[jknecht]

I will also add that, for photographers, there is bundle from Adobe that I consider to be a tremendous value. For about $10/month (where I live, it's easy to spend more than that on a single drink in a bar), I get access to both LightRoom and Photoshop. I've tried open source alternatives, and they are good, but none of them are necessarily better than the Adobe product.

I hate the fact that I am paying for yet another subscription, but in this case, over the course of 5 years, I am just barely paying the retail price of the old CD-based product. So (a) I don't feel like I'm being fleeced, and (b) I get to spread the payments out without really paying more.

Every time I've tried moving into the world of FOSS photography, I've wasted dozens of hours trying to figure out how to do relatively simple things, modifying and tweaking configurations, or completely removing and reinstalling because an update broke something that should have never broken. I work in software, so I'm not exactly a dummy on this stuff; and I know that sometimes that's just part of the deal - especially in a world where you get what you pay for.

In the end, I had to decide whether I wanted my hobby time to be focused on working with my photos or working with my software. And that is why I happily pay.

[igouy]

> whether I wanted my hobby time to be focused on working with my photos or working with my software.

Exactly.

I aggressively delete most images as-soon-as they are on the file system. (Is this image worth my time?) So less of an image management problem.

I use ~5% of what RawTherapee provides, because I no longer struggle to make OK pictures from flawed images. Instead I make pictures I like from OK images.

[sumoboy]

On the photography forums it's hilarious to see people spend $5k-$10k on camera gear and whine about spending $10/mo because it's too expensive. Time is money like everything else and I'm sure a ton of time was spent getting this all together to save how much?

[bpye]

I've tried open source photo editing before, and honestly, the editing experience is pretty good. I've always struggled to match Lightroom for library management however, even if Lightroom doesn't deal with my network drive properly (it always thinks it's out of sync). And so, like you, I've always ended up going back to Adobe's photography plan.

I would really love to use open source tools instead, the network drive bug is very annoying and not being able to run on Linux is pretty unfortunate. The overall process just ends up being quicker with Lightroom than Darktable or RawTherapee though :(