Lightroom alternative...

GSXRMovistar · 2 Apr 2019 at 14:08

Seeing the amount people spend on their camera kit, accessories (memory cards alone), bags to put it all in I don't think £100 a year is all that bad for the very latest Adobe offerings.

EGuitarStar · 2 Apr 2019 at 21:48

I currently have an Adobe subscription FOC but wish to get away from it before I delve too deep into it.

I think I'll stick to my suggestion in this thread and go with Luminar.

I'm using the 7 day trial to test and so far I am impressed with its features and intuitiveness.

i know nothing · 3 Apr 2019 at 02:14

EGuitarStar said:
I think I'll stick to my suggestion in this thread and go with Luminar.

I'm using the 7 day trial to test and so far I am impressed with its features and intuitiveness.

I have it. Started with Luminar 2018 which was fantastic, then they upgraded it all to Luminar 3 and it all went wrong for me. Kept on crashing, the DAM took ages to load, loads of issues. I have since uninstalled it and gone back to Luminar 2018. The only difference between Luminar 2018 and 3 is the DAM. Check their forums, this was a MAJOR issue!

As far as I can tell, Luminar 3 is okay if you have the latest and greatest PC, if you don't... beware!

EGuitarStar · 3 Apr 2019 at 09:08

i know nothing said:
As far as I can tell, Luminar 3 is okay if you have the latest and greatest PC, if you don't... beware!

Hmmmm, going to make the most of the trial and run tests before purchasing. Thanks for the heads up.

I'm on an i7 2600k with 8GB DDR3 running on an SSD which is far from latest and greatest but so far have not experienced any issues.

MartinPrince · 3 Apr 2019 at 10:27

EGuitarStar said:
Hmmmm, going to make the most of the trial and run tests before purchasing. Thanks for the heads up.

I'm on an i7 2600k with 8GB DDR3 running on an SSD which is far from latest and greatest but so far have not experienced any issues.

Have you overclocked the 2600K?

EGuitarStar · 3 Apr 2019 at 10:43

MartinPrince said:
Have you overclocked the 2600K?

No, have been running at stock since I've had it. I've not really had the need to squeeze out more from it.

EGuitarStar · 3 Apr 2019 at 20:56

i know nothing said:
Luminar 3 is okay if you have the latest and greatest PC, if you don't... beware!

I just ran tests now and can see that this is indeed the case, Luminar eats into my RAM and then when I am editing my images it takes 5-7 seconds for any changes made to be visible.

I also managed to get Lightroom up and running again. Going to stick to LR for now since I am getting it free from work.

MartinPrince · 3 Apr 2019 at 21:58

EGuitarStar said:
No, have been running at stock since I've had it. I've not really had the need to squeeze out more from it.

Well LR loves high Ghz and running a 2600K at 4.5Ghz is relatively easy as most would do 4.2Ghz-4.3Ghz on default voltages.

Minstadave · 7 Apr 2019 at 16:47

My CC subscription is just ending and looking at alternatives.

Going to try keeping LR as my photo manager as that still works without a license.

Trying Darktable first. Completely free and modelled on LR. Anyone else tried it?

Like the look of Aperture Photo too, under £50 for a perpetual license.

footman · 8 Apr 2019 at 17:14

Just installed Luminar 3 with a £10 discount voucher which made it £55. My needs are fairly simple as far as PP goes and it pretty much duplicates what LR does for me plus some interesting extras, the interface is similar too which pleases me. Works with my Silver Efex Pro plugin for monochrome conversion which makes me even happier.
File saving can be quite slow but then I am saving 32 MB + files.
Time to bin the subscription.

EGuitarStar · 8 Apr 2019 at 19:40

What are the specs of your system? I found Luminar 3 to not run well on my specs.

footman · 8 Apr 2019 at 22:41

EGuitarStar said:
What are the specs of your system? I found Luminar 3 to not run well on my specs.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
3.5 GHz Intel Core i5
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2 GB

footman · 18 Apr 2019 at 09:03

After 10 days of frustration I've gone back to the Adobe CC plan.
I tried 2 applications, the Luminar 3 I mentioned earlier seemed fine to begin with although saving an image was a bit slower than LR but gradually became slower and slower in exporting. Also my Nik Software plugins, specifically Silver Efex opened easily in Luminar but quite suddenly stopped doing it.
I tried another application, ACDsee which was slower in other areas but the main problem was that clone stamping was missing in the Mac version but present in the PC version. I tried it on my games PC which I didn't really want to use for anything else but the image rendering was horrible in my eyes.