At first is counter intuitive, until a rainy afternoon is spent working it out and the lightbulb moment happens. I've unistalled / unsubscribed everything else. It can only get even better.
same with rawtherapee. I tried both got stuck really quickly in darktable ... some aspects i really hated a lot. some gui parts are not clear ... for example the reset of the modules... i needed to search on google to get this. Rawtherapee is hard as well. but i really like the batch/queue clear separation of things. creation of your profile for RAW conversion. etc.
Actually, you can create a separate photo library in Apple Photos. Hold the Option key while opening the Photos app, then select "Create New" and save the new library in a different location. This library won't sync with iCloud, allowing you to manage large photo collections without using up iCloud storage. To switch libraries, just hold the Option key when reopening Photos and select the library you want. Hope this helps!
You've must have missed the latest Capture One. It has AI masking and is very snappy. Btw, I too play around with multiple editing tools. But do 80% in C1. Use NIK collection, ON1 plugins, Affinity photo, have the LR/PS for my astro panel
still, it's same expensive if not more than Adobe unfortunately :( and their support for the versions you buy is terrible, some months and you dont get even bugs fixed =/
A helpful overview, although I'm familiar enough with several of the editors you describe here to know that some of your critiques are incorrect. Taking Affinity Photo as an example, at 15:01 you say that Affinity Photo doesn't have HSL adjustments when it does (when you open Adjustment Controls at 15:29, HSL adjustments are third from the top). Did you just miss those adjustments in your quick review (or were you looking for something more? Similarly Affinity's Inpainting Brush Tool is pretty good at making things disappear even in area with complex patterns (like water or grass). Your critiques of Photomator and DXO PhotoLab left me with the same impression
Affinity does not give you control over the colors in the raw file only once it’s in the editor which can often not be pushed as far due to bit depth. I found affinity’s brush to not work as good (compared to photoshop) on the handful of images I tried
I bought it used close to a decade ago, used it for a few years and then sold it for more. That should tell you in what state Adobe was back then... xD
If you load the Photopea page and switch off your wifi connection, the app still works. It doesn't appear to actually upload the files. It's using them locally.
And if you tell your browser to never unload that tab or delete its cookies then it will work offline forever. Its basically free photoshop at that point.
Amazing! Thank you so much for this no-nonsense review and comparison. Surprised you didn’t include Darkroom in it (pretty good but new features were delayed last hear, hopefully they’ll catch up this year)
Adobe still can't handle Fujifilm RAW files properly. Capture one has built in tethering. Darktable is awesome & free (once you learn how to use it). AI is a double edged sword.
Thanks for the very thorough (and occasionally brutally honest) walk through of the various programs. I am very new to digital photography (picking up the hobby right before retirement) and now have 4 or 5 apps to play around with as I learn.
I fricking love darktable (might be because I used to study programming), yeah, some of the names annoyed me because they were different, but they were mostly descriptive enough provided you know physics and color theory.
If you are working on a raw file in Affinity Photo you can choose the non-destructive editing option, the HSL filter is found as an adjustment layer, the fill method you used is incorrect, the correction brushes were used without softness, the hardness at 100%, bad technique, I recommend familiarizing yourself with the software before doing this type of review, Affinity Photo has an option similar to "content-aware fill" as found in Photoshop (not AI).
Apple Photos does support spot healing brush, also can import without uploading to iClouds, though the app is buggy and normally crash, and laggy UI when editing many big raw files
Photomator is polished because it is based on Pixelmator, a rather old piece of software that does both PS and LIghtroom stuff to a decent degree- and has a very cheap perpetual license.
C1 is just the industry standard for most proffessionals working these days. Their raw converter is IMO far superior to lightroom, and the option to use sessions is now my only way to work
When I started using Photoshop in circa 1995 on a Mac performa with 8 MEGABYTES of ram and 500 MEGABYTE hard drive it was extremely time consuming. I had to find my own way to create ways to use it. There was no A.I. around the place so you understood exactly how everything was achieved. I think this is probably why the programme became so good, with real hands on experience educating the programme makers. With A.I. now doing everything I fear that the 'human' element of development and experimentation will be lost.
I had purchased perpetual licence photoshop and used for many years, then changed my pc for a mac and tried to get the mac version….and found it had no choice other than to go for a subscription. As a hobby photographer i had no intention of giving adobe ongoing access to my money !!! Just not worth it for me.
I keep waiting for you to clear your throat. ;) Luminar NEO has improved a great deal in the last year. Their Remove Crap tool has improved a lot, as have their masking tools. I hang on to PS CS6 for some things, but I can mostly edit in NEO, Affinity, and ON1 RAW. Now, if only I could put all the best features of those programs into ONE program, I'd be thrilled.
