We don’t want to pay Adobe anymore, so my Dad is looking for an replacement for Lightroom Classic.
He has over 4500 photos in Lightroom and we want a basically drop in replacement.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT1: Also, how do we transfer photos out of Lightroom?
EDIT2: All photos are locally stored.
I went down this path a year ago. Apple Photos would have been easier but I didn’t want to give up the filesystem based catalogue organization I had - >70,000 pictures over 15 years.
I went with Darktable. There was a definite adjustment period and I think I still have to Google around. Lightroom was easier / I was used to it. But Darktable has seemingly every feature I need and then some.
Knowing my photos won’t be hostage to a greedy corporation is liberating!
Nope. Not in my opinion. Nothing beats lightroom as a whole package. There are alternatives that do some things better but as a whole I don’t think they can really compete.
If you google “alternative to _____” you normally will get a website that lists good alternative software.
You’re looking for a RAW editor and organizer, and there are a bunch out there. For free there’s Darktable and RawTherapee, and if you’re just a hobbyist, that’s a great place to start, I prefer RawTherapee personally.
But for paid software, which may be necessary for some people, there are a couple. I landed on Capture One because of all the non-Adobe options, it’s the only one that had support for Tethering, which was a feature I needed. It’s probably the most full-featured competitor to Lightroom, and it does most things as good or better than LR, but it’s also a pretty expensive program in the category. I’d only go there if I was an advanced amateur and have a need for the power.
Masking and the new Point Color control are keeping me tied to Adobe.
Make sure you check the contract length of the subscription. If you cancel with some time to go, Adobe could charge a cancellation fee of a certain % of the remaining time. Not sure if they still do this after the amount of complaints they got last time this was in the news.
I have to use Lightroom even though I’ve Lao used all the others. Lightroom presets are much more popular. Lightroom tethering from my Sony camera with smart shooter for dslr scanning. I just can’t drop it nut I do hate that it’s a subscription.
r/genp
LR just came out with a big update. I’d keep it.
Yeah plus if you have presets plug ins know the shortcuts. As someone who can drive blind in light room classic sadly it is what it is. Same with photoshop. Would I love a non subscription service sure. Am I going to throw away 17 years of training and learning to use it. No
The widespread use of Adobe in schools, and the student pricing is exactly why they have you.
Yep they got me young. And at this point it Could be a big learning gap. Plus all my past projects I use stuff from would also go caput. I hope they don’t charge like crazy for the basic ai stuff. Because it’s still super beta
DXO Photolab 6 totally replaced Lightroom for me
This would be my choice too. Does 95% of what LR does, does some things much better, and performance is like 10x.
And the one time cost every few years is awesome
And the one time cost every few years is awesome
One time cost… Every few years … Hmm
One time cost… Every few years … Hmm
You could buy it right now and keep that license (essentially) indefinitely, with bug fixes made to the latest version (7) for about the next year.
But in a year the new version will likely drop with some improvements. You won’t get those unless you pay more to upgrade to the latest version.
So you don’t pay a subscription, but if you want the latest toys then you must pay.
I mean, its nuanced.
Right now, buying a new license is $229. Upgrades are like $100 - $150.
The only time you need to rebuy / upgrade is when you get a new camera that is only supported by the newest cameras.
I bought my copy for a D7000, and it worked with my old files, worked with my D7100 too as I probably bought in late.
I had to get an upgrade in ~2015 for the D750, and used that with a 5Dsr, and various Olympus cameras (Everything not Nikon are cameras given to me for assignments).
And a final upgrade for me around the time the D850 came out, and I used that for the year I shot a Z7.
Even estimating high, that would be $4.50 a month.
For anyone who isn’t usually on the newer cameras, it should be even cheaper.
Yeah I do minimal editing now anyways, their raw handling is great and it allows you to apply edits to multiple photos etc like Lightroom, make your own presets.
I do wish their masking was better developed, that’s my big gripe right now. Control Points are great but a little more fiddly than some of what Lightroom can do so easily (‘select subjet’ etc.)…
Yes I’d agree with that
Whoa thanks for mentioning this. I must’ve researched an older version back then and didn’t like it. This actually looks very solid now.
Hey there playgroundmx - thanks for saying thanks! TheGratitudeBot has been reading millions of comments in the past few weeks, and you’ve just made the list!
ART (another Rawtherapee) was big discover to me, there is learning curve for some advance features, but it is Very powerful. I enjoy it weary much.
It’s completely free for use!
