5 ms·

"Everything became a slow, entangled, expensive mess now called "Creative Suite". There's probably an opportunity to make better versions of these tools. Even

by swalsh 5y ago

"Everything became a slow, entangled, expensive mess now called "Creative Suite". There's probably an opportunity to make better versions of these tools. Even their crown jelwels. If a decent enough quality version of lightroom that works with Linux comes on the market I'll cancel my creative suite subscription instantly.

ilmiont 5y ago
"If a decent enough quality version of lightroom that works with Linux comes on the market" It's called Darktable. https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.darktable.org/
- wil421 5y ago
  Last year I used Darktable and Lightroom side by side. They were both steaming piles of crap. Lots of bugs, crashes, and extremely high CPU usages. Darktable was slightly less buggy on MacOS but not much. Lightroom was easier to figure out but I’m not really using anything but basic features on both apps.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    I do not remember Darktable ever crashing on me (well I am not professional and maybe not using all the features heavily). Also I use it less than a year, maybe older versions were less stable. I use it on Windows which can be a factor as well.
  - derwiki 5y ago
    What OSX LR bugs have you hit? Apart from it being slow sometimes, I cant think of a bug I've hit.
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    Similarly I used Darktable under OS X and didn't hit to any bugs. Exporting files require some patience since it maxes all cores at once, but nothing crashed or burned during the journey.
- pizza234 5y ago
  I've tried to use Darktable as replacement, and there's no comparison in terms of UX and functionality (within the specific use case that Lightroom is intended for). I'd like to use an open source product, but there is a huge amount of work put into Lightroom (I've been a long time user, and it's very easy to pick a new version and use new functionalities with trivial effort), aimed at making things easy to use for a non-expert, that is hard to match without big backing.
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    I personally use Darktable to process my raw photos for some time. While I didn't use Lightroom for any considerable amount of time, I've found that Darktable can process relatively modern raw files (A7III in my case) easily and with pretty high quality. What are you missing especially? It answered all my needs so far. For some examples you can see https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/ . Some are not processed with Darktable, but all EXIF is intact, so you can check for yourself.
    - martyvis 5y ago
      Main thing I find Lightroom is superior compared to Darktable is being able apply adjustments consistently across groups of photos. You might have say 6 photos all taken of the same subject in the same conditions. You adjust one the way you want, and then literally copy and paste the categories of settings from one to all the other photos you want. Darktable doesn't seem to have that sort of workflow to get through hundreds of photos quickly.
      - bayindirh 5y ago
        This is perfectly doable in Darktable too. You can either save the adjustments you want as a style or just copy the history stack and paste to other images. Just did the same thing last week.
    - p_j_w 5y ago
      I have a Canon point and shoot that I use for underwater photos and Darktable really doesn't cope well with some of the RAW files. I believe it's related to the zoom. I also vastly prefer Lightroom's overall workflow. That may be something that could be fixed with adjustment, though.
- sneak 5y ago
  Darktable is not sufficient quality to be considered seriously as a LR replacement, sadly.
liquidise 5y ago
The Affinity software[1] has been excellent for my usecases. Their pricing is also incredible, with Photo and Designer each running $25 right now. Last week one of our employees said during a call that Photo their best software purchase in recent years. That being said, my Adobe experience was heavy in Photoshop. Affinity Photo is more competitive there (their content-aware fill is impressive). Designer still has some ways to go to compete with Illustrator on level ground. 1. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
- fgonzag 5y ago
  I second affinity. As someone who often resorted to pirated Photoshop because of it's very infrequent use, the first time I saw that affinity got all of the PS and Illustrator features I use for $50 combined I jumped on it. I couldn't be happier with my decision.
starky 5y ago
I've never used it but I believe Corel's version of Lightroom works on Linux. I only use Lightroom for its catalog, there is better software out there for editing RAWs with DXO Photolab and Capture One.
sneak 5y ago
Pixelmator is like $30 (once, not subscription) and is better than Photoshop. IIRC it's made by a small team of dedicated devs in Latvia (edit: actually it's their other l-neighbor Lithuania, just looked it up), and I love it. DaVinci Resolve (now stewarded by Blackmagic Design) is a Premiere/AE replacement that is preferred by many in industry. It's also buy-once-ware (not subscription) and runs natively on Linux. Adobe has nothing resembling a monopoly.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Is there a decent size community for Pixelmator? The difficulty with many of the open source or lesser known commercial products is that even if they're better than the big market leader, the amount of learning materials and community support is so much greater for the market leader.
  - novok 5y ago
    TBH The Affinity Triad (Photo, Designer, Publisher) is more popular than Pixelmator, more featured, does windows & mac and has a community. It's also a pay-once set of apps and is made by a medium size software company in the UK called Serif. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

