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I have been a fan of Adobe Lightroom for years. It has excellent apps on mobile and for my laptop. Lightroom helped me bring those photos to life. You read that right. Photography is a competitive space. There are tons of good software out in the market, which helps us jazz up our photos.

I remember starting my photography journey by touching up my RAW photos on Photoshop with the help of beautiful presets I bought from places like Creative Market. The process was easy. Open up a RAW photo, experiment with presets until I was satisfied and finish off with some minor touches.

Some of the best selling stock photos on my Creative Market shop came from this process:. The problem with this approach was that I became dependent on the collection of presets I had at that time. Presets are great and can save you a ton of time. Lightroom is like a very newbie-friendly subset of Photoshop, which makes editing photos a breeze.

I was already subscribed to the Creative Cloud Photography Pack , which got me access to both Lightroom and Photoshop. I started editing my photos with Lightroom. The friend who recommended Lightroom to me, suggested I give Pixelmator Pro a shot. Banking on the fact that his recommendations are usually solid, I downloaded the trial copy of Pixelmator Pro and took it for a test drive. I was amazed at how well this tool was built. Lightroom is great for retouching and colour grading photos.

However, when it comes to tweaking stuff, we need to import a half-edited photo into Photoshop to finish the job. I used to spend way less time editing photos in Lightroom than in Photoshop. Pixelmator Pro shines in this department by providing both super easy ML-driven retouching tools and also advanced photo manipulation capabilities like Photoshop. Unlike Lightroom, where you select an area using the radial tool or the linear gradient tool and then apply adjustments to the area, Pixelmator Pro allows local adjustments in two ways:.

The guys behind Pixelmator Pro made a fantastic video on how to use all the retouching tools in the app. This feature gives me a great starting point for my editing workflow. After the initial automated adjustments are made, I can continue from where Pixelmator Pro left off and add some finishing touches of my own.

Although it works on a majority of photos, for some of my photos I prefer starting from scratch on my own. This is a life-saver when it comes to taking colour grading inspirations from other awesome photos. Pixelmator Pro can automatically apply colour adjustments based on a reference photo that I choose. For example, see this:. However, not every photographer shares their presets. This feature allows me to harness colour grading from every photo present on the internet.

Adobe Lightroom is an insanely popular photo editing software. With popularity, comes a boatload of tutorials and courses. Therefore, right now:. One of the impressive aspects of using Lightroom was that I could watch tons of how-to videos on YouTube and get better at my photography game. Although there are a couple of official tutorials from the Pixelmator team, the number is meagre. Photo editing and photography, in general, is based on core concepts which can be applied to any tool regardless of how they are structured.

I was able to apply most of my photo editing knowledge from Lightroom to Pixelmator Pro almost immediately. This tiny little UX problem adds some manual effort for every photo I edit. Not a good thing to have. The album feature helped get a snapshot of all my processed photos in the app and anything that I had queued up for processing.

If your photography workflow is anything like mine, then absolutely yes. One lifetime copy of Pixelmator Pro on macOS is worth just four months of Lightroom subscription payment. More on this topic. Keep switching your system theme based on the time of the day?

Here’s how to keep your wallpaper synced. Things 3 is a beautiful to-do list app. But, when it comes to flexibility, Todoist is miles ahead. Some of the best selling stock photos on my Creative Market shop came from this process: One of my best selling photos on Creative Market.

That is when one of my friends introduced Lightroom to me. The main selling point was that it was powerful, like Photoshop but with less work to do. Then, my photos started to look this these: One of my photos edited in Lightroom. Lightroom made it easy and fun to apply those retouches. But, the problem was: I was neither shooting nor editing photos very often This meant, I had to pay for Lightroom every month to have it parked on my laptop. I paid for over a year where I maybe used Lightroom for about times.

With Pixelmator Pro, I like: How I can have the best of both worlds in a single app Lightroom is great for retouching and colour grading photos. Now, you might think: Why not edit the photo directly in Photoshop?

For example, check out this awesome: Quick selection tool in Pixelmator Pro I love how cool the quick selection tool works in Pixelmator Pro. Also, this tool is super fun to use. Just look at that cool mouse hover effect. One of my most used tools in Lightroom was to apply local adjustments to a photo. Selecting area to retouch: Using a selection tool like the quick selection tool I talked about, I can select an area and apply adjustments to that area.

This technique offers fine controls over the selected area, pretty much like Lightroom. Some of the ML-driven features I enjoy are: ML enhance This feature gives me a great starting point for my editing workflow. Apart from this, I also love the: ML Match Colours feature This is a life-saver when it comes to taking colour grading inspirations from other awesome photos.

For example, see this: Automated colour grading using ML match colours. Some might argue that presets do a better job than this. But, I treat this feature as a starting point and then calibrate accordingly to add my touch. That said: I do miss a couple of things about Lightroom Adobe Lightroom is an insanely popular photo editing software. I shoot and edit photos in my free time as a hobby. For some features like the local adjustments, I got used to the new way in a couple of days.

I have to add each adjustment control to my images like this manually: Adding a new colour adjustment in Pixelmator Pro. Now, the question is: Whether moving to Pixelmator Pro is a good idea If your photography workflow is anything like mine, then absolutely yes.

Mainly, for these two reasons: All-in-one app for all photo editing needs One time payment One lifetime copy of Pixelmator Pro on macOS is worth just four months of Lightroom subscription payment. Choose what works best for you. Join the Club. Here’s a cautionary tale.

Apple Photos/Pixelmator vs Lightroom/Phot… – Apple Community.Review: Pixelmator Photo for iOS. A Lightroom alternative?

