[bbatha]

For all the potshots about AI, this update is huge even if you take away the AI features. They basically added lightroom to this release. There's some polish before you'd want to change your subscription, but its really tempting. It may be the best photo management/editor on linux. Yes, I know about darktable and rawtherapee and I stand by what I said. They also added a ton of motion graphics stuff which from the beta seem to be enough to undercut a lot of basic uses of after effects out. The later two features are in the free release as well!

[BuildTheRobots]

> ...before you'd want to change your subscription...

For anyone not in the know, Resolve has an exceptionally capable and feature rich free version. A lot of the AI features (and >4k editing) are locked to the Studio licence which is a one-time payment, but works simultaneously on two computers (including different OS's) and allows upgrades across major versions.

I spent less than $300 on it a decade ago and my licence works fine on new v21 released this week. My least-regretted software purchase in 3 decades.

[switchbak]

I was a lightroom user for almost 20 years, and their licensing ridiculousness was enough for me to: - change up my workflow, avoiding raw so I can use simpler editing processes - do way less editing - take way fewer photos

It sucks, but I just can't justify their insane pricing scheme. I've been looking for Linux-capable tools for a while, and Darktable / Rawtherapee are a long way from what I'm after. What you describe sounds like a dream.

[Arainach]

This seems like an overreaction that punishes you more than Adobe. There are a number of other tools - until fairly recently Capture One offered perpetual licensing, for instance. Giving up RAW to spite Adobe is like being angry at Microsoft Office subscription pricing and saying you'll abandon word processors and just use a typewriter instead.

[switchbak]

I don't have spite for Adobe, that seems like a projection on your part. But I can't justify the purchase, and have adapted the way I take photos as part of that.

It's more like finding the subscription for a CAD program too expensive, and swapping to something more primitive instead. If that offends you, I think you gotta have a long hard look in a mirror some time.

[Arainach]

The point is that there are many options, at many different price points including free, that don't involve giving up 95% of the data your camera sensor provides and don't lock you into getting the exposure perfectly right the first time or else.

FastRawViewer, DxO, Affinity, Darktable, Capture One. Those are just the ones I personally have installed. There's also RawTherapee, a number of camera OEM-specific tools, and more.

[fooblaster]

I looked to see if any of these tools support the hdr gain map export that Lightroom supports, and of course, absolutely none of them do. I can't use these.

[edb_123]

Back when Adobe upended their perpetual licensing, Capture One was touted as _the_ alternative and I gave it a try since my new Sony camera's RAW format wasn't supported by the last perpetual-license Lightroom version anyway. And man, coming from Lightroom, Capture One was one of the most horrendous usability experiences I have ever had in a creative tool. Even after keeping on trying for a long time, I could absolutely not find a workflow that worked for me and that wasn't filled with obstacles, pains, slowness, inexplicable UI design choices and illogical workflows that totally broke the creative process. It made me miss and appreciate Lightroom so much. But as a photo hobbyist I couldn't justify Adobe's then-new licensing model anyway and the hobby just dwindled away. I ended up finding other paths to express my creative side instead.

If Capture One still is like this, I wouldn't really be surprised if there's truth to the other comment here claiming that their current owners are trying to offload them.

[lofaszvanitt]

Well, C1 is still the best. But you need two monitors for a smooth experience. Image on one, tools on another. And it's a breeze. Lightroom is like trying to swim in a pool of mud with tin ankle bracers :D.

[vr46]

Capture One is a shitshow, however, and their new owner is actively trying to offload them, so a risk.

[bigbuppo]

Capture One still offers a perpetual license for US$349... it's the option down at the bottom, of course. And they still do discounted upgrade pricing on that, too.

[bzzzt]

They didn't do that last time I looked. You can only trade in your perpetual license for a discounted 'upgrade' to the subscription version.

[bigbuppo]

Like all software companies that go down the subscription hole, they do their best to hide it. You literally have to login and click on a bunch of things to get to that point.

And I'm sure this will all change when the new vulture capital fund that snaps it up tries to extract every last microcent of "value" from the brand.

I should also note I jumped ship to DxO as soon as C1 started going down the subscription hole. And frankly, I'm kind of glad they're struggling. I guess they thought they were going to replicate Adobe's "success" with subscriptions without first being a near-monopoly.

[lofaszvanitt]

Lightroom is terrible, was terrible. Use Capture One.

[qmr]

Absurd to let them affect you so. There are powerful alternatives many of them open source.

[switchbak]

Absurd? What's with you folks and your strongly charged language?

Please recommend these "powerful alternatives", because I have explored the space and found nothing that replaces Lightroom in a way that I find acceptable. Please omit Darktable and Rawtherapee as I've already evaluated those.

