Like all Adobe Products, Lightroom has a steep learning curve. With so many options, you can easily find the right alternative to Lightroom for your skill level. We recommend PhotoDirector Essential as the best overall free Lightroom alternative. While Lightroom takes many users weeks or months to master, PhotoDirector Essential uses simple, straightforward tools and sorting features that new users can learn in no time. This free Lightroom alternative is packed with all of the editing tools, features, and presets you would ever need to produce professional, publication-ready photos.

PhotoDirector will keep your photos organized, assist your workflow, and provide a secure place to store your catalog. With this free Lightroom alternative, you can tag, rate, and add keywords to your entire photo dump in one simple step, allowing you to arrange an extensive catalog quickly.

This program also utilizes automatic facial recognition to streamline the sorting process. PhotoDirector is a superb free Lightroom alternative because of its advanced features like AI-powered tools, object removal , pro-level color adjustment tools, and an extensive library of filters and effects. With PhotoDirector, you can split, combine, and color layers with glitch effects or use de-blur, de-haze, and de-fringe to sharpen images.

Whether you typically perform simple color corrections to your photos or prefer to zoom in and perfect every pixel, PhotoDirector has you covered. Think of PhotoDirector as the perfect blend of Lightroom and Photoshop without the clunky, hard-to-learn interfaces Adobe programs utilize, making it the perfect free Lightroom alternative.

Download PhotoDirector Essential today to organize and edit your photo collection like a professional. G2 Rating: 4. Capture One is the best alternative to Lightroom for color adjustments.

Based on our review, Capture One has incredible color accuracy and image quality, with true-to-life color processing for over camera profiles. It offers eight color ranges instead of the standard six and lets you isolate and edit specific colors in your photo. It also has organizational tools like keyword management and sorting by star rating or color tagging.

In addition, you can sort your photos into Sessions folders for current jobs and Catalogs for older projects. The two programs are very similar – so similar in fact that it might not be worth the change. This free Lightroom alternative has a fast workflow, allowing you to sort your photos, organize, edit, and view them in one program, with no importing required.

You can also edit thousands of photos at once with ultra-powerful batch processing. This free Lightroom alternative automatically sorts images by name, date, and tags, or you can add in your own sorting criteria like ISO or shutter speed. Create groups or add color-coding, flags, and star ratings to identify your favorite photos.

Aftershot also comes with some editing tools, like lens corrections, a cloning tool, and color adjustments. Aftershot is best used for processing, sorting, tagging, and viewing photos and is not a stand-alone photo editor. If you want a free Lightroom alternative with photo organization and a full-bodied editor in one, try PhotoDirector Essential. PCMag Rating: 3. It is an industry leader in face detection and recognition. The AI assistant will even offer labeling suggestions and group similar faces that you have yet to name.

Other photo management tools include sorting by keywords, categories, and tags, and sorting, filtering, and grouping photos in any combinations. Besides photo organization, this free Lightroom alternative has layer editing with adjustment layers, masks, blend modes, layer effects, and adjustable opacity. This alternative to Lightroom offers RAW photo processing, photo management, and layered photo editing all in one place.

Image from Digital Camera World. The program comes with hundreds of popular one-click presets, filters, LUTs, textures, and borders that can be combined, blended, and customized. Presets and filters are easy to find and apply using responsive sliders.

You can also selectively apply your effects to a specific area of your image, then brush in or out to your liking. This free Lightroom alternative is also a powerful export and image converter with great organizational tools. Search by star ratings, likes, color labels, keywords, or metadata. Choose to see your images as either photos, folders, or thumbnails. ON1 Photo RAW offers many professional tools, but the learning curve is steep and the interface is confusing.

Although they have the same overall rating, we felt ACDSee was a better all-around alternative to Lightroom, so we placed it higher on our list. Image from Darktable. Shotkit Rating: 4. Based on our testing, Darktable is the best open-source free Lightroom alternative. Like other open-source editors, Darktable is constantly updated by users and professionals, and bugs are located and fixed in record time.

The program supports 21 languages and offers many learning tools like user forums, video tutorials, and instructional posts. Darktable is one of the only open-source photography editors to offer tethered shooting support and RAW processing for over cameras. Darktable has some photo management tools so you can organize, sort, and tag your images. Add metadata and search content by tags, star rating, color labels, etc. Other features include professional color tools, hot pixel fixes, denoise, masking, and blending.

Some of these features offer finer control than their Lightroom counterparts, making Darktable a viable alternative to Lightroom. If you are a professional photographer who regularly deals with thousands of images, Darktable will not work for you as a free Lightroom alternative. Image from Apple. Apple Photos is a free Lightroom alternative found built-in all Mac computers. If you have thousands of photos on your iPhone just waiting to be organized, then Apple Photos is for you.

Photos taken on an iPhone will automatically transfer to your iPad or Mac, without any importing, and edited photos will transfer back to your iPhone without any exporting. This free Lightroom alternative can handle RAW files from popular digital cameras as well, even brand-new models. Organize photos with keyword tagging, geo-tagging, and facial recognition. Click on the info box to see the camera model, exposure settings, tags, and a map of where the photo was taken.