Tue Mar 22, pm I did install it and impressed with it. That will usually work. But I do like the program and hope between Apple and the Raw Power developers they get it straightened out. I don’t know if you have read this article of Nik Bhatt, which explains in great detail the behaviour. When I start working on a RAW stored in Apple Photo’s I always start developing all lighting aspects in the App or extension that I see fit for that picture, sometimes it’s just Apple-photo’s, more often I am starting to us Pixelmator, as I can continue all other types of edits.

As long as you afterwards don’t do anything in Photos or an other extension, you can reopen and continue editing were you left. When I am in doubt I simple make a copy of that picture in Apple-photo’s, go back to the original of the copy you can do that and start with another extension, to see if I get better results.

HtH Ben. Lightroom Mobile, I miss a few additional features like the guided perspective correction mode in Lightroom or the ability to adjust the aspect of the corrected photo. If you don’t need the aforementioned Lightroom features, you may want to supplement Pixelmator Photo with SKRWT app, an excellent app for perspective correction on iPhone. A healing brush is a tool to remove smaller objects and imperfections from a photo.

To use the healing brush, you just paint over the object you’d like to remove, and Pixelmator Photo will do the rest. While the healing brush in Pixelmator Photo works well according to a few tests, I miss some Touch Retouch features, such as the clone brush’s various follow settings. Touch Retouch is an app for retouching that I’ve used for years.

To read more about this app, please head over to the Touch Retouch Review. In September , the Pixelmator team released a new version of Pixelmator Photo that caught my attention. It has a new feature called ML super-resolution. It’s an AI-based algorithm that will increase the overall resolution of any photo. I got a resolution of 43 megapixels from a megapixel photo shot on iPhone 11 Pro. That’s just awesome. ML super Resolution increased these photos’ resolution to almost 7 megapixels without any loss of detail.

I was blown away by the results. Here’s a screenshot of one of the photos I’m talking about:. And here’s a before and after screenshot of the resolution of a photo taken with the iPhone 11 Pro. This list will take you through 14 of the most popular free Lightroom alternatives and compare them to popular Adobe software. Apple Photos is automatically installed on all Mac computers, and it can be set up to sync with your other Apple devices via iCloud.

This is great for people who use all Apple products. Apple Photos offers a simple, streamlined way to organize and edit your photos all from one application. It supports RAW files and offers a handful of tools for simple editing, such as levels, curves, and selective color.

You can also use it to create photo books , greeting cards, calendars, and more. Where it falls short of Lightroom is in its inability to edit certain parts of an image.

Photo editing has never been easier than it is with Luminar AI, which offers a 7-days free trial. This program is packed full of awesome Artificial Intelligence-powered filters that allow you to edit photos in mere seconds.

Accent AI, for example, analyzes a photo and determines the best overall edits. In no time at all, it transforms your shot into a fantastic work of art. Luminar makes edits automatically while giving you as much control as you like. You can adjust contrast, exposure, temperature, and clarity. Furthermore, Luminar contains a myriad of presets and image retouching tools.

This combination of features makes Luminar one of the best Lightroom alternatives available to try. GIMP is an open-source raster graphics editor. GIMP looks and feels a lot like Photoshop and offers a lot of the same tools. It can even read. Like Photos and Lightroom, Windows 10 Photos acts as both an image library and editing program. You can flag, rate, caption, and tag your images in Windows 10 Photos, making it easy to sort through large batches of photos. This software offers a handful of filters as well as an instant fix button that improves color, brightness, and contrast.

NET is free and easy-to-use photo manipulation software. The tools in Paint. NET are straightforward and simple to understand.

This free Lightroom alternative is a good choice for those looking for basic image manipulation on Windows without any frills. It also happens to be one of the only free image editors that doubles as a space to store and organize your photos. You can add tags to images, rate them, organize them into folders, and mark them by color. Darktable also offers non-destructive editing, allowing you to convert back to your original image quickly and easily.

While the tools offered are similar to those in Lightroom, it does fall short in its ability to handle professional color manipulation. Raw Therapee is completely free open-source software that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It also offers non-destructive editing, meaning the original file can be brought back with a simple click.

While it does offer a way to rate, color tag, and sort images manually, the library is lacking in comparison to Lightroom. This software is best for simple photo editing and basic color correction. PhotoScape X is a free image editor for Mac and Windows. The process was easy. Open up a RAW photo, experiment with presets until I was satisfied and finish off with some minor touches. Some of the best selling stock photos on my Creative Market shop came from this process:.

The problem with this approach was that I became dependent on the collection of presets I had at that time. Presets are great and can save you a ton of time. Lightroom is like a very newbie-friendly subset of Photoshop, which makes editing photos a breeze. I was already subscribed to the Creative Cloud Photography Pack , which got me access to both Lightroom and Photoshop. I started editing my photos with Lightroom. The friend who recommended Lightroom to me, suggested I give Pixelmator Pro a shot.

Banking on the fact that his recommendations are usually solid, I downloaded the trial copy of Pixelmator Pro and took it for a test drive. I was amazed at how well this tool was built. Lightroom is great for retouching and colour grading photos. However, when it comes to tweaking stuff, we need to import a half-edited photo into Photoshop to finish the job.

I used to spend way less time editing photos in Lightroom than in Photoshop. Pixelmator Pro shines in this department by providing both super easy ML-driven retouching tools and also advanced photo manipulation capabilities like Photoshop.

The Cloud version of LR has that, and some folks pay more to get both, but even at that it’s a complicated workflow. I don’t mind the extra work, but it is more work and more complex. Photoshop is an immense tool. Photoshop Elements is a reduced version geared to the home and largely photographic user. That might be worth exploring. If you’re getting into Raw processing seriously, then DxO Photolab might be worth checking out.

Not an organiser but a very good processor. On the other hand, if you want to go beyond just processing but experiment with more radical changes to your photos and the look of them, then check out things like the NIK collection or Exposure x7.