I'm on the brink of getting a Lr/Ps subscription

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Having used GIMP for years, and having looked at RT and its local adjustment tools, I’m strongly considering getting an Lr/Ps subscription now.

To my (slight) shame, the typically corporate focus on user-friendliness and convenience is what does it for me. I so want to try my hand at tools like AI-assisted selection and adjustment layers. I’ve seen nothing in the FLOSS-world that could match tools like that and I feel like I’m actually missing out never having tried editing my photos with those powerful tools.

The reason I’m posting here is that it also feels like a betrayal of my “actual” anti-corporate attitude, which I’m evidently far less principled about than I’d like to believe. Please believe me, I’m fully aware of the powerful philosophy behind FLOSS, and I’m aware that it makes sense, that it is not just important but invaluable to the digital future of this world, and I admire everyone who contributes to the wonderful manifold of FLOSS projects on any level. But… it’s like veganism or going to the gym. Yeah, they are right on every level, from morals to health. But I just can’t do it.

This is the same movement that I’ve gone through again and again e.g. with Linux (tried it several times for years each time, always ended up back in Microsoft’s cold embrace) and LibreOffice (same and same). Maybe I just need to grow up, be honest with myself and own up to the fact that I prefer corporate software applications for all the dumb and obvious reasons that those corporations consciously employ in order to lure in people like me.

I just keep getting frustrated with looking at the engine instead of having a great steering wheel. I know that this places me in a semi-digitally-literate underclass. I’m a haptically-oriented person (as a professional social worker in elderly care, I should be). A good and stable GUI with complex mouse-controlled input options is made for people like me. I want to use my mouse. To me personally, the keyboard is there to provide additional input when the mouse isn’t enough. I’m not a programmer, so it’s only when I’m writing text like right now that I really use the keyboard.

Even about this, I know that I’m categorically wrong, not just about FLOSS but even and especially with regard to professional corporate software, where a large part of the steep learning curve consists of rote memorization of keyboard shortcuts. But they still manage to reel me in because using the mouse for selection is the at-face-value appeal of Lr/Ps, to me at least. Plus those adjustment layers. I just need those in my life too.

I know that many or most here cannot fundamentally relate to what I’m saying, because most of you are clearly more comfortable with FLOSS than I’m ever getting. I’m not being superior here, to the contrary: it feels rather like giving up yet again. But I have tried, and I know that I just don’t have the brain/time to really wrap my mind around FLOSS.

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Gotta ask… Have you tried darktable? Because I recently went they other way. I’m a working professional and had been using Lightroom since its first release. Getting results I was happy with in darktable took me about two years of on and off fiddling on my home Linux computer though… One day I noticed on my work MacBook Pro that I was feeling constrained by Lightroom and I installed darktable on that machine too. Have been almost 100% darktable since that day. I use Krita for some after work at home, but at work I still fire up Photoshop to do some pixel edits. The lack of adjustment layers in GIMP I can not live with. Krita is the only sane FOSS replacement for Photoshop as I see it.

darktable is not perfect. I mainly miss support for DCPs (especially the dual illuminant ones). Creating camera profiles for every single lighting situation is not tenable. I also sorely miss a way to shift several colors in one module. The scene referred way to work around that now is to use 9 simultaneous color balance rgb modules (!). Aurelien started working on a color eq, but it may have been abandoned. I just love darktable’s masking tools though! And sigmoid really made in impact for me.

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It’s a pity that your first steps with FLOSS weren’t as successful as you would have liked. Since my experience was exactly the opposite, I was and still am Microsoft based, had an LR/Ps subscription and was extremely frustrated with the constraints and limitations, it seemed like a revelation to see what could be possible with RT even without keyboard shortcuts.

But what’s wrong with being flexible? I don’t think you have to commit to one world and live in it forever. Just use the tools that will get you the most, regardless of whether FLOSS or paid. The most important thing is to have fun and be happy with the results. With this in mind, I wish you lots of fun and success, maybe one day it will drive you back to this crazy world. :wink:

greetings

Martin

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I second @mikae1’s suggestion about trying Darktable.

But if in the end you find that some commercial software works better for you, just go for it.

Principles are important, but so is the joy of photography. If developing images is a chore with your current environment (for whatever reason), then it will diminish the pleasure you derive from taking photos, so fix that.

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You should not apologize here. Use whatever is (or seems) best for you. FOSS is not a religion (for most).
Using non-FOSS is not as bad as eating meat :innocent:.

