So you want to ditch Adobe Lightroom, but ... 

Thanks for putting this video together. Definitely the most honest and well thought out piece on this topic on YT. Much appreciated.

Very high quality video Andy. I've only just come across your youtube channel in the last 48 hours. You are an excellent presenter.

It doesn’t feel like Adobe has really wanted to invest in LR Classic at all and wants everyone on LR instead. Makes me think there’s a finite amount of time we have with Classic and that’s kinda a scary thought. I have no problems with the subscription model at this point. I just would rather it be with a good company.

Just came across this. I've long advocated separating DAM and processing for the very reasons you stated. DAM by it's nature should be long term. In my 2 decades of raw processing, editors have come and gone or been dumped for better. On Windows my DAM of choice is Imatch. Super powerful, reliable, and reasonable cost perpetual license with discounted upgrades at major releases. The developer is very responsive. One point of caution with separating DAM and processing/editing, metadata should only be written by the DAM. You can use the metadata in the processors and editors for filters and sorting, but all writing of it should be done in the DAM. There are standards for metadata, they aren't always followed so have one source of truth.

Thx for this Andy. With all the recent dramas with Adobe, this topic has been more than relevant. I'm trialing Peakto at the moment and since I'll be ditching Lightroom Classic as an asset manager/organiser, I gather it'll be pointless to import the LC catalogue, but import from disk directly. With that method, Peakto doesn't seem to recognise the JPG equivalent of Raw as sidecars but sees it as two separate pictures. As such I'm now trying Darktable too and currently importing my files there.

Thank you, I guess my search for escaping Adobe is now over. You clearly explain that there is no real alternative for Lightroom which is one of my most important applications since... forever. I will just forget about bad business practises and bite the monthly bullet.

Good info. Is it wrong for me to miss Aperture?

Good video. I switched from Lightroom to Darktable about a year back and I'd never move back. Much more powerful and much more control (and no dodgy AI nonsense! :D)

As a non-pro, I ditched Adobe quite a while ago in favour of DxO and Affinity.

I tried dxo photo lab and hated it. You can't even COLOR GRADE without paying for their extra $100 add-on film pack which has a million features that I don't want. It doesn't have an import feature like Lightroom. You have to go through the files in the window explorer to cull them and then move them to the folder you want to keep them.

Thank you for the very honest and thorough video. I think I will stick with The Adobe Photography bundle for now since it seems to be good value. Subscribed to your channel. Glad I found you.

Hi from Brissy Andy, liked and subscribed. Excellent video on an issue that plagues many of us, not least those who started off with and were happy with Aperture, only to be forced to Lr. Recently I was hoping that Nitro might be the solution, your video predates its release. I got it and I like it so far, though maybe I wouldn't if I had seen your recent rather unflattering video on it! Am hoping its issues are addressed... Keep up the good work!

Great trip through options. If it helps anyone I use Fuji and after a lot of trial and exasperation have landed on DxO Photo Raw -> Lr Classic/Ps -> DxO Nik Collection for my time, life and sanity. Accepting I'll have to spend something somewhere. And wordpress for sure. Great stuff Andy

This was good. I'm still missing Aperture as well...have been pondering trying Mylio to DXOPhotolab over Lightroom but still not sure ...Thanks for sharing your preference and the excellent and thorough review Andy.

Great video, Capture One seems well expensive these days. Looking at the costs if you were going to upgrade a perpetual licence every year you might as well pay the subscription, I think perpetual licences only pay if you plan on either not upgrading, or have a 2 year cycle. I usually try and take advantage of buying a year's Adobe subscription at a time (then cancelling the subscription), the apps will work until the subscription expires even when cancelled.

Nice one Andy. Saved me heaps of research 🙏🏻

Looking at alternatives after the current Adobe dramas and exported all my RAW changes to sidecars. Already "subscribe" to most DXO products and have Affinity, but I guess it's the DAM I'm missing. Might try Bridge before I jump out of the Adobe ecosystem completely, I guess the question is whether DXO Photolab has enough DAM functionality to be worthwhile.

Ooh, a timely video. Still tossing up as to what I should do. Currently it costs me $14/mth for 1tb cloud storage. As posted in the On1 thread, I'm an amateur photographer in retirement mode, so, do I really need the powerhouse that is LrC? Thing is, I run it on my Mac Mini M2 Pro (16GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, Macbook Air 15" M2 (8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) and Lightroom for iPad 12.9" M1. That works well, plus I can tether to LrC in the bedroom/studio for our annual Xmas postcard shoot. Thanks again, Andy, for your videos. It's appreciated.

So after all the fuss about Lightroom costs I looked at ON1 which is AUD 1.50 Less per month than LR AND Ps...combined. Why would I bother given, amongst other things, the incredible amount of tutorials available for Adobe products? Excellent review, by the way.