The app will also automatically create albums of photos by type, such as Screenshots, Selfies, Panoramas, Live Photos, and more. In fact, its auto-correct tool is better than many paid software.

Intermediate to professional photographers and editors will need to look elsewhere. Apple Photos lacks features such as layer editing, lens profile corrections, content-aware edits, and chromatic aberration, to name a few. If you want the user-friendliness of Apple Photos with more advanced photo editing tools, try PhotoDirector.

Image from PhotoLemur. AI-powered tools mean easy, one-click solutions with professional-looking results. There are some digital asset management tools, making this a worthy alternative to Lightroom. It has four workspaces: Catalog, Templates, Edit, and Export. You can also use batch editing to recreate complex-looking edits in a large group of photos at once.

Sylum Luminar AI is very easy to use, and its powerful AI tools produce extraordinary results in one click. However, we found it lacked keyword tagging and facial recognition. If you are in the market for a free Lightroom alternative and rely on tagging to organize your images, try Capture One, PhotoDirector, or Apple Photos. Image from DPReview. We found Exposure X7 to be the best free Lightroom alternative for special effects because many Lightroom and Photoshop users use the software as a special effects plug-in.

Exposure X7 has effects like film grain, bokeh, light effects, overlays, vignettes, and more. Flexible masking and layering help you blend effects in every way possible. You can also selectively apply effects using radial, planar, or half-planar gradients and adjust the opacity. Instead, create smart collections from a file list and populate them by specific criteria. The program also has tons of printing options, such as printing multiple images per page, output sharpening for specific paper types, presets for print settings, etc.

Exposure X7 works better as a plug-in for Lightroom than a complete alternative to Lightroom. It has features and effects that Lightroom lacks, but many of its features are patchy. This includes features that any photo editor would deem necessary, like lens correction, noise reduction, and mask selection tools.

Experts can shoot at a higher sensitivity level, while amateurs can make up for the lack of professional camera equipment. It can even be used to fix old photos that until now were unusable. As far as image management goes, this free Lightroom alternative offers metadata and keyword management in the photo library and an Advanced History feature that keeps track of each edit made to your images. However, it is missing geotracking and facial recognition tools.

DxO PhotoLab includes a limited selection of additional editing features, including 40 presets and base-level adjustment tools. While its demosaicing tools and photo processing quality are similar to Raw Therapee, DxO PhotoLab offers better photo management options, giving it a higher spot on our list. However, in our product test, we found it to be less user-friendly because it organizes images into a linear list, making it challenging to find a specific photo at a glance or compare images across a photoshoot.

New database-driven Media Mode provides an uncluttered view of previously browsed and cataloged folders, perfect for easy sorting, grouping, and filtering. Freely preview what your images would look like with a variety of filters with the Auto Lens View. View adjustments made in Develop mode, copy and paste the adjustments onto other images, or restore the image with the Develop Settings pane—all from within Manage or View mode.

Parametrically reduce noise on specific parts of an image, while preserving details. Apply non-destructive Develop Presets, view your editing history, and take snapshots or your adjustments at any point along the way. Copy pixels from a source to a target area, then analyzes the target area and blends them with the Blended Clone tool. Color grade images non-destructively by importing and applying LUTs as Develop mode filters.

Brush on or grade exposure, saturation, vibrance, white balance, light, contrast, clarity, and tonal range, as well as saturation, brightness, hue, and contrast-based color adjustments. Non-destructively reduce haze and restore skin tone. Add non-destructive photo effects. Apply hue-based brightness adjustments and saturation-based tinting in black and white mode. Combine images with different exposures to create one image with an optimal dynamic range HDR. Combine images with different focal distances to create one image with a greater depth of field Focus Stacking.

Seamlessly color grade your images by importing and applying LUTs as colorful Edit mode filters. Adjust contrast in specific tones and target precise brightness ranges to bring out contrast details in highlights or shadows. Record adjustments, categorize, use pre-loaded adjustments, import and export, and automate with ease with ACDSee Actions.

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Acdsee ultimate 10 vs lightroom 6 free.13 Best Free Lightroom Alternatives in [Windows & Mac]

 

Enjoy, and try out all of these editors to pick your favorite! The creators of Luminar have learned from the mistakes of their competitors and created an editor that embodies convenience and flexibility. Effects and filters can be adjusted with sliders. It identifies people and objects in photos, then selects the most appropriate adjustments. Moreover, Luminar has instant Looks that can be applied to any photo.

Looks are tailor-made and selected by leading designers and photographers especially for Luminar. Adobe Lightroom is the king of the editing world. First of all, Lightroom is all about intuition. Experiments and genuine art are made in Lightroom.

So try out the test version and then decide if you want to pay for this feature-rich program. You might have come across this program on other lists of best photo editors for beginners. What is Aurora HDR about? It thoroughly processes every photo you upload. After processing, the AI presents you with its own unique vision of how your photo should look. With Aurora HDR, you have the opportunity to learn and use every one of them.