[Melatonic]

Lightroom mobile (only) is pretty cheap (still a subscription obviously) and does RAW. Depending on your workflow and device its not bad.

[larusso]

I think non native speakers may not have a good feeling how charged a word or phrase is.

In their defense you only spoke about dropping your raw workflow for something simpler not that you looked for a special HDR RAW support.

I know it’s Apple and may not what you look for but does Photomator tick these boxes?

[switchbak]

Yeah that's a good point that I often forget about, thanks.

I wasn't looking for RAW hdr, just plain jane RAW support that handles moderately new cameras. I stayed on with the old Lightroom as long as I could, but a) it didn't handle my new Sony RAW files, and b) new Mac versions made it impossible to run.

I've moved away from Apple, as that was the last thing tying me to it. Photomator might be nice actually, maybe a good reason to dust off the iPad - cheers.

...

Edit: mobile editing has come a long way since I last checked. Photomator seems really great - between this and a desktop-first approach (Darktable / Davinci) I think this solves all my needs. Big thanks for the recommendation.

[lofaszvanitt]

All of the open source alternatives are a mountain of shit. Hard to use, shit ui/ux experience. End of story.

[switchbak]

This is what I've found, sadly. But there's always folks like Arainach in the sibling thread that'll chew you up if you dare complain about the usability of anything OSS.

This is the new version of "GIMP is better than Photoshop", it seems.

[gmanley]

It's a bit convoluted to get to but you can also "rent" a license for $30 a month through Blackmagic Cloud. As with many, I'm not a fan of subscription licenses but it was valuable for me to use for a month to evaluate if the Studio features warranted the investment in the permanent license. Specifically some of the Fusion effects are Studio only.

[jwrallie]

That’s quite reasonable. Props for them for doing it.

Without updates included, buying a lifetime license nowadays feels more like a subscription which expires as soon as your OS upgrades instead. It also creates a lot of friction with different file formats when you try to collaborate. companies know how to exploit this to force you into subscriptions.

[theSuda]

I regret spending money on multiple pro versions of Hitfilm in hindsight. I found Resolve very daunting as a beginner and Hitfilm's layered editing felt easier at the time. But looking back I should have just spent it on Resolve pro license. I stopped using Hitfilm way before my last license expired just because Resolve just felt better once I got a hang of it.

[agup792]

I have become a huge fan of Davinci Resolve. Its free version carried me for a long time!

[cjonas]

I made the switch from premier to resolve a few years ago and it feels like such a breath of fresh air. Being able to do the same with Lightroom would be amazing so can't wait to check this out. I've been using the free version and honestly never needed the pro features but I think I'll make the one time purchase today just to support a non-subscription based product of this caliber

[altairprime]

Is the Lightroom stuff the same as was discussed on HN a couple months ago? If so, then, see also 296 comments about the new photo mode: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47760529

[bbatha]

It is. That was for the beta

[andrei_says_]

I have both the latest Lightroom and Davinci Resolve.

Recently I edited a few images requiring removing extra people from the frame and I was able to do all editing in Lightroom, in seconds.

As much as I dislike Adobe, Lightroom’s shortcuts and flow are now habits.

I will likely continue using both.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

I have tried most RAW editors and as a total package Lightroom always came out on top for me. The AI masking is a huge improvement.

[Daub]

I believe that DaVinci’s edge is the excellent masking and node based editing it offers (via the color page) and the insanely powerful hue tools. Neither Lightroom nor Potatoshop has effective hue tools - e.g. selectively change the hue or the saturation of a color except in the most primitive way.

[Auracle]

Capture One, however, does.

[Daub]

Thanks for pointing that out. You are indeed correct. However, from what I can see DaVinci's tools still have the edge. With Capture One the feedback on what hues have been selected is far vaguer than I would like. Moreover, the node-based workflow is far more suitable for complex adjustments.

Repeating a point I made in another comment: in DV it is possible to edit hue to hue, hue to saturation, hue to luminesce, luminesce to saturation, saturation to saturation and saturation to luminesce. There is also the amazing chroma warp, using which near arbitrary color adjustments can be made. Nothing out there comes even close to that capability. No wonder most Hollywood movies are color graded in DV.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

You seem to be very focused on color. There are quite a few other areas where the traditional editors like Lightroom or C1 have more to offer.

[sbarre]

I haven't had a chance to look at the non-beta version but in the 21 Beta, the Photo page didn't support Lumix or Olympus raw formats, and I own two cameras: a Lumix and an Olympus. :-(

I assumed they would add them later, I hope I'm right!

edit: nope, still only supports Canon, Fuji, Nikon, Sony and iPhone ProRAW.

