Looking for a Lightroom alternative

DxO PhotoLab
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You may find PhotoLab good because of its ergonomics and image quality, if you care about denoising, advanced sharpening and same presets being applicable to a wide variety of ISO and “mis-exposures”. Perhaps the other choice could be CaptureOne (or AffinityPro, RawTheraphy, Darktable, camera maker software,…), or someting working with Topaz. Depends on your goals. This market is currently too unstable to be sure you made a right decision in the long-term, I think. Recent changes in terms of use and licensing made by all the main players just don’t look good.

Install a trial version and work hard for some 2-3 weeks on your old photos. Try to develop your presets and workflow, before deciding. I often shoot indoor martial arts under horrible lighting and PhotoLab made me change my technique.

Please be aware of the following points:

  • PL is a simple software to get good results quickly, provided you mastered it and prepared suitable presets. If you invest enough time, you will be mostly choosing your photos, rather than editing them. You don’t have to adapt denoising parameters too often and SmartLighting usually does a good job too, so you’ll save a lot of time.
  • Since PL 7.7, you will not be able to use it, if 37 days passed since last license check over the Internet (so there’s no more true lifetime perpetual license).
  • If you require a lot of very precise local adjustments or you have to use metadata to organize your pictures in an advanced way, perhaps try or add to your workflow something else.
  • PL is very primitive in many aspects, like filenaming for exported files (far from LR or even NX Studio). Filtering is very basic too. Some tools look funny (e.g. Texture), but you can just ignore that (probably silly marketing “products”).
  • PL is not a graphics editor. It’s main goal is to develop RAW files (including denoising and applying optical corrections, good sharpening included) and make some RGB adjustments. The rest, if required, should be done in some other postprocessing software (e.g. PS).
  • It may be a good idea to try/buy also FilmPack and ViewPoint licenses. You may find FP contrast fine adjustments, VP volume corrections and some other features useful (CreativeVigneting, some renderings). I’ll not comment on the DxO marketing strategy, as it will become obvious to you after just a while.
  • DxO does not provide support for downgrading, so always save your installation binaries.
  • Small previews have often different colors and tones than those viewed at 75% or more, so it’s good to have a large monitor, 4k at least.
  • Only very small previews for DeepPRIME denoising (like in other software with advanced denoising). You have to export the pictures to get a real view in this case. After some experience (two months or so ?), you’ll probably get used to it and know when to correct your defaults and what to look for.
  • For DeepPRIME exports on PCs, you’ll need something like RTX 4060 to get reasonable times (you probably work with hundreds, if not thousands of photos per session?). I have RTX 4070, which does the job well enough for me with 46Mpx Z8, while not producing too much heat around my legs, but maybe 4060 is a more reasonable heat/performance compromise (?). RTX 30x0 require some 50% more energy than RTX 40x0 to do the same job and their support will end sooner, but they are probably cheaper.

I have no idea about baseball games. What are your typical EV values (mine are often around 4), what kind of lighting is there, which cameras you use with what ISO settings?
What’s the kind of customer? How quickly you have to deliver?

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@Wlodek

Thanks for the thorough response - I’ll try to address each question you asked.

I currently have trials for PL and CaptureOne. My goals are to browse the photos I took quickly to pick ones with action/poses/timing/etc in them that I find appealing, perform a quick enhancement, and then mark for keeping. When done culling, I then recall all the ones I marked as keepers for export as JPEGs to upload to Pixieset.

I have zero desire (or talent) to sit and endlessly tweak a photo to make it “perfect” to the tiniest detail. If this were something like an airshow that I went to in Grand Junction, then I might want to spend more time working a photo, but for the baseball games, getting through them and uploaded is the priority.

All of my recent baseball pics have been shot as JPEGs, how is PL at working with JPEG? The next game isn’t until the 15th, where I think I’ll go back to compressed RAW so I’ll be working with RAW rather than JPEGs in both PL and Capture One.

I don’t really organize the photos at all. With Lightroom, I’d just plug in my card reader, import to Lightroom, cull and hit the auto enhance, do a quick crop or level and then export them to my portable SSD. Then they’d be uploaded to my Pixieset page. File names aren’t important, the only REAL organizing I do is exporting them to a folder with names like, “Spuds vs Sodbusters - 6/4/24”. I just keep the original DSC002313 or whatever filenames.

I do have a 42" LG OLED monitor, so I hope I’m good on that end. I have an RTX 4080 16GB.