Clearly, he just tried these softwares for content and views with no intent on understanding the philosophy and use case for each of these softwares. Darktable for example is not for programmers. It is for people who know more about the aspects of image processing than just using sliders to add effect to the image.
Try editing thousands of pictures for clients where you have to wait for the preview to update after you make an adjustment. I am aware it’s powerful in certain instances but the criticism doesn’t come out of nowhere.
@@HarrisonTong your criticism about darktable is all about the advanced options you didn't understand and want them to be burried behind the scenes like lightroom does which is clearly the opposite of what darktable is all about.
Still, he has a point. Even if it is for people who understand the concepts behind image editing, you have to package this stuff in a usable package. Darktable sometimes feels like that they put scientific papers directly into a UI. I am not against that these applications should have some scientific terms in the UI (e.g. other applications mention hsv, RGB, cielab everywhere), but where Darktable imho fails is to realize that they are not market leaders and cannot introduce new terminology into the world of image editing. Either they should try to stick to the normal industry standard naming or slightly deviate from it. You can still write in the manual which mathematical operations are behind it but not in the main ui. I still use Darktable, but I have to agree the UI is weird. - The strict principle of modules is weird. E.g. I think cropping would be done better as a separate thing. - some modules might do multiple things, but then it wouldn't hurt to extract this subset as a separate module. For example, the colour calibration RGB does white balance and channel mixer. It might be the same from principle, but for usability, move the channel mixer out of colour balance module and have it as a separate module. It might still be the same behind the scenes, but just separate it and call it obviously to the industry standards. - same thing with Tone Equalizer. Why not just call it tone curve, remove the simple option (which I would assume not many people use) and streamline the usage. For me, Darktable feels heavily inspired more by Davinci Resolve than by Lightroom. But Resolve is hugely popular, in contrast to Darktable.
Been using Darktable for a while. Found it is actually easy to use. The masking tool is very powerful, fast and useful. I was forced to leave Aperture 10 years ago, and now force to leave PS and LR. I can no longer edit 10,000 wedding photos of my old clients becuase Apple decides not to support Aperture. That is the main reason I opt to learn Darktable.
Coming in to this a year late… Props for trying all these out! Photomator is like the younger sibling to Pixelmator Pro (the healing on this is outstanding btw), by the same company, which absolutely rocks. I might try photomator just to see if it can handle RAW DJI Mini Pro 3 files. Apple Photo has always supported storage on the Mac (without iCloud). Having said that, Aperture's replacement by Apple Photo is the reason I went with Capture One back in 2016. Capture One is very good. The developers are constantly making the software better. "AI" tools are included and being added all the time. I bought the Affinity suite for their Publisher and Designer packages. Photo is okay, but doesn't come close to Pixelmator. Good video. Thank you.
I use DXO photolab, or on1 photoraw (lightroom equivelant), instead of lightroom, and Affinity photo2 instead of Photoshop. Also use Neo, to do things like skin retouch...
A correction, if I may. With Apple photos it only the catalogue that sinks that will cause you storage issues. You can create a standalone catalogue on your local hard drive that doesn’t sync to the cloud so you can have multiples.
I like dark table quite a bit but I find gimp to be extremely lackluster. Personally I use affinity photo because it's only a one time purchase. Plus, I like that I'm supporting perpetual licenses as a valid business practice
I started editing my photos in PS like 3 when it was very manual, glad I did because I can edit great in other programs. This made me happy when Serif brought out Photo I dropped Adobe like a hot potato, never looked back.
Was curious to see darktable in here. I myself was using it while watching the video lol. I do admit, it's really overwhelming when you jump into it. But you really have to put in the time to create your own layout. Coming from Lightroom, it's really hard at first, but once you manage to get all your "most used" modules sorted out in a good way and you get a feel for it, it's not that bad at all! Can't say I don't hate myself for forcing myself to go more open source sometimes. x) Nice video, thanks!
I grew up on darktable. After 4 years of editing almost every day some young photographer would download LR and destroy me in editing. I tried it again about a year ago and you can't bring up shadows without a bunch of really disgusting effects. In the end I just stick to pirating lightroom.
Decided to learn Darktable as participant of the Adobe Exudos. I think it is underated piece of software. It can be technical, but once you learn it, it can be easy and powerful at the same time. Having migrated from Aperture to LR, i know I can't trust my work and assets on these corporates.