[omnimus]

They mentioned in notes the support will come. They support lumix videos.

[sbarre]

Oh I missed that, thank you! That's good to know..

Yeah I've used previous Studio versions to edit videos from my camera without any trouble. I'm just excited to finally ditch my Adobe subscription ASAP. :-)

[Melatonic]

Hope they add the Lumix support soon too!

[sbarre]

So it seems RW2 support is in the non-beta version of 21, I spoke too soon.

The docs page is incorrect, I was able to load my Lumix RAW files in no problem.

[jackofalltrades]

RAW files from my Lumix S9 are working without problems with the latest free beta in Linux.

[jackofalltrades]

I was not aware that we could edit photos in DaVinci Resolve in Linux. Thank you for this info, I'll certainly give it a try!

[dofm]

Output size is limited to 4K in the free version, I think. Which is not nothing (8MP or something, good for a reasonably large print) but it might make you question how much editing belongs inside Resolve.

[Melatonic]

Seems odd to limit photo output also to "4K" resolution. Although I suppose if they did not someone could probably do workarounds like outputting an EXR sequence of an edited video file.

[Hobadee]

You couldn't until this release. :-P

[well_ackshually]

Also, nobody would have complained about "content aware face fill", "AI" image edition tools have been standard for ten years in Photoshop

[embedding-shape]

I remember CS2 making big news with the "healing brush", that's like 20 years ago or something like that.

[dofm]

That wasn’t an AI tool at all, though. Neither is pre-2023 content-aware fill, AFAIK.

They are both PatchMatch (well the healing brush certainly is), which is a heroic bit of code. Entirely deterministic statistical algorithm. Not AI by really any definition (including back then)

[embedding-shape]

In my mind, it's as much "AI" as "AI Slate ID" introduced in this release, which I guess was kind of the point of what GP said.

[nandomrumber]

Probably not you, but on this very forum there are plenty who will argue that LLMs / AI are entirely deterministic and that given enough time, a chisel, and sufficient clay tablets, any AI output can be calculated by hand.

I don’t know enough about anything to determine which opinion is correct.

Is AI output not just matrix multiplication and a random seed?

[dofm]

I don't disagree necessarily on the fundamentals; I am slowly catching up on what LLMs do and don't do but that sounds right to me.

But what I would observe is that the healing brush does not have a random seed. It will always do the same thing if applied at the same pixel.

(I am actually less sure if content-aware fill randomises; I always got the impression it did not)

This makes it both incredibly powerful and occasionally frustrating.

Because on the one hand, you can learn to apply your judgement to precisely control what it will do, and change the radius or position if you learn it is likely to fail, which becomes instinctive. I absolutely love using it to fix scratches in film scans; it's a quick, precise, controllable tool that can be used in a way that is amazingly convincing, and it ends up quite a "zen gardening" thing as a result. It'll sell you on the cheapest wacom pen once you know how efficient it can be.

On the other hand there are situations where it simply cannot work the way you want because it will always find a pattern you don't want it to.

(You can sometimes use the clone brush tool first, to manually break up the pattern that patchmatch will find)

[embedding-shape]

> But what I would observe is that the healing brush does not have a random seed. It will always do the same thing if applied at the same pixel.

Given a model architecture that supports it, greedy decoding + the same inputs + prompts, that's true for most LLMs today too, I don't think people consider them less/more AI because of that.

[coldtea]

>Probably not you, but on this very forum there are plenty who will argue that LLMs / AI are entirely deterministic and that given enough time, a chisel, and sufficient clay tablets, any AI output can be calculated by hand.

Any particular AI output is deterministic (and can be calculated by hand even, if you're immortal).

But it's not deterministic in the sense that (a) it's a black box on the Cloud, (b) repeated AI prompts don't give the same results.

[nandomrumber]

Isn’t your (b) only because of the addition of a random seed?

[storus]

Can you run batch processing with the same settings over a large sequence of images like in Lightroom as well? And/or make slight changes to some parameters at certain points of time like correcting light intensity during sunsets the transitions smooths when your hardware made a step change when capturing it?

[bbatha]

You can. Davinci is more powerful for this too because you can copy the parts of the node tree. So you can have a base edit for exposure, white balance etc then apply your look as a copy paste on top of the clean part. In Lightroom and most photocentric workflows you get one prebaked pipeline.