The thousands of photos I take are typically culled down to about 100-120 that I pick to upload. I rely heavily on the 30fps of my A1 to try and get well-timed shots, so I shoot a bunch of 15-30 image groups during the action.

Lighting at the baseball games is 100 natural from the sun for the first 6 or so innings, then the sun goes down and switches to artificial. I usually leave by the 8th inning because even with my 70-200 f/2.8 I’m pushing ISO to uncomfortable levels to keep frame rates acceptable.

I typically like to use shutter priority with auto ISO set to 6400 max, though once I start hitting about 5000 ISO, I consider it too dark and pack things up to go home.

The customer isn’t technically a customer since they’re not paying for anything - it’s a mutually beneficial agreement where I get to hone my craft and they get the pics to use for marketing and advertising. They’ve never given me a deadline, but when we can have 5 or 6 games in a row that I’m shooting, I don’t like to fall behind and try to get each game done and uploaded within 24hrs.

EDIT: Here’s my pixieset page with the pics I’ve taken this year.

https://sampsonphotography83.pixieset.com/spudsbaseball2024/

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Same here.
From what I’ve heard, DxO denoising is a bit faster than Adobe Denoise AI and overall quality is comparable within half a stop. PL restores colors quite well for very high ISO but I have no personal comparison with the latest LR Denoise AI in that respect. With next upgrades it may change slightly this way or the other, but they are more or less in the same class.

Judging from your profile, you may be happy with PhotoLab. You may start with default DeepPRIME settings, or decrease DP ‘Luminance’ from 40 to something like 20-30 (if results are too “waxy” to you) and perhaps increase ‘Force details’ to something like 30, or just stay at 0. You may safely use the same DP settings for ISO 100 and 6400 on A1. As a rule of thumb, use DP to get some grainy background and DP XD to get it smoother, whichever you prefer (but DP XD eats 2-3 times more GPU time). With DP XD you’ll also get slightly more microcontrast and rarely some unwanted artifacts but with your ISO range (up to 6400) on A1 you should be safe. Don’t use ClearVision for portraits, as it will amplify skin defects, but for remote photos small values (e.g. 5 or 10) may work in your case. I’m not sure, if you would find FilmPack or ViewPoint features useful, but give them a try (especially FP ‘fine contrast’ advanced adjustments, e.g. to get dark hair more “readable” without disturbing main tones too much). ‘Contrast’ and ‘Selective Tone’ work differently than in LR, so you’ll have to learn them anew. SmartLighting can automate much of your work, especially for high contrasts and over/underexposures (but don’t rely on face recognition for your type of photos). The default ‘Lens Softness Correction’ (=1.0 )is usually too high, so maybe use something lower (beware, negative values are in fact for some reason positive, but just slightly less so). I’m using PL7 for just 6 months, so don’t believe in everything I’ve written above, these are just hints.

Your pictures look good, perhaps too good for this kind of “customer” (usually they care only about who is on the pictures and what is the story or mood), so you probably could have risked slightly longer shutter times or higher ISO. With Z8, which is probably ± 1/3 stop A1, I use ISO limit of 8k or 12k (even with “dirty” lighting) and get results acceptable to friends, for the press I would go even further (25k pictures on D780/24Mpx looked acceptable, provided they were well exposed and lighting wasn’t crazy).

I work with RAWs only. For JPEGs you loose DxO denoising and lens softness correction (AFAIK), so no real advantage. Also check for Sony sRAW/mRAW - I think they are not supported by DPL. Personally, I use loselessly compressed 14-bit raws only (Nikon gear).

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My advice: Stay with Lightroom. The ToS issue is being overblown. And, frankly, there is no other option that competes with LrC’s masking options and generative remove tools when you need them. Also, as a digital asset manager, there is nothing even close.

PhotoLab Elite may be the best alternative. I’ve owned four or five versions of it. But DxO customer service is bad. They don’t act like they care whether you are a customer or not. And their pricing has been going up, discounts have been going down, and what constitutes a “new version” is getting pretty meager.

If you wanted to use Affinity Photo 2, you could combine it with Adobe Bridge for culling, keywording, and the like. Bridge is the one part of Creative Cloud which remains free and fully useable without a rental plan. Alternatively, you could use a program like Photo Mechanic to do your culling. Pros love Photo Mechanic for its speed and power, however the one annoying limitation that makes Bridge a better alternative for me is the inability to preview at 100%.