I should take another look at ART but basic Rawtherapee and Darktable both lack something in their features for storing a lifetime collection of photos. They’re pretty good at all the usual exposure/color correction features but not really a full replacement for Lightroom.
I’d argue that it depends on your workflow; if you like to manage files in folders on some local/network storage, then Rawtherapee is great since it doesn’t force a collections workflow on you like Darktable does (which I find really annoying).
Lightroom also stores your files in a folder structure based on year, month and day that the metadata in the images says they were taken. But when you import a day’s photo shoot it adds it to your current catalog where you can easily browse an entire day, month, year or multiple years worth of photos, so long as they were all added to the same catalog. With Darkroom every group of imported photos becomes a separate item that you can browse, but you can’t browse more days all at once that easily.
I’m trying out Luminar Neo in hopes of ditching the annual subscription for LR + Photoshop.
You’ll be out even more money. That shitty company only sells abandonware.
They release a flawed product with promised updates and features, then charge you for those updates, and use the money to create their next editing software which you’ll have to buy again also.
This happened with Luminar 4 and Luminar AI, and they just never bothered to fix those programs. Getting a refund from them took effort as well.
Moving your Photos to a new Tool
There is no such thing as a drop-in replacement for Lightroom. Most edits from Lightroom do not transfer to non-Adobe products because how they render is proprietary. You could export all edited files in Lightroom to 16-bit TIFFs and then you can put those TIFFs and the corresponding RAWs into some other tool. The TIFF will be already rendered by Lightroom so it will contain all the edits. You can then either edit the TIFF some more in another tool or you can go back to the RAW and redo your edits in your new editing tool.
Other Tools
Capture One Pro: If your father is using the Lightroom catalog to organize his photos, then the most similar (in concept) tool would probably be Capture One Pro. It has an excellent RAW editor, though not as many extra features as Lightroom. It is available either as subscription (like Lightroom) or as a perpetual license. One of the problems is that it’s more expensive than Lightroom. List price for a perpetual license is $299, though it sometimes goes on sale for $179. You can use that license for as long as you have hardware that it runs on (e.g. many years). There’s currently a new version coming (probably by the end of the year) so I wouldn’t buy a new license right now unless it was a deal that includes the upcoming new version.
DarkTable: On the other end of the pricing spectrum is DarkTable which is open source and thus available without paying, though if you make regular use of it, you will probably want to support the ongoing project. DarkTable has a rich set of RAW editing tools and a catalog, but it is not known for its ease of use. When I’m frustrated with both Lightroom and Capture One (for one reason or another), I’ve played with DarkTable a few times, but never took the plunge to commit to really learning it.
DXO PhotoLab: Available as a perpetual license (non-subscription), the DXO products are known for their RAW processing, particularly their DeepPRIME denoising technology and their lens correction profiles. I’ve played with a trial version and found it very capable, but haven’t used it day to day myself.
Affinity Photo: It’s worth mentioning Affinity Photo because it is such high value ($69.99 for perpetual license). It’s not a direct Lightroom replacement as it doesn’t include a catalog, but it can edit RAW files. You essentially open a RAW file you want to edit, make the edits and then save the edits and they are saved to a sidecar file. Affinity Photo is more analogous to a replacement for Photoshop (tons and tons of pixel editing features), but it can also do RAW editing. I use it in conjunction with Capture One and go to Affinity Photo when I need occasionally need pixel editing capabilities beyond what Capture One Pro can do.
Photoshop Elements: If super advanced editing features are not a requirement and ease of use and perpetual license are the main driving needs, then you should consider Photoshop Elements ($99) which is kind of a mini-version of Lightroom.
I bought DxO and it does the job very nicely. Bought it at a discount with Nik collection, and you can do whatever you want with the files.
Does DXO have any type of catalog or is it just edit individual images?
I do not know what catalog means, but you can try it for free for a month and see what it does. It is mostly for color correcting, etc, not really for layers and extensive editing like Photoshop. Give it a try, you may just like it.
A catalog is a structure by which you can organize your photos, create collections, search, keyword, etc… Both Lightroom and Capture One have catalogs and it becomes your primary mechanism for finding and managing your images. The RAW files themselves can still be stored in the regular file system, but you don’t generally access them direct from the file system - you access them through the catalog which you structure the way you want your images organized.
If you don’t know what a catalog is, then I’ll assume that DXO isn’t offering one and you just open images one at a time directly from the file system (much like you would do in Photoshop).
Found this : PhotoLab has its own internal database, which holds all image edits. There is no such concept as catalogues. Personally, I activate and us DOP sidecar files, which can then be transferred with the image file, to other locations on disk without messing up things like catalogues.