[embedding-shape]

I haven't tried these new image features at all, nor do I know how well exposed it is in the scripting API in the new version, but Resolve does have a Scripting API I've used for batch processing (of videos) in the past, I'm guessing this gist will soon be updated for version 21 then you can take a peek there: https://gist.github.com/X-Raym/2f2bf453fc481b9cca624d7ca0e19...

[thewebguyd]

I run a photography biz on the side, and this is huge tbh.

I already used Davinci to make a custom LUT, blended it with the Adobe camera standard profile to use in lightroom as a base for all my edits as Davinci's color tools are much better, and doing it this way just lets you get tones that you couldn't other wise get with Lighroom/ACR alone. This basically removes the need to have lightroom in there as a finishing step.

The only downside is by now I've got a really solid ImagenAI profile based on the 30k photos I've fed it over time, and that obviously relies on a lightroom catalog, and is also capable of applying my LUT since I've made it a slider in LR. I hate adobe, but I'm not sure I could go back to not using Imagen as now I can turn around a full wedding gallery in about 2 days.

[Daub]

Agreed that the photo editing features are killer. AFAIK no other photo editing app allows the user to selectively desaturate a hue and its ability to adjust scoring to restricted lightness range is world class.

[larusso]

Lightroom maps support color range and luminance range. Can you explain what the difference is?

[Daub]

Are you referring to Lightroom's masking capability? Indeed, even in Photoshop it is possible to select a color and perform a masked adjustment. Lightroom's selection/masking tools are pretty good and for basic tasks it is fine, but the masking workflow is (IMHO) fundamentally limited. DaVinci's nodes can be stacked on top of each other and the per-hue adjustments are live. Also... I gotta say that the visualization the DV's tools offer is far superior. At a glance I can see the range of hue that have been selected as well as the degree of change they are being subject to.

FYI, In DV it is possible to edit hue to hue, hue to saturation, hue to luminesce, luminesce to saturation, saturation to saturation and saturation to luminesce. There is also the amazing chroma warp, using which near arbitrary color adjustments can be made. Nothing out there comes even close to that capability. No wonder most Hollywood movies are color graded in DV.

[larusso]

Stacked you mean each node works on the input from another nodes output? So I could add a node to make green blue and another node to make blue green again? Because Lightroom mask only work on the base adjustment. Sounds good if I got this right. I wanted to play around with it anyways.

[Daub]

Yes, it would work like that. Moreover, the adjustments concatenate. In other word if a node darkens an image to the point of blackness, the following node can restore the original brightness.

That being said, the new photo editing functionality of DaVinci is not the smoothest. The DaVinci app is a bit of a Frankenstein. The editor is a development laid on top of the original DaVinci color app. The audio page (Fairlight) and the VFX module (Fusion) were purchases which were acquired and 'glued on'. Moving from one to the other can be clunky - though not as bad an experience as Adobe's dynamic links.

[BOOSTERHIDROGEN]

Yes it work like that.

[dheera]

Is there any RAW processing software for Linux that works for DJI drone photos?

I have a bunch of photos from a Mini 3 Pro and Mini 4 Pro -- 4 years' worth -- that I haven't published because I don't have a way to process them.

No tools on Linux (RawTherapee, Darktable, RapidRAW) render their colors correctly no matter how you mess with the sliders, and all of the Github issue pages are dismissive of the problem. There is something fundamentally wrong about how Linux RAW libraries are reading DJI photos.

Lightroom on a Mac tested on another computer renders them all correctly, but I don't own a Mac nor Lightroom.

[__mharrison__]

Resolve runs on Linux. What am I missing?

[bbatha]

Resolve unfortunately only supports a few brands of raw. Om systems is not supported for instance.

[Forgeties79]

>They also added a ton of motion graphics stuff which from the beta seem to be enough to undercut a lot of basic uses of after effects out.

I moved my team to Resolve about 2.5 years ago and I can say with absolute confidence Fusion > AE. Resolve Studio is all you need, period. Lightroom is clearly better right now than their Photo editor but like all their other offerings (ehhh except fairlight lol still mediocre), it's only a matter of time

[httpsterio]

This has not been my experience. I have frequent crashes with Fusion that seem to be related to specific nodes. Checking my computers usage it doesn't seem like I'm running out of juice either.

When it works, it's really nice and I'm sold on the node based workflows, but it's not all entirely roses.

Resolve itself is excellent, Fairlight works just Ok and is still heaps better than Audition ever was. But Fusion I feel like hasn't seen enough love in the past few years.

The whole Reactor setup for installing Fuses feels really broken and for the free users they disabled those entirely in version 19.1.

