Alternatives To Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Adobe’s CreativeCloud

Updated 12/27/2022

by
Jeff Colburn

When Adobe went to a subscription only plan, I started to look for different processing software. I wanted to have software that I owned, without worrying about paying a monthly or annual fee. And I would decide if I wanted to pay for an upgrade. It turns out there are a lot of options that will meet your needs, and cost a lot less than Photoshop and Lightroom.

As of today, a subscription to Photoshop alone costs $21 a month, with 100 GB of cloud storage. If you want Photoshop and Lightroom, it’s $20 a month, with 1 TB of cloud storage.

I belong to various photography discussion groups, and many have been talking about the subscription plan, and whether it will be good or bad for them. Some of the main concerns that photographers have are:

  • If they decide to stop paying each month or year, they won’t be able to access Photoshop to open their files. All the time and effort they put into these files will be lost and the photographs will be unusable.
  • They don’t want to have to pay a monthly fee, since they don’t regularly buy upgrades when they come out. When I used Photoshop I would usually skip 1-2 upgrades as they weren’t offering anything I needed.
  • What if they start using the subscription plan, then the monthly fee starts going up, a lot? They’ll have to pay the price, or hope they can find another piece of software similar to Photoshop and Lightroom that can open Photoshop files and layers.

Here are some options for you. The text in quotation marks is copied from the company’s website.

ON1 Photo Raw – https://on1.sjv.io/15Mjdz – I have been using ON1 instead of Lightroom and Photoshop for over two years, and I love it. It does everything I need it to do, and is loaded with AI tools. Their monthly newsletter comes with a new tutorial, or add-in (textures, brushes, LUTs, etc.) or both. They have a huge number of tutorial videos on the site and on YouTube, and their tech support is great.

  • Price: $100 for the entire package, Plugins $20-$25 each, Subscription $8 a month or $90 a year or $180 a year if you want the Plus membership. Plus give you access to additional tutorials and add-ons. 
  • Opens RAW files: Yes
  • Opens Photoshop files: Yes
  • Content Aware tools: Yes. It include many AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools
  • Noise reduction: Yes
  • Work with layers: Yes
  • Sharpen photograph: Yes
  • Does HDR: Yes
  • Free trial: Yes, for 14 days

ACD Systems – http://www.acdsee.com/en/products – They offer ACDSee Pro, which is like Lightroom, and ACDSee Photo Editor 6, which is like Photoshop. They also offer versions for Mac. They have nondestructive brushes and global nondestructive adjustments.
Price: $60 to $109, depending on the package you want

  • Opens RAW files: Yes
  • Opens Photoshop files: Yes
  • Content Aware tools: Not listed on site
  • Noise reduction: Yes
  • Work with layers: Not listed on site
  • Sharpen photograph: Yes
  • Does HDR: Not listed on site
  • Free trial: Yes

DxO Photo Lab 6 – https://www.dxo.com/dxo-photolab – “DxO PhotoLab 6 ELITE edition is your complete, end-to-end, RAW photo editing software. Built for utmost quality and utility, DxO PhotoLab is the multi-award winning RAW editing and workflow software for exacting photographers.”

  • Price: $219
  • Opens RAW files: Yes. It considers some DNG files to be RAW files. DNG files created with Adobe Lightroom, Camera Raw or DNG Converter are supported as long as the native Raw files of the shooting camera are compatible with DxO PhotoLab.
  • Opens Photoshop files: No
  • Content Aware tools: No
  • Noise reduction: Yes
  • Work with layers: No
  • Sharpen photograph: Yes
  • Does HDR: No
  • Free trial: Yes

Gimp – http://www.gimp.org – I’ve used Gimp off and on for years, and it’s great. It’s what I turned to when a company I worked for wouldn’t buy Photoshop and I needed to manipulate photos. If you want to learn how to do something in Gimp, just Google it. People have put up a boat-load of tutorials that will show you how to do anything. And there are plugins that will give you RAW format support and even a content aware healing tool.

  • Price: $0
  • Opens RAW files: With plugin
  • Opens Photoshop files: Yes, but may have trouble if the file has many layers
  • Content Aware tools: With plugins
  • Noise reduction: Yes
  • Work with layers: Yes
  • Sharpen photograph: Yes
  • Does HDR: There’s no HDR tool, but can combine images and use a layer mask to do HDR
  • Free trial: No, the whole program is free

Paint.net – http://www.getpaint.net/ – This program is similar to Gimp but has the same tools you’ll find in Microsoft Paint. Plugins let you work with RAW and Photoshop files. Other tools include a clone stamp, text editor and unlimited history.

  • Price: $0
  • Opens RAW files: With plugins
  • Opens Photoshop files: With plugins
  • Content Aware tools: No
  • Noise reduction: Yes
  • Work with layers: Yes
  • Sharpen photograph: Yes
  • Does HDR: There’s no HDR tool, but can combine images and use a layer mask to do HDR
  • Free trial: No, the whole program is free

PaintShop Pro 2023 – http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4900067 – “Add brightness to your photos with more AI power and impactful tools for results as unique as your images.”

  • Price: $80
  • Opens RAW files: Yes
  • Opens Photoshop files: Yes
  • Content Aware tools: Yes
  • Noise reduction: Yes
  • Work with layers: Yes
  • Sharpen photograph: Yes
  • Does HDR: Yes
  • Free trial: Yes

There is nothing on the market that does everything that Photoshop does, except Photoshop. But when you choose a program to work with your images, you don’t need it to do everything, you just need it to do the things you want it to do.

There are more options out there than the ones I mentioned, but this will give you a good start. All you have to do now is decide which path will work best for you.

Have Fun,
Jeff

If you’re looking for Fine Art prints, or stock images, of Arizona then head on over to JeffColburn.com