Affinity Photo2 is probably the closest replacement for Photoshop because it attempts to be similar to Photoshop to some extent. Unfortunately, Photo2 does have some major weak points when it comes to selections and functionality. Selecting tools is a confusing and not quick. When selecting an area of your image in Photos2 you can only pick one (1) color, and then you have to use a slider to increase the sensitivity outside of this color. Thats it. This leaves you in the unfortunate situation of either making a thin selection that doesn't capture all you need or an overly inclusive selection that captures too much, potentially a haze all over. Either way you are faster doing the selection manually or lots of cleanups. In Photoshop you can add additional colors holding down the alt-key and you can adjust your sensitivity separately so you can grab just the color range you need with far less cleanup; lets say only beiges but not the yellows and greens. In Photos2 you get beige but also some greens and yellows and there is nothing you can do about that except very time consuming manual selection. In terms of tool selection pressing a letter "b" sometimes gives you Brush-tool but i think it is actually toggling between the last tool and the current tool. It is confusing. Adjusting layers is also confusing because you need to drag the adjustment layer on to the target layer or it will effect all lower layers, you cant toggle the effect quickly; you have to remove it from the target layer and then toggle it off. These are just a few problems I have experienced, there are many more, and the non-existent "AI" remove tools or spot healing brush mentioned in this video is a major drag. I didnt ditch Photoshop because it sucks, Ive used if for decades, I play it keyboard like Mozart using it, but because of Adobe Corporation. Their profit driven immorality, FAR too expensive, no purchase option, and I dont want to submit to their exploitation of my privacy or intellectual rights. There are many videos that explain in detail the demonic business practices of Adobe.
I use capture one and Adobe photoshop. Capture one for color editing and skin tone editing and photoshop for retouching object removal etc Update tho there is AI masking and erasing now it’s just different from Lightroom’s
This a great comparison video. I would really suggest trying the latest version of Capture One again. It has improved so much in the past year. The AI options are really, really useful right now. I have never used the Adobe products (and probably never will...). Instead i have been using C1 and Affinity Photo as my editing combo. Although C1 is going the expensive route of the Adobe products lately... I may have to explore other options like you have here. As a "serious hobbyist" that doesn't make ANY money with photography (although i wish i could...), I can't afford to shell out this much money all the time, just to be able to keep up with the developments of the software. Great job!
I expected more people to actually pointing out Gimp the Linux standard image editing software. I have used a lot Photoshop. Now away from Windows. I use Gimp and they are really similar of course there are difference but I think they are really really close. Is there a reason why you haven't tried GIMP ?
Photomator relies on apple's raw engine. I saw people saying this applies noise reduction within Photomator whether one likes it or not. I run my own tests and that seems to be the case. I found that applying the high res option can help, but this doesn't seem like a long term solution to the issue. As things stand I'm getting considerably better results using darktable. There is a substantial learning curve with darktable,, and I love the performance of Photomator, but the apple raw engine almost makes it a no-go for me at the moment. If that is ever fixed, I'll jump in without a second thought.
Darktable. Forget the AI stuff, and yes one has to learn some modules in detail to use them. But it's powerful and it's free. I only look at other programs for the layer based editing ( Darktable doesn't have that)
Affinity Photo has 'inpainting' which is the equivalent of Photoshop's Content Aware fill. They have also just added AI Selections in the latest Beta version. If Affinity can add a generative fill feature that works well I wouldn't bother with Photoshop
I feel you misrepresented the Sky replacement feature in Luminar Neo. You used a preset instead of showing the actual Sky replacement tool/process which is far superior especially used with your own Sky photos. The presets I agree are horrendous but I’m sure no one actually uses them
Ive worked on two versions of apple photos... You can export jpeg, png, tiff. You can select between raw or jpeg of you ahoot that way. Im not sure what you mean by icloud library only It does have a retouch tool, whoch isn't great for large or conpex removals, but is good for spots. Although I actually think the older version of the tool was better It even has basic perspective correction. I do use a different software for my naming and filing and a first cull, but my raws all just get dragged into photos after that.
Do any of these have cataloging features like in Lightroom? I usually take a burst when trying wildlife and Lightroom seems to be the only place where I can go through my photos and decide to pick/reject easily.
Darktable has very good cataloging. You can start with simple reject/1-5 stars along with 6 color options. You can also create tags for anything you can thing of like boats, nighttime, Madison Square Garden, etc.
c1 has also a catalog if you want or better can use it. can, because as a professional, you often do so many photos that it get impossible to manage the amount of data on one computer. Also we also regularly work in teams, let do the editing and retouching done by another person, direct on the raw. C1 has a couple of tools build in exactly for this.
Adobe Free. Best I have is Photomator, which is great replacement for Lightroom. Second is Pixelmator for Layer Based Photoshop replacement. LOVE both. I also have Affinity Photo which I use occasionally.
It would be great if you could’ve also looked at culling. With photoshop and similar software, it’s hard to edit 1000s of photos as you have to open them individually and export them individually. Also, performance on my older MacBook was pretty bad for a lot of these apps. Lightroom and photomator are workable. But the AI versions were just unworkable for me. Same for darktable. It’s not really a review of performance when you do it on a blazing fast computer.
