[vladvasiliu]

> For hobby photography do yourself a favor and skip this dark pattern peddler.

Meh. It depends on how you view your photography.

I'm a Sunday photographer. Never made a dime from my work, and I don't look to. I just do it because I enjoy it. I particularly enjoy that I can use it as an excuse to move my ass away from my computer, walk around town to grab shots, etc.

I like editing my photos, but the editing is not why I take photos. I don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of time to learn a new tool. It's a hobby, and the software is only an accessory to it. If I have to spend hours to learn a new tool in front of my computer, it defeats the purpose.

I tried Darktable, and got okish results with it, but it's a pain to use. It doesn't have any serious noise reduction, and since I can't be bothered to lug around anything heavier than a m4/3 body with an f/4 lense, it's something I need, because I mainly shoot at night half the year.

I've looked at alternatives like capture one, but unless you intend to not upgrade your software for at least 3-4 years, they're not cheaper, even though they're not subscription based. You also have to cough up all the money upfront. And you get no Photoshop, either, which I use in addition to LR.

Now, I don't love lightroom. I have no idea wtf it lags when I open and close panels on a pretty hefty desktop. But boy, do I love the time I gain with "ai" masking, noise reduction and object removal.

All in all, it's just not expensive enough to make it worth my while to change to a different software and also lose all my catalog history, just to cough up the same amount of cash in the end.

Now, if someone came up with an actual equivalent that ran on Linux, so I didn't have to have a dedicated Windows box just for this, I'd line right up with my money ready.

[dmbche]

I think Resolve just released a lightroom equivalent didn't they?

Edit0: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/davinciresolve/...

Yeah and seems the only limitation you get is no GPU acceleration with the free tier. I'd give that a spin I like resolve much better than premiere for video and it has AI integration as well

[vladvasiliu]

Yeah, I saw the thread on HN the other day, and was genuinely intrigued. But according to the reviews I’ve seen, the workflow is fairly different. I have 0 experience editing video, so picking up a tool with a completely different approach isn’t exactly appealing, but maybe I’m missing something.

[dmbche]

I'm biased as I have been editing video (including color, exposition, curves and luts) with Resolve for a while (and have edited pictures in their color editor before because I really like their workflow), but for what it's worth I would give it maybe one (1) hour of trying out yourself, you might be very pleased ( or you're welcome to curse me for wasting an hour of your time).

If you are pleased indeed, you might just put 120$ in your pocket rather than adobe's this year. Who'd say no to that?

Have a good one

[vladvasiliu]

Just downloaded it to take it for a spin. First off, it doesn't support Olympus raw files, but, fortunately, I had some DNG lying around, which did work. However, it expects to pick from a list of raw formats. All seem to work, but it's not immediately clear what the difference is.

The settings are a bit daunting at first; some are what you expect in a regular photo editor, and others are... weird for me. Like, what's "lift" and where are my white and black sliders?

Color tools seem to be interesting, but there seem to be multiple places where you select color spaces, and all defaults seem to be video-centric (which I guess isn't unexpected, but it just means you have to know to go hunt for them). There's also a dedicated "color" page, which I think is what all the fuss is about, but if I switch to it, my photo disappears and I'm presented with a video timeline...

I also haven't found any trace of masking, and noise reduction seems to be a paid feature, so in my case the free version wouldn't do...

All in all, I want to like it, especially since it runs on Linux, and will probably continue to check it out from time to time, even though I'd have to convert the raws to dngs beforehand.