becoming increasingly problematic with Photoshop files provided by customers so biting the bullet and moving to the subscription model was the only rational choice. I used the final standalone versions of both CS and LR until it was no longer tenable. Stubbornness more than anything since I seriously abhor this rush to subscription models that more and more providers are pushing, but I've no idea what those of us in a (semi)professional setting can do about it. Honestly, though, I believe its worth the effort.Fully agree.įull disclosure I did finally add the Adobe subscription early last year after resisting it for some time, in truth too long. That's the hardest part - migrating to a new tool set. My experience has been that they're extremely capable if you take a little time to learn how to use them properly.

but for us amateurs, it's really worth accepting the few compromises and inconveniences in open source alternatives. For professional use, I understand why Adobe products continue to lead, especially in terms of efficient workflow, and why other paid alternatives are probably better for professionals who don't want to use Adobe. Yes - there are things Lightroom does better or easier so far as raw conversion goes, and yes - Photoshop is a lot more polished, but there are things the open source options do better too. I know folks here must get tired of me saying this, but open source options - especially RawTherapee and Darktable for raw conversion, and GIMP for editing - have improved hugely in the last few years.

Lightroom 6 mac catalina