For me the GIMP is a good and sufficient alternative to photoshop which I used for years before. Being now a Linux user, the choices of non-FOSS graphics software are also limited. darktable however, for me is more than a substitute for lightroom and I don’t want to miss it!

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To start with I certainly don’t think you should be ashamed/guilty or anything like that. After all, all this stuff is, when it come down to it, just tools to make other stuff with.

And I’m a great believer in using the tools that suit one, and that make the task the most enjoyable.
And if that’s commercial software, why not?

I tried Lr a while back, just to see if I felt I was missing out, and found that for my style of shooting and processing it didn’t offer enough advantages to outweigh many things that I saw as downsides, including the fact I like the principle of open source (like you).

But that was just for my specific needs, and if you’d benefit from Lr, why not?
You can always keep RT or DT installed as well if you want to!

As an example…
I use Google for my emails - despite the fact that I know they compute all my stuff into data, sell it, and all the rest of it… which I’m fundamentally against. But I just don’t have the energy or interest to be honest to use something else less convenient.
Dunno if that’s relevant!

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Don’t beat yourself, especially don’t beat yourself into using software that does not suit!

I detest MS and its world. I’ve had an MS-free house for over a decade.

But I’m not religious about FOSS and don’t expect anyone to be. In my book, the best day will be when I see all those packages available for Windows, Mac and Linux. And, although I have ben very spoilt by almost-zero software cost for a decade, I am not fundamentally (fundamentalist? :wink: ) opposed to paying for it.

Here’s where I stand. I too am so impressed by what I see in the de-noising applications now available. I’d be running one or more right now if it was not such a hurdle to install a copy of Windows on a machine which is all Linux/ext4 and has secure-boot etc turned off because its discs were inherited from a previous motherboard which died. I’ve even tried Virtual box, but… svga graphics.

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Yeah. Totally agree :slight_smile:
Personally, I work with RawTherapee but I have also bought a licence of DXO Photolab

Yesterday, I was watching a video tutorial, on YouTube, by Andy Astbury [1].
He has recorded a bunch of videos regarding RawTherapee but recently he is covering darktable as well.

Here is what Andy wrote, on YouTube, in a comment, as regards the different softwares:
"The two processors are totally different from the ground up. Raw Therapee has good and easy colour management that suits me; I find CM more obtuse in DT. I like the awesome capture sharpening in RT, and DT has NONE! But RT is very limited in terms of masking, and does not allow for multiple module iterations, so DT beats RT there - and it’s a very severe beating!
RT has great export interfaces with most rips such as Photoshop, DT has none - which is a major flaw.
RT can work with .dcp camera profiles, DT cannot - another major flaw.
But DT has Filmic, Sigmoid and the Tone Mapper and Colour Balance modules - RT has nothing close.
RT is very good at highlight RECOVERY - way better than Lightroom for instance - but for highlight RECONSTRUCTION DT wins hands down. (there is a difference, as I explained in another video).
Both of them kick seven bells out of Lightroom as a raw processor in general, but Lightroom kills both of them in terms of speed, ease of use, digital asset management AND NOISE REDUCTION.

So, which one is best? Don’t ask me…I can’t answer. I use all three, and just regard them as different tools for different jobs"

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cns-7tWEdSI

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I can closely relate to about 80% of what you’ve written, been there myself at times (and still go back from time to time). I’m a FLOSS advocate (although not zealot) but I recognize there’s good and bad on all sides of that topic. My temptation certainly isn’t an indication of a quality shortage in FLOSS, but more about the way I fit in or not.

I’ve been tempted to try Lr but haven’t so far mostly because the quantity and quality of what I shoot doesn’t justify it. Also my computer, although only 18 months old, may not be good enough for it. It’s barely sufficient for occasional editing with ART.

As you implied, things like AI features, advanced content aware fill, (apparently?) easier color grading, stack alignment and such are very interesting.

But I would definitely feel like I needed to perform some kind of “FLOSS penance” if I went to the Adobe dark side… and not because of the community but just internally to myself.

So, I’ve never made the jump. :grin: But it’s been tempting at times, in a kind of guilty manner.

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I’m subscribed to Andy’s channel but didn’t see this particular comment. However it describes the situation rather nicely, AFAICT.

One thing I miss in all FOSS raw editors is adjustment brush based making. ART has brush masks, which I frequently use to touch up parametric or color similarity masks. But the brushes are hard edged, so I can’t use them to draw a mask in most cases, unless I’m lucky and the nature of the image will allow edge-aware feathering to properly soften them. But to be fair, as far as know Lr doesn’t have edge-aware feathering, which I would miss.