Good luck.

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Affinity is sold to Canva. Hope they will not change their licence model.

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Careful with that! PL does not support all RAW formats:
https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/sections/5860036247197-Supported-Cameras-Lenses-Formats

Also, some of the key functions are limited to RAW.

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@CybrSlydr note that isn’t because DxO are being mean, it’s because the real areas where PL shines is where it has access to all the data contained in a RAW file and have matched it to a camera/ lens combo they have labbed. That latter restriction is a long running bone of contention for many (working with files from unsupported hardware), but that’s where DxO have parked their lorry

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Be aware, that at this time, you cannot compare two photos side by side in PL.

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I use Dxo PL and Affinity Photo since years and this combination is super. Together with Nik Collection …

Wolf

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Normally, I write a company off when they’re acquired by someone else. But Canva has made a big effort to reassure Affinity customers. While not ruling out a subscription option, they have committed to always offering a reasonably priced perpetual license option. It’s part of their four-part pledge. I believe them.

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I’ve used Nik Collection since it was owned by an independent Nik. For over a decade I have carefully save my Nik Collection adjustments as Smart Filters in PSD files that would remain re-editable should I ever need to go back to review or adjust my settings. Then, at some point, DxO broke backward compatibility with the Nik Collection. Newer versions won’t open older smart filters, and when I asked DxO how to reinstall the older Nik versions to access my previous work, they basically told me to f**k off. They wouldn’t even allow me to reinstall older versions that I had paid for. “Your new license cancels out your old license.”

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Your NIK license was from the pre-Google buy out right?
That’s more than 12 years ago if I remember correctly.

I know then when upgrading a DxO license, it he old one is not kept but turned into a new one.

For DxO to honor the previous-previous sellers licenses might not fully be up to them but it can be what was specified in the contract when DxO bought the suite and code base from Google.
One could blame Google for simple giving it away and never bothered maintaining it during their ownership.

That said, the old and not maintained free Google version of NIK suite is still available and free to download, I believe?

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Professionally, I worked for a large global company. We were sold at least 5 times in 20 years. The buyers always said that it was only in the interests of the company, the employees and the customers. And that was never the case. The only interest buyers have is to increase their profit . And that was always to the detriment of employees and customers. :frowning: Let’s believe that Canva is different.

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Don’t think anyone will disagree with you there, which is why there is a monster thread on the Affinity forum lamenting Serif selling out to Canva.

Only time will tell if Canva are different / Only time will tell if the pledge means anything.

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That’s not correct, Required. I’ve owned a license for every Nik Collection edition going back to the very beginning of the software except DxO Nik Collection 3. I supported DxO when their first release of Nik (v1) was basically just bug fixes that should have been free. What I needed to install was DxO Nik Collection 4 (at least in this case).

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You’re right to be cynical. No argument there.

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I’m sorry if i was wrong.

Regarding the licenses DxO have for a long time had the process of upgrade them as in turning the old one into a new one.
That’s probably why they refused?
Or have I misunderstood that too?

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I did the same more than a year ago. I replaced ACR with Darktable (free), which is superior.
I use Darktable for all my raw editing. When you learn how to use it, you will not miss it.
When I need to do serious pixel replacements I use Affinity Photo 2 and tiffs.
As the noise reduction in Darktable is fair but not up to AI standard, I use DxO PureRaw 4.
The dng files from PureRaw 4 goes fine with Darktable. Don’t ever buy DxO PhotoLab.

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To be clear, I find DxO PL, DxO VP and DxO FP very good. It has an easy-to-use interface, professional features, and delivers excellent results. I’m willing to pay the price for that. What is frustrating is that DxO may be joining the companies with the Software as a Service (SaaS) strategy. I can understand some of the reasons for this, but as a user I don’t want to go down this path. That’s why I’m looking for alternatives for Linux. This will also solve the MS problem. I am currently testing DarkTable on Linux and it looks pretty good. By exchanging XML files, modifications from DxO are transferred to DarkTable. :slight_smile: . I am now testing the noise reduction. I also use Affinity in WIN. I am also looking for a replacement for Linux. Maybe I’ll use GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus. For Data Access Management (DAM) I use IMatch under WIN. However, I don’t have an idea for a Linux replacement for this yet.

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I think Darktable has a pretty good DAM but not to the level of IMatch.