by swalsh 5y ago

ilmiont 5y ago

"If a decent enough quality version of lightroom that works with Linux comes on the market" It's called Darktable. https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.darktable.org/

wil421 5y ago
Last year I used Darktable and Lightroom side by side. They were both steaming piles of crap. Lots of bugs, crashes, and extremely high CPU usages. Darktable was slightly less buggy on MacOS but not much. Lightroom was easier to figure out but I’m not really using anything but basic features on both apps.
- FpUser 5y ago
  I do not remember Darktable ever crashing on me (well I am not professional and maybe not using all the features heavily). Also I use it less than a year, maybe older versions were less stable. I use it on Windows which can be a factor as well.
- derwiki 5y ago
  What OSX LR bugs have you hit? Apart from it being slow sometimes, I cant think of a bug I've hit.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  Similarly I used Darktable under OS X and didn't hit to any bugs. Exporting files require some patience since it maxes all cores at once, but nothing crashed or burned during the journey.
pizza234 5y ago
I've tried to use Darktable as replacement, and there's no comparison in terms of UX and functionality (within the specific use case that Lightroom is intended for). I'd like to use an open source product, but there is a huge amount of work put into Lightroom (I've been a long time user, and it's very easy to pick a new version and use new functionalities with trivial effort), aimed at making things easy to use for a non-expert, that is hard to match without big backing.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  I personally use Darktable to process my raw photos for some time. While I didn't use Lightroom for any considerable amount of time, I've found that Darktable can process relatively modern raw files (A7III in my case) easily and with pretty high quality. What are you missing especially? It answered all my needs so far. For some examples you can see https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/ . Some are not processed with Darktable, but all EXIF is intact, so you can check for yourself.
  - martyvis 5y ago
    Main thing I find Lightroom is superior compared to Darktable is being able apply adjustments consistently across groups of photos. You might have say 6 photos all taken of the same subject in the same conditions. You adjust one the way you want, and then literally copy and paste the categories of settings from one to all the other photos you want. Darktable doesn't seem to have that sort of workflow to get through hundreds of photos quickly.
    - bayindirh 5y ago
      This is perfectly doable in Darktable too. You can either save the adjustments you want as a style or just copy the history stack and paste to other images. Just did the same thing last week.
  - p_j_w 5y ago
    I have a Canon point and shoot that I use for underwater photos and Darktable really doesn't cope well with some of the RAW files. I believe it's related to the zoom. I also vastly prefer Lightroom's overall workflow. That may be something that could be fixed with adjustment, though.
sneak 5y ago
Darktable is not sufficient quality to be considered seriously as a LR replacement, sadly.

liquidise 5y ago

The Affinity software[1] has been excellent for my usecases. Their pricing is also incredible, with Photo and Designer each running $25 right now. Last week one of our employees said during a call that Photo their best software purchase in recent years. That being said, my Adobe experience was heavy in Photoshop. Affinity Photo is more competitive there (their content-aware fill is impressive). Designer still has some ways to go to compete with Illustrator on level ground. 1. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

fgonzag 5y ago
I second affinity. As someone who often resorted to pirated Photoshop because of it's very infrequent use, the first time I saw that affinity got all of the PS and Illustrator features I use for $50 combined I jumped on it. I couldn't be happier with my decision.

starky 5y ago

I've never used it but I believe Corel's version of Lightroom works on Linux. I only use Lightroom for its catalog, there is better software out there for editing RAWs with DXO Photolab and Capture One.

sneak 5y ago

Pixelmator is like $30 (once, not subscription) and is better than Photoshop. IIRC it's made by a small team of dedicated devs in Latvia (edit: actually it's their other l-neighbor Lithuania, just looked it up), and I love it. DaVinci Resolve (now stewarded by Blackmagic Design) is a Premiere/AE replacement that is preferred by many in industry. It's also buy-once-ware (not subscription) and runs natively on Linux. Adobe has nothing resembling a monopoly.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Is there a decent size community for Pixelmator? The difficulty with many of the open source or lesser known commercial products is that even if they're better than the big market leader, the amount of learning materials and community support is so much greater for the market leader.
- novok 5y ago
  TBH The Affinity Triad (Photo, Designer, Publisher) is more popular than Pixelmator, more featured, does windows & mac and has a community. It's also a pay-once set of apps and is made by a medium size software company in the UK called Serif. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/