Even if the database were to ever corrupt, normally, these DOP files will ensure that your edits are safe
Personally, I activate and us DOP sidecar files, which can then be transferred with the image file, to other locations on disk without messing up things like catalogues.
That’s exactly my method.
I don’t use or manage a vast library in software, preferring instead to organise my shots chronologically in folders by year, month, then individual shoot date.
I can move the DOP files along with the Raw (CR3 in my case) files wherever and retain those edits every time I reload them in Photolab.
Plus Photolab doesn’t get so bogged down as a result, with loading entire libraries of photos. It only loads the ones I want to work out.
The direct competitor for Lightroom is capture one, which costs more than LR and Photoshop combined, but I think does a better job on the files. If you want free then you get what you pay for. Each manufacturer has their own RAW converter for free, and some are better than others. There are a bunch of others, but I can’t say which is any good.
I might get downvoted for this but I think a lot of people forget how expensive editing software was before subscription based services.
I think it depends how often you update either the subscription or the standalone.
If I bought DXO Photolab and kept it for 5 years without paying for an update then it’d come out far cheaper than 5 years of Adobe subscriptions.
But those subscriptions would bring me the latest version, where that Photolab license would only count for the existing version (which would be 5 years old at the end).
I’m curious about whether any of the competitors have a function to import from (or maybe even better sync with) a Lightroom catalogue. Do the laws anywhere protect the right to reverse engineer LRc in order to build that, in the name of free competition between software vendors?
On1 photo raw has import from lightroom. See my comment further up for a link to instructions
I honestly don’t understand the hate for Adobe.
Is it the subscription model? Ya… business is business. Please suggest a better model that funds software development consistently. I hated it initially, but like not having to buy and install updates all the time.
Is it the performance of the tool? Usability? These are both great to me…
I mean you get what you pay for, more or less. There are other good tools out there, but nothing that is way better all-around that I’ve seen.
Because it will cost people £120 a year for the rest of their lives to use it? Software shouldn’t be subscription, it’s an enormous con.
Lightroom and Photoshop are absolutely best of class applications, and if you have subscribed, you get endless support for them.
What do you expect ?? All that awesome development and free support for no cost?
As others have said, I remember when Photoshop (by itself) was £600 - and I bought it. Subsequent updates were cheaper, but it was the equivalent of many years of subscription now. I would much rather pay £9 per month now, get two apps (LR and PS), have endless support, and have pretty much the best software there is.
Also, My use of Adobe software earns me much more than it costs. If you make money from your use of some tool, how is it a con to have to pay for it??
‘Support’ is a con. You can’t tell me they chose subscription for any other reasons than capitalistic greed.
I still use a pirate copy of photoshop 7, so I’m not interested in fancier versions. I’d use a basic Lightroom forever, I’m not interested in ‘support’.
Students can not afford an extra £120 a year that easily, adobe want to allow professionals to gain an advantage.
£600 isn’t reasonable either. A lot of the lightroom alternatives are £50-£200.
Far more complex software like Blender and Unity are free.
‘Support’ is a con.
In my book support is also the fact that one can count on a huge knowledge base, which means that every time I have an issue, I can count on someone else having had it before me, and possibly many others having found a solution for it. In my professional experience this is an invaluable difference between using widespread software compared to more niche alterrnatives.
Support can come from the community though, and i don’t remotely need it to edit photos, i use 1% of lightroom, turn b&w, use sliders, that’s it. It’s the basic photo processing i want, not the billions of options I’ll never use. I don’t even know what ‘support’ means for photography. I get videogame engines because they’re extremely complicated.
The community is exactly what I referred to. The reality is that such community is often an order of magnitude larger around well established products, regardless of whether they are sold or are free (often they are commercial products, think MS Office for example).
Moreover, nobody said that you should buy something that you do not need. That would be coercion indeed. I would not pay 1 quid, let alone 10, if I did not need Lightroom.
I do not feel forced in the slightest when I pay my 10 euro a month (I actually pay a lot more than that for the full suite) when such money makes me do the work in 10% or less of the time I would need with alternative products.
If the support is coming from the community, why am I paying Adobe for it?
I am not paying Adobe for the community support, I did not make myself clear. I am taking advantage of the fact that Adobe has a huge user base, therefore it is a lot easier to get help for very specific issues.
I could save the monthly fee by using some other software (assuming that there is one that suits my needs, which is not the case), but I would have to waste a much longer time to look for answers/help/howto guides because a smaller user base means that specific issues might not have been encountered/solved by others.
