Why I Ditched Adobe Lightroom for Pixelmator Pro

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Adobe Lightroom – External Editing and Saving – Pixelmator Community

Shotkit may earn a commission on affiliate links. Learn more. Are you looking for a Lightroom Alternative which offers great image editing and organization features, but without any monthly costs? A few years ago, Adobe shocked the creative world by introducing a monthly subscription plan for all its Creative Cloud apps.

Many photographers accepted the change and paid for the upgrade, happy to have the convenient cloud storage and cross-device photo editing capabilities of Lightroom CC. This guide features our summarised recommendations of the best photo editing software in , which can be bought for a one-time fee. Luminar came onto the scene a few years ago as an affordable and simple image processing and editing software for users looking for a way to get their images looking great with minimal fuss.

It arrived at the perfect time when photographers of all levels were starting to look for a viable Lightroom alternative — see our full review. The most recent release of Luminar here in June is quite frankly mind-blowing. I write about it more in my full review, but in a nutshell, the latest version is a viable Lightroom alternative that offers some truly incredible features. If you want to dive deeper, you should check Luminar vs Lightroom comparison which will help you understand the differences in both the editors.

Headline artificial-intelligence A. Another new feature to Luminar is the AI Portrait Enhancer, which helps you to do the work of a portrait photo retoucher in seconds — removing blemishes from the face of your subject, whitening their eyes and teeth, or even making their faces slimmer, can all be done in a few mouse clicks. Adobe Lightroom, by contrast, offers very few A. Lightroom, on the other hand, will apply its edits to the entire image, requiring you to manually mask things out.

Luminar makes it simple for a non-professional photographer to turn a bland photo into something a pro would be proud of. Getting images into Luminar is simple — just drag and drop.

Aside from all the great features, the main benefit of Luminar over Lightroom and all the other image editors available in is its simplicity. For those familiar with Lightroom, the editing panels in Luminar look almost identical — all the main adjustments for RAW files are there, including more advanced features like Curves and LUT Mapping.

Performance depends heavily on the size of the original file, and your computer hardware. Finally, there were complaints about crashes and performance issues with the initial release, but thankfully, with the v4. While the aforementioned Luminar is, without doubt, a fantastic alternative to Lightroom, it does fall short of being a complete replacement, lacking certain file management features that professional photographers rely on.

Thankfully, it works well in conjunction with Lightroom as a plugin , but what about those of us who want something to replace Lr completely? The answer lies in a popular product by Exposure Software review , now in its 6th iteration. Exposure X6 is an advanced image editing app that rivals Lightroom Classic, with powerful features, intuitive controls and ease of use, all for one affordable fee i. As a fully-featured RAW image editing software, Exposure X6 offers all the photo manipulation and file-management tools for advanced photographers, while still being simple enough for beginners to start using right away.

It can also be used as a plugin for Lightroom , but we recommend ditching Adobe completely in favour of X6, to save on those monthly fees. Those transitioning from Lr will find the Exposure workspace very similar, with an additional benefit — panels and editing tools can be completely customized to suit your needs. Photo management in Exposure is impressively fast. Incidentally, migrating images from an existing Lightroom catalogue is simple, with all existing edits, stars, flags, keywords and other metadata included with the files.

Filtering in Exposure is a breeze, with the ability to quickly find your images based on all the usual variables. One handy feature is the ability to collaborate on image editing, via a cloud-based service such as Dropbox.

This allows you to access your edits on multiple computers, or give access to your team if you shoot as part of a studio. The ability to customise your tools and workspace is a great feature.

Another useful feature is the 3D Colour Masking tool, which allows you to create and control a mask based on hue, saturation and vibrance. Performance-wise, Exposure is fast to import and export images, and suffers from very little lag while editing, even on heavy RAW files.

Best of all, perhaps, is its price. All in all, Exposure is an impressive piece of software that should fulfil all your needs as a photographer seeking a way to interact with your images, and produce stunning results. ON1 Photo RAW is another of our favorite alternatives, and the version brings in a number of new features see review.

Like Luminar, it combines an image organizer, Raw processor, layered editor, and effects app all in one. The develop module is structured much like Lightroom, and as mentioned before will seem a bit more complex to those new to photo editing.

That being said, ON1 has all the photo adjustments you would expect from a Lightroom replacement, including excellent AI auto options for tone. Used well, it can save quite a bit of time when making multiple selections. These work much the same as Photoshop and inPixio , with masks, blend modes, and an easy way to merge layers. Not everyone uses these features, but if you do and want an all-in-one editor, ON1 has an edge up on the competition here.

As far as portrait editing is concerned, ON1 has long been at the top of the field for its price point. From there you can adjust the skin, eyes, and mouth of each individually. ON1 also has several quality built-in presets. Also, the latest version added over new looks, as well as a number of new backgrounds, textures, and skies. It comes with a number of templates, including various options for individual prints, contact sheets, and tiled package prints.

It also lets you add watermarks before you print. Other new features include SmugMug integration, better noise reduction, an excellent map view mode, new timeline albums, and a new focus mask overlay so you can tell which photos are in focus. Just about everything most photographers would ever need is here one place.