Trouble with DXO PhotoLab is it can’t see .psd files, so none of my files which were edited using Photoshop are viewable.

Wow, you covered a lot in a short presentation. Well done. I was an early Lightroom user and Photoshop pre-subscription buyer who also became an early adopter of Topaz and NIK software, which allowed me to become a Salon winner in Camera Club competitions. Then I found On1 Raw, which you do not like, to be a one size fits all program that provided non-destructive Topaz like effects as well as layered capability for compositing and I switched. For the few times I needed Photoshop type capability, I used inexpensive Affinity Photo. Yes, i have to pay for annual upgrades but with discounts it is only $60-70 per year to obtain the new features, including Brilliance AI in the 2024 release. Is it really better than Lightroom and Photoshop or Capture One? Probably not, but it is a lot easier to use for my non-commercial travel, landscape, and family photography. Final conclusion: Lots of great software out there and the one to use is the one you know how to use best.

Great video Andy 👍🏻, Squaresoasce wich is not sponsoring this video killed me 😂😂. I use Adobe since the early ages, then stopped a couple years since then I did not much photography/video. Then with my iPhone 12 ProMax I started again to get interested in photography and it did not take that long I got myself a Mirrorless camera…. So the question was what use for editing? I found Neo and thought wow a great program until, well until Luminar started to push out update and feature after feature without making sure they worked properly. One1 is just not good (sorry folks) and DxO has great camera support but lacks in the masking otherwise it would be good really. Well so I returned to Adobe and I love it. Yes it’s subscription but considering the quality I am getting out of each Program is really great. It is not perfect, but you can find issues in every tool you use.

Interesting. Personally, I’m very happy with Lightroom Classic. I know it well, it’s fairly simple and gets better every year. Tried Capture One and DXO. Found both unnecessarily complicated as editors and of course useless as asset management systems. I don’t like Adobe themselves a huge amount but that’s life. I do have a big Apple Aperture library gathering dust in an old Drobo. If it will boot ok I might see about getting Avalanche and Peakto to save it.

Great video!

Excellent video, Mr. Hutchinson. Very informative, and you explained everything rather nicely. What is your opinion on ON1 Photo Raw? It's a Raw editor and image manipulator, and the new version now seems to have DAM built in. It's also supposed to have excellent masking skills. Thanks again.

50% DXO discount only for new users.

Say! Did you used to edit Your Sinclair?

Every software made you pay for a new version, even Adobe. It costs money to keep feeding developers.

Subscribed. Mate you are without a doubt one of the most HONEST presenters out there. Plus, you're a fellow Aussie! I am not a fan of what Adobe is doing, but .... I AM a fan of LRC, PS and Bridge, so, whilst I can afford it I'll hang in there. If I left Adobe, my choice would be either, DXO PhotoLab or Darktable! A question: Right near the end of the video, you offer your recommendations, one you mention is "Adobe Bridge with DXO PhotoLab ... or DXO PhotoRaw" PhotoRaw? surely can't compete with DXO PhotoLab, in fact itis merely a PART of Photolab? Not knocking PhotoRaw - I have it. But how can it replace a dedicated RAW Processor? Loved your shoot of Bombo Quarry! I'm travelling down to Bargo soon to meet up with an old mate for 2 or 3 days of photography. If we end up near your neck of the woods would love to meet and buy you a beer or two. Or tea, coffee juice.

Your video is confirming to me. I think I already have revealed my preferred combination: Darktable for raw, and Affinity Photo for the pixel based editing. I mention this combination, because it fits into a low budget and offers a lot of value for the money. As a curio I have a lifelong Photoshop 5 license from before Adobe lured its blood needle into our veins. Even the old ACR works as long as it is fed with DNGs. And yes, Bridge is a fair organizer, unfortunately my old version can't show the Affinity format as image thumb nails, but they often end up as TIFs anyway.

Timely topic, Andy. Thank you. I'm personally struggling with my workflow ... TL;DR - Would an alternative be possibly front-ending DxO PR3 into a hybrid PS / LR approach to take advantage of the demosaicing and denoising capabilities within DxO and then leverage LR for DAM and further processing? Or, perhaps just using Bridge (or Peakto or Mylio ... interesting options I've not really considered) for DAM and leveraging DxO PL7 for image processing? I don't foresee giving up my Adobe subscription since with the photo plan it's not much more than a trip to Starbucks once a month, but I have seen what other RAW processors can do out-of-the-box and I've generally been happier with the results from those tools. Going back to LR as my "only" one-stop approach depresses me.

I only use the minimum Adobe cloud subscription and it cost me less to have both LRs, Photoshop, Bridge etc. than Photolabs and NIK.

I use ACDSEE, good DAM but average editing compared to C1, LR so you have to have good RAWs to start with.