First and foremost, Photolemur creators made accent on automation. When it comes to editing options that fit the needs of most photographers, Lightroom Classic does have the edge. However, discerning image editors who want pixel-perfect precision without the need to launch Photoshop or another editing tool should certainly check out ACDSee Photo Studio. While both of these programs follow a similar overall design philosophy, Lightroom Classic has the edge in terms of usability and overall polish.

It feels more refined, with tools and options that are carefully laid out in a specific manner and a level of consistency that shows careful attention to detail. ACDSee Photo Studio feels a bit more like the open-source program DarkTable , with a user interface that tends to prioritize function over form.

And these days, Adobe is running the risk of letting their tools crumble under the weight of feature creep. For example, the new Masking options in Lightroom Classic are highly advanced but quite confusing for new users. After everything is said and done, Lightroom Classic and ACDSee Photo Studio offer excellent editing options and a slew of digital asset management tools. For heavy lifting, PS is still the way to go but has a huge learning curve and is way more expensive.

Although I am considering getting DxO as well, I’d say that its greedy ness is a little concerning. DxO isn’t particularly friendly when it comes to maintenance updades, and might find yourself obliged to buy an not so inexpensive update just because you got a new camera or lens that isn’t supported in your current version. With ACDSee, one can master most of its functions fairly quickly, which strike a good balance between functionality and complexity.

Most people adopt ACDSee for its DAM features first and foremost, but overall I am quite fond of its photo editing capability in spite of a few shortfalls, but no application has it all and none does all it does best either so you have to see if what it does well meets your needs.

There’s a 30day trial available. I have a lot of experience with both, and they are not comparable in my opinion. It also includes the Book, Print, etc. The other programs have additional features and extras too. It isn’t just Lightroom that has more than the 3 main functions. As one might expect, they all have their pros and cons. Pick your poison. I have lightroom 6. It appears that people use several programs.

How is Canon digital photo professional for raw files? So many lost souls in here hoping against hope that someone can help them find better software than the Adobe Photo Plan. It’s probably the most complete consumer-oriented DAM on the market. It does everything Lightroom does though oftentimes it does it in a different way from that of Lightroom. This is because it uses a hierarchal database as opposed to a relational database.

Hierarchical databases are inherently faster than Relational databases, so you would likely see some improvement in overall responsiveness and would also likely see significantly more photo storage capacity before it bogs down from too many photos. The downside is that the ACDSee computer programmers have to take longer and plan out their database changes a bit more carefully than the Lightroom programmers. This means that any new features in the future will be slower to reach the market.

This is not something I personally worry about. It has a high degree of batch automation capabilities, and for keywording, there are actually TWO database files One for categories, and one for keywords proper. So it is possible to do many searches without having to figure out a complex ‘not logic’ for the search. Search capabilities are strong, but its hierarchal database make Not logic complex. It supports virtually all camera raw files, and all the major bit mapped photo files like jpg, Tiff, etc.

Also video. Here we discuss the key differences with infographics and a comparison table. You can also go through our other related articles to learn more —. By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Forgot Password? Experience the time-saving power of batch processing by rotating and flipping multiple photos at the same time.

Select and send to share memories with family and friends. Your media collection covers many file types from various devices. Have you settled for the standard in file browsing without even knowing it? Apply non-destructive Develop Presets, view your editing history, and take snapshots or your adjustments at any point along the way. Copy pixels from a source to a target area, then analyzes the target area and blends them with the Blended Clone tool.

Color grade images non-destructively by importing and applying LUTs as Develop mode filters. Brush on or grade exposure, saturation, vibrance, white balance, light, contrast, clarity, and tonal range, as well as saturation, brightness, hue, and contrast-based color adjustments.

Here is a step-by-step guide for using PhotoDirector, the 1 free Lightroom alternative, to crop, rotate, add filters, and adjust the colors of an image. For more info on how to import and organize your photos with the best free Lightroom alternative, click here.

Lightroom is no longer the only high-quality management program for photographers. Dozens of excellent alternatives to Lightroom exist on the web, and finding the right one for you ultimately comes down to personal preference. Our favorite free Lightroom alternative is PhotoDirector Essential for its innovation, ease of use, range of features, and intuitive processing tools. PhotoDirector is a free Lightroom alternative that excels in photo editing features and intuitive organization options, giving photographers the best of both worlds and eliminating the necessity of a second editing program.

Guided editing allows you to make complicated photo edits, like face beautification and content removal, with the touch of a button. This alternative to Lightroom uses artificial intelligence to make these changes automatically, saving you time and hassle. Download the best free Lightroom alternative today and use beginner-friendly tools to make professional-quality images.

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Acdsee ultimate 10 vs lightroom 6 free – Adobe® Lightroom™ Editing Process

 
 
Earlier this year I reviewed ACDSee Ultimate However, ACDSee just released the version of their flagship photo editing software and. ACDSee is a significant substitute to Lightroom; after all, it produces an alternate workflow to Lightroom’s procedure of importing, modifying, and exporting. Unsure which solution is best for your company? Find out which tool is better with a detailed comparison of ACDSee Photo Studio & Photoshop.

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