When discussing Lightroom alternatives, any serious photographer needs to consider Capture One Pro. See also our Capture One vs Lightroom guide for a more in-depth comparison.

With its latest release, Capture One Pro 21 offers exceptional RAW image file processing, image cataloging, layers, local adjustments, keystone adjustments, as well as just about all the features one would expect out of a pro image editing app. There are a few different programs available including both free and paid. If you shoot with a Sony or Fujifilm camera, there are specific versions of the software, making colour management even more efficient.

There are also usually discounts on these versions. Viewing your photos in Capture One Pro review is an eye-opener, thanks to colour profiles which are tailored for every camera.

With Lightroom, imported files have a more neutral starting point. Capture One Pro has more ways to manipulate colour than Lightroom, allowing you to make colour balance changes to shadow, mid-tone and highlights, and a channel dedicated to skin tones.

Take a look at the video below to see how a talented portrait photographer uses the software to edit all his high-end fashion portraits. From there you can adjust the affected color range, hue, saturation and lightness. The 3-Way option even lets you adjust the color tint separately in the shadow, midtone and highlight areas. Need to smooth out the skin tones?

No problem. Simply choose the Skin Tone tab, select a color range, and adjust the uniformity sliders. Instead, everything sits in one interface and you toggle through buttons to change functions — this mixed asset management can be confusing at first.

There are tons of adjustment options, many of which the average photographer would never use. If you thought Lightroom was tricky to master, just wait till you start exploring the capabilities of C1!

Tethering features in Capture One Pro makes it the obvious choice for studio photographers. This is no surprise since tethered shooting functionality is one of the main reasons the software was developed. Lightroom only has adjustment points for brushes or gradients.

When you use layers in Capture One Pro, you can make targeted local adjustments to your photos and still use the majority of the editing tools available, not just the ones in a given tool.

This is a huge benefit for those who like a fine level of control over photo manipulation. For everyone else, however, it may be slightly overkill. Updates and support for new cameras and lenses are excellent in DxO PhotoLab 4, with the software detecting the imported RAW file and downloading any modules profiles for the files.

The non-destructive editing is smooth and fast, and version 4 brings a number of useful features, including:. Darktable is our choice of the top free Lightroom alternative. Like Lightroom, this app has a full-featured image adjustment suite and extensive library management options.

As far as the UI is concerned, Darktable looks a lot like Lightroom. Once you get used to the interface you can fully customize Darktable , setting it up for just the editing tools you want to use. You can also set up automatic scripts to seriously streamline your workflow, and make repetitive tasks fast and more efficient. Speaking of tutorials, Darktable comes with excellent free documentation. You can see more differences in our comparison here. Most open source folks choose Digikam.

Overall, though, this is the most developed of all the open-source free Lightroom alternatives and is well worth trying out. Next in line, and a close second is the free photo editing app RawTherapee, available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

RawTherapee has all the standard editing features needed in a Raw editor and includes advanced color controls and lens corrections. The Raw processing in RawTherapee is spectacular for a free app, and the program has a strong, devoted Fujifilm user following. Fujifilm Raw files are notoriously challenging to render well. Also, if English is not your strong suit, RawTherapee is available in over 25 languages and will soon have more — very impressive, especially considering this is a completely free app — something not offered by Lightroom.

One place where RawTherapee really lags, though, is easy-to-find documentation. Should you choose it over the aforementioned app, and is it really a decent Lightroom alternative? Have a play around with them and see which one suits your workflow. Originally developed as commercial software, LightZone was later taken up by the LightZone Project as free software in There are definitely some strong conceptual differences between LightZone and other Lightroom-style apps. One is its concept of Zone Mapping, which allows for selective adjustments via a unique layer-based system.

Pixelmator vs adobe lightroom free

It is a cloud-based service for people who love photography, it gives you everything you need to edit, organize, store, and share your photos across desktop, mobile, and web. It is a graphic editor developed for macOS, and built upon a combination of open-source and macOS technologies.

Get Advice. Follow I use this. Adobe Lightroom vs Pixelmator: What are the differences? Adobe Lightroom and Pixelmator can be categorized as “Graphic Design” tools. Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise. What is Adobe Lightroom? What is Pixelmator? Jobs that mention Adobe Lightroom and Pixelmator as a desired skillset. Australia Queensland Brisbane. Creatives and Communications Specialist.

See jobs for Adobe Lightroom. See jobs for Pixelmator. What companies use Adobe Lightroom? What companies use Pixelmator? See which teams inside your own company are using Adobe Lightroom or Pixelmator. Sign up to get full access to all the companies Make informed product decisions. What tools integrate with Adobe Lightroom? What tools integrate with Pixelmator? No integrations found. Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrations Make informed product decisions.

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Create and enhance photos, illustrations and 3D graphic objects. Easily create complex shapes with our state-of-the-art vector boolean operations and take advantage of our extensive layer styles. The industry-standard vector graphics app lets you create logos, icons, sketches, typography, and complex illustrations for print, web, interactive, video, and mobile. Trending Comparisons Django vs Laravel vs Node.