Alas, Darktable also has really poor GPU support on Macs. I don’t know if this is only a budgetary restriction, as much as an objection to paying Apple’s Xcode developer fee. There is huge potential, but, as you say, it would be good if someone took the source and developed a nice UX, and added a small fee to cover Xcode developer fee to obtain native Mac GPU [ Metal®️]support
The same thing that happened in the music recording industry needs to happen in the photo/video editing, and graphic design/publishing industries. They used to be heavily gate kept by Pro Tools as the industry standard due to its accompanying hardware needed in early low specced CPU computers. As CPU’s got more powerful, the need for the brand specific hardware made less sense and people began toying with alternative (much more creative and innovative) recording software like Ableton, Logic, FL Studio, Reason etc but because the fossils at the studios only knew Pro Tools it stuck. However, the mounting pressure from the artists and waning need for large production studios it has finally broken the stranglehold hold Avid had with its Pro Tools.
First up, great job covering these programs, In essence you have done exactly what I have done and tried all of theses apps to find the ones that suit your use and I feel you have covered them well as a user. I personally have settled on Capture One for most of my Raw processing, I find this app gives me the best overall ability to process large quantities of images with quality outcomes. I also am very impressed with Photomator and will be like you keeping an eye on its development. And lastly I have to react to the the person who was very upset about your comments about Dark Table, I like you found the app to be very difficult to use in any productive way with large quantities of images, it may well be the Bees Knees of professional programmers/photographers who get deep into the technology but for users who want quick accurate control and productivity it is not for us.
DxO is nice. Develops RAWs really well. But it lacls a lot of basic fonctions compared to most players. - Average selection tools - Panorama stitching or stacking features - DxO ViewPoint has to be biught if one needs to correct perspective. - Weird U-Points instead of a basic radial gradient… - Availability of luminosity mask conditioned by separate purchase of DxO FilmPack to work. (Even when buying DxO PL’s Elite version!) - Some functions have been stripped off DxO Nik Collection to push people to buy the other software… - No Elliptic or octogonal control points - No iPhone support (not important for me though) I agree: DxO Denoise is better than standard LR Denoise, bur LR’s AI denoise is even nicer. For years DxO’s main selling point is Denoising. The rest barely evolves: Prime, Deep Prime, Deep Prime XD, Deep Prime XD2, Deep Prime XD 2 S.
-The unspoken moral of the story is you get what you pay for. Yes, Adobe is expensive. It's the gold standard for a reason. -You didn't mention software that comes with the camera... NX Studio for Nikon, DP4 for Canon, Fuji X Studio for Fuji, OM Workspace for OM Systems etc.. I do all of my global adjustments in NX Studio and then export the Tif to Camera Raw for local adjustments.
I can see the programs at the end of the video you lost complete interest in reviewing the actual program. You didn't even give an actual rating at the end of the section like you did at the beginning XD
ha ha.. in 1996 I was an interface designer.. I got a major gig with a software company to 'fix' four software titles.. it was hilarious. they were all suffering from 'programmer designer syndrome'.. one of them was a 3D map program, basically a proto google earth.. there was 2 dozen tabs with acronyms of various technical terms!.. I'm like WHAT THE LIVING FORK IS THIS?? this was supposed to be for 12 year olds.. haha..no wonder all the testing was returning 'wtf is this??' so just FYI.. PDS is real.. and has been around since DOS. hehe
RAW PHOTO PROCESSOR (RPP) = The best, highest fidelity, most film like result I've yet to encounter. And it's FREE. The closest in color fidelity is the Exposure X7 Kodachrome 25 filter. But it's a distant second.
As usual I was too quick an too short. My point was that to give Darktable a fair evaluation, you need to learn how to use it. I agree that is programmer based but that fits my mentality. Once you spend the time (several hours/days) learning Darktable you learn that it is powerful and can do almost everything that Lightroom can do but without the $240 per year ongoing cost. If your mentality is programmer and you are willing to learn Darktable is good.
I have used Darktable since 3.8 and am done with it. I shot some pictures at a workshop put on by Sony using their new A9III. Darktable can't open them because its too new plus it doesn't recognize a couple of my Nikon lenses for lens correction. Then, I took a couple of printing workshops and came home and couldn't find the print module that the manual talks about. I could find it opening up Darktable on my old, slow MacBookPro but my powerful pc running Windows 10 doesn't have that option. I could go on and on and on. It is a good piece of software if you are a Linux geek and love to write scripts but I have better things to do like focus stacking (easy in Adobe). And Darktable is all sliders, dude. Like the incredibly slow diffuse or sharpen module or Aulien deciding to change everything from display referred to scene referred and renaming/combing modules from one release to another. Who on earth has a module called white balance that you DON'T use to change your white balance besides a programmer? Sure, color calibration RGB module and then the CAT tab is where anyone in their simplistic mind would go to take care of white balance:) If it works for you, great but I am happy to pay Adobe $20 a month just to never open the manual again:)
Darktable is