Photoshop element alteratives?

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TN_Boy
Posts: 4689
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 11:51 am

Re: Photoshop element alteratives?

Post by TN_Boy »

mrb09 wrote: Sat Feb 01, 2025 10:48 am
lthenderson wrote: Sat Feb 01, 2025 7:50 am

How easy is Darktable to use over Lightroom? I had Lightroom for many years but when I upgraded my PC last year, though owning my disk with 16 digit serial number, Lightroom wouldn't let me install it on the new computer saying I had to buy their software again using the subscription model. I hate subscription based software for something I only occasionally use so have GIMP but find it very difficult to use. I'm still in the market for something non-subscription based and much easier for my evidently challenged brain to operate.
The concepts are similar, in that you have a "light table" as if you're looking at slides, and go into develop mode for editing. I tend to do pretty simple stuff, crop, change color balance, bump up shadows, occasionally a mask, and they all work.

When I switched, I found my backups were a mess from switching computers over time, and my lightroom catalogs were all out of sync. So I just imported all of my raw photos -- about 5000, a mix of NEF, ORM, CR2 and DNG formats, and created a new darktable catalog. I lost my lightroom flags, but I had all my 4 star+ photos saved as jpg's, so if I want the original, I correlate by date -- darktable lets me list by date of capture time. My plan is to keep the darktable import catalog as an archive, and only use it if I want to reprint something.

I sold my last mirrorless camera and just use my phone now, so I'll be using darktable for new photos with a new catalog. One nice thing about darktable is it just has a sidecar file along with a photo, so as long as you keep them together the catalog can't go out of sync.

I'm definitely reminded of the old days of finding a 4x6 photo and trying to track down the original negative for a larger reprint :)

I'm also switching my online photos from Smugmug to Flickr, since I'm grandfathered in an old Smugmug plan that no longer exists and the new subscriptions are quite a bit higher. That doesn't really have anything to do with darktable, but it is part of the changes I'm doing.
You can generate sidecar files in LR, if worried about catalog failures.

Does Darktable have advanced "AI" denoise like LR does now? The AI denoise Adobe introduced was a big deal to a lot of wildlife photographers, anyway, since we often wind up shooting at higher ISO levels than we would like. Before the AI denoise, there were (still are) things like Topaz denoise, which also often outperformed the older noise reduction features in Adobe products.

Negatives ... ah the old days. How I hated film :-).
mrb09
Posts: 1030
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2016 9:02 am

Re: Photoshop element alteratives?

Post by mrb09 »

TN_Boy wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 2:37 pm You can generate sidecar files in LR, if worried about catalog failures.
Yes, if I had thought of that *before* I corrupted my catalog :oops:
TN_Boy wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 2:37 pm Does Darktable have advanced "AI" denoise like LR does now? The AI denoise Adobe introduced was a big deal to a lot of wildlife photographers, anyway, since we often wind up shooting at higher ISO levels than we would like. Before the AI denoise, there were (still are) things like Topaz denoise, which also often outperformed the older noise reduction features in Adobe products.
I didn't see one. I did use the LR denoise with GPU assist, I had a bunch of images shot at ISO 4000+ that it cleaned up more than I expected.

If I was still shooting a lot with a full frame DSLR or mirrorless, I probably would have kept Lightroom, but I don't even shoot raw images any more, I just use the darkroom sort and compare and do a bit of adjustment on jpg's. If I really really need to reprocess any old raw files, I'll probably use something like DxO.
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gavinsiu
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Joined: Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:42 am

Re: Photoshop element alteratives?

Post by gavinsiu »

Ok, I talked a bit with my wife and got her use cases. Majority of the time she is just removing the background. Apparently, she has to keep the picture of the specimen unaltered, but remove the background. This doesn't seemed like it would be worth getting Affinity or Photoshop for. May be something like Photopea would be sufficient? I also remember my kids use a product call Krita, but I am not sure that's usable in this use case.
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PottedPlant
Posts: 557
Joined: Tue May 30, 2023 11:30 am

Re: Photoshop element alteratives?

Post by PottedPlant »

gavinsiu wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:13 pm Ok, I talked a bit with my wife and got her use cases. Majority of the time she is just removing the background.
Pixelmator.
Mashed or Baked Potatoes?
hunoraut
Posts: 2309
Joined: Sun May 31, 2020 11:39 am

Re: Photoshop element alteratives?

Post by hunoraut »

gavinsiu wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:13 pm Ok, I talked a bit with my wife and got her use cases. Majority of the time she is just removing the background. Apparently, she has to keep the picture of the specimen unaltered, but remove the background. This doesn't seemed like it would be worth getting Affinity or Photoshop for. May be something like Photopea would be sufficient? I also remember my kids use a product call Krita, but I am not sure that's usable in this use case.
Photopea has Photoshop's Content Aware Fill, which is super capable.

That said, like Photoshop, it's an image editor software, not a catalog management tool. If you don't have heavy editing needs, the major providers like Google, Apple, and Samsung have AI-removers in their standard Photo app which is much easier to use.
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