What else should they do? I am genuinely curious
Er i dunno just sell a purchase copy once? I know we live in an ultra capitalistic world full of extreme greed, people don’t have to be cheerleaders for it. Especially when it’s the leading art software company who have chosen to lock out a lot of creatives who can’t afford it.
More complex videogame engine programs like Blender and Unity are free to use.
You mean like capture one? Or do you mean you should have access to all future updates as well?
like Blender and Unity are free to use.
Last I heard, Unity has introduced substantial fees for developers.
Yeah developers. When you sell a game. Anyone can download it and use it. I’m not selling any photo on lightroom. I have no business, it’s a hobby.
Videogame engines are different, but the principle remains to use basic unity it’s free.
This is their students and hobbyists Unity on their website:
Latest version of the core Unity Platform
Free assets to accelerate projects
Resources to get started and learn Unity
Obviously I’ve heard about Unity recently charging obscene amounts but it revolves around sales. It doesn’t cost anyone a penny to download Unity and make a game, once you try to put it on a console and sell it it’s different.
There is hardly any technology that will accompany us for the whole life. I would be more worried about losing decades of digital images simply because of a technology shift, than to be enslaved by Adobe in using their tools for the rest of my life.
BTW, when the sort of money I pay monthly for LR will become an issue, I have about half a dozen similarly priced subscriptions to get rid of first, which are far less useful to me.
Why would you lose decades of digital images? Only if Adobe fix it so you rely on them. All i want from a photography edit program is to bring in photos, edit them, save them into my own folder, done. I don’t want Adobe to make a digital copy that’s saved in their cloud ‘so i can access it on another computer’. Because it just means i can’t access that photo when I’m offline and spending time in my campervan i am often offline. I’d copy the photo, rename it, still couldn’t open it again to edit. It’s nice being to able to go through hundreds of photos sat there unfinished in lightroom but that’s it.
But that’s a shit system designed to trap you into Adobe. I have photo, i open photo in program, i edit photo, i save photo into my desired folder on my computer, that’s it, that’s all i want.
I don’t think £10 a month is value for money at all, at least something like Netflix will put new films and tv up they’ve financed. With Lightroom I’m paying for access, that’s all. I use 1% of it.
Why would you lose decades of digital images?
Ever tried to open a file that was made with an application only running on a computer that was last made 30+ years ago, or to read a medium for which the last reader was seen in the wild 20 years ago? Digital files are volatile, they can be lost for many reasons (backup is not a “forever” solution in the digital world).
Adobe is the least of my concerns in this regard. Besides, are you aware that many of the most common file formats, often including the ones used by backup applications, are proprietary or were developed by those big companies that are considered as evil? It is funny, isn’t it, that many of the tools that are supposed to bring our digital possessions into the eternity are proprietary? Ever use TIFFs in your image management workflow? PDF in your daily life? Not to mention raw files made by cameras, a format that easily disappears ten years after it was introduced or less?
We used to exchange R1 for $1. Now it is 20 to 1. So paying per month is just too expensive.
When R1 was $1, a meal at a restaurant with your family might cost R50
Now a meal with your family can cost R1000.
It is the value of your currency that has changed, not the value of the software.
And that is why we cannot afford it. Unless you are doing very well in your photography field, these extra costs simply drain your bank balance.
Exchange R1? I have no idea what you are saying
South Africa: One Rand for one Dollar.
How do you expect the rest of the world to “just know” that R1 is Rand?
Off topic, but that’s just as much a problem with the ignorance of the “rest of the world” as it is OP’s harmless assumption
Perhaps, but one can’t expect to know the nicknames of every currency in the world, and what the exchange rates are vs. every other currency, etc. OP could have said that they were from SA, and that was one of the things driving their decision.
This is why it’s useful to use standard abbreviations for currencies (ISO 4217). For the South African Rand, it’s ZAR.
I remember editing softwares like LR and PS and others being well over $1000 before the subscriptions came out. I’m personally more than happy to pay the monthly fee for the full use of the Adobe suite and they constantly push out updates that you used to have to wait 3-4 years to get.
Same here. Professionally I have been (and still am) an Adobe suite user for 20+ years and an MS Office user for 30+.
I can’t remember for how long I had to stick with the same feature set whilst reading of how fantastic and time saving were some newer tools that I could not afford, because at best I could upgrade once every 5-7 years.
Most of the reasons I am sticking with both suites of software are identical, and none of them is being a fan of either these companies.