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I must be misunderstanding your requirements, but Darktable has masks you can draw (with a tablet etc), and then blur/feather:

brush
brush1186×565 365 KB

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Yes you can draw “soft” vector masks, which are great and I’d not want to give them up (I’ve used them more than a few times). But that’s not the same as being able to simply brush on a given adjustment.

In general it’s the same as in any other graphics software – the vector approach is more editable and (by some debatable metric) more powerful, but the “bitmap” / brush approach is more immediate and intuitive. So the responsibility is to get the brush masks right the first time but the advantage is it’s less effort if you do.

I see both as equal and complementary, but neither is a replacement for the other.

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Well, both DT and RT are open-source. Maybe someone should fork and combine them, and then we’d have the best of both? Granted, it would be a beast of an app — but no one could complain about any lack of features! ‘DarkTherapee’ — it has quite a nice ring to it, don’t you think? :wink:

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I have, but barely. I remember that earlier this year when I first started shooting RAW and was reading up on processing software, many comments I came across said something to the effect that “Darktable is easier for beginners, but RawTherapee is overall more powerful.” Well my experience is just the opposite (AFAICT). RT is certainly way, way more powerful than what I can do with it after half a year, but it never felt like a dauntingly steep learning curve. With DT, it does.

I believe that. And you’re a professional who already had general experience with image processing prior to trying DT (I don’t). That also means that you probably had a good handle on the purely aesthetic aspects of editing (I don’t, not really), and it still took you two years to feel like you mastered DT. I’ll keep it installed and will certainly revisit it occasionally, but I feel like I would have to make learning DT my life’s mission in order to ever get anywhere with it.

I agree, and apparently Adobe knows it too, seeing as they don’t make their subscriptions monthly but annual. Probably because it would be too easy for people to try it for a month whenever they feel like it, and then go back to whatever else they’re using.

I certainly will.

Yes, I can relate very much.

That is a great comment, thanks for bringing it to our attention! I can even speak to a couple of points he makes, e.g. that DT is better at highlight reconstruction than RT. I can attest to that, at least in the sense that I see the DT regulars here achieving results on highlight reconstruction that I can never come close to matching in RT.

Yes I feel the same. Well, they don’t call the corporate digital world “the Dark Side” for nothing.

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@ogven Re darktable: take a look at this: Darktable – One Camera One Lens

MfG
Claes in Lund, Schweden

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I’d personally take what Andy says about darktable with a huge grain of salt. In the past he’s been dismissive, rude, and refused to learn the nuances of the software.

In fact his statements here are wrong:

There is a capture sharpening preset in the Diffuse or Sharpen module. It works well

Darktable has a lua script to integrate external tooling. There are a number of lua scripts for things like gimp, enfuse, hdrmerge, etc.

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First of all, thanks for not being one of those guys that ragequits the FOSS room with ignorant remarks and guns blazing. It’s refreshing.

As someone who has very little free time for photo editing, I understand the attraction of an easy-to-use interface. In my case, I have gradually built up some sense of how to get what I want out of the various tools in DT/RT/ART, while I have zero experience with Lr/Ps. Making the move you are making would be jumping into foreign territory for me.

Good luck with your Lr/Ps experience, and if you reconsider your move, you’re more than welcome back here.

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You can do that since darktable 4.4 too. @dterrahe has introduced a new “sum” operator that is set for the brush when used in the continue mode. You can use this nicely with mask refinement:

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No need to apologize if you can afford paying a subscription and the paid product offers what you want. However, for me I have walked away from Lightroom because I prefer the controls and localized adjustments with drawn and parametric masks in darktable. Darktable is like a Lamborghini sports car and to me Lightroom is like an auto sedan. Lightroom you move a few sliders and adjustments are done. The ease of LR is its beauty. But for me the infinite control and options of darktable is its beauty. Being able to use multiple instances of modules in darktable bears some resemblance to the advantage of adjustments layers in photoshop.

I looked closely at Rawtherapee and darktable. My initial impression was that the GUI of Rawtherapee was more intuitive, but the superior ability of localized adjustments in darktable using a variety of powerful masks and multiple instances of modules lured me away from both LR and Rawtherapee.

In the spirit of honesty I must confess that I am biased against using AI in my photo editing as I want to be the artist in control of the finished look and AI could compromise that for me. However, if AI selection and corrections suits your needs and a paid product offers these then make no apologies and get the subscription. Whatever increases your enjoyment of photography and life.

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Hmmm… I’ll have to check that out when I’m at my computer (on my phone now).

Thanks!

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