[Forgeties79]

That’s interesting, our experience with fusion has been fantastic. But maybe you’re doing certain kind of work or more advanced work than we are

[mistic92]

Unfortunately they are far from Lightroom, maybe next year they'll be closer. I really would like to ditch Lightroom but there is no alternative

[qmr]

Ridiculous. Darktable and rawtherapee off the top of my head. There are many others.

[maxgashkov]

I tried Darktable and I don't doubt it's a powerful RAW editing software but it feels like to be effective with it you need to care about the software more than you do about photography. With Lightroom/Capture One etc. it's the opposite. Darktable is just too 'out there'

[vjvjvjvjghv]

I tried to like Darktable but even after more than a year I couldn’t get the hang of it. It almost killed the hobby for me. Lightroom just works for me.

[patrakov]

I suggest that you try https://artraweditor.github.io/ as an alternative.

[t0bia_s]

None of those have reliable selective tool. Unpractical to use professionally.

[patrakov]

Darktable 5.6 will have AI masks.

Anyway, I tried them, and found that, after you master the "a few rough brush strokes + adjust feathering and mask opacity until it snaps" and "overzealous brush + parametric mask" techniques taught in any Darktable course, for wildlife photo editing, AI doesn't bring much. And yes, this does require a course to break the "perfect mask is required" mindset.

Yes, Lightroom courses will brainwash you that AI "select subject, select sky, select object" workflow is the only modern way to do selective editing, but this is the Lightroom workflow. For Lightroom, it is a natural workflow, because it is, in Lightroom, the best strategy that can create a mask that aligns well with the object edges - until it doesn't. Other editors (such as ART and Darktable) have other idiomatic workflows for masking, and they work, because they have other tools than Lightroom for snapping the mask or refining it.

Bird feathers spread out on the tips of their wings are one particularly bad example where AI struggles, but non-AI tools don't.

[t0bia_s]

Yet, LR is industrial standard no matter how enthusiastic developers of free software try. I wish that Adobe have proper competition, working on linux. There isn't.

[patrakov]

I have a different problem with Lightroom being an industrial standard. If you avoid Lightroom, you cannot find a photography teacher.

You can find a Darktable teacher, and I did. He is a professional photographer, but I disagree with that particular teacher's style in photography - especially the rejection of strong edits even if they do work as creative reinterpretations of the scene.

You can find a photography teacher with good taste in composition, with recognition that both ultra-constrained and creative edits have their place (and I did find such a teacher), but that teacher will inevitably use Lightroom. That teacher recognizes what needs to be edited, recognizes that Darktable has the right to exist, but will explain the needed changes using Lightroom tool names.

It's now your job to translate - and, importantly, translate the visual effect achieved, not the slider name. This requires seeing the intended effect. This requires doing it in Lightroom first and then trying to make Darktable output look the same.

For example, the teacher asked for a high-key edit and told me to raise the whites. In Lightroom, this keeps contrast high near the top of the tonal range, right until it abruptly becomes zero because of clipping. That "high contrast followed by clipping" behavior is exactly what the requested high-key edit needed.

But your teacher will never describe it in those contrast-related terms. Before translating the instruction into Darktable, you first have to discover the visual pattern yourself that the Lightroom slider is producing.

And the correct translation, if you use the "sigmoid" tonemapper, is the "target white" control, which the official documentation marks as "don’t touch". You need to set it to 130% via right-clicking to override the soft limit of 100%. Very non-obvious, not mentioned in the Darktable course that I went through, but the photography teacher then accepted the edit.

In summary, the requirement to learn Lightroom in advance just to understand the photography teacher is the real trap here.

[gglanzani]

Laat time I checked, deleting an image on DaVinci didn’t delete on disk. That’s something I’m really missing

[alfirous]

If I remember correctly, Davinci is Non-linear editing which doesn't affect the original file. Unless you mean there's copy of original file somewhere on disk?

[gglanzani]

I know, but what I miss is be able to delete in Davinci, and have the file disappear from disk :)

[omnimus]

It might be best editor on linux but running it on linux is not easy. You basically need pick correct hardware pick right distro. It might be pretty easy on the oficial rocky linux but on other distros good luck. Also no AMD support.

I am pretty experienced linux user and i would have to buy new NVIDIA card and pray things work out.

Sadly i found out it will be much cheaper to buy refurb mac mini. So now i have dedicated machine for editing video.

[omnimus]

I suspect main reason resolve supports linux is render farms with purposefully bought hw.

[riidom]

There install script is quite aggressive as well. Well at least around ~v16 it was.

[RobotToaster]

At least some of the motion graphics stuff (Krokodove) was part of reactor, an open source community plugin that BMD added a paywall to use. https://www.reddit.com/r/davinciresolve/comments/1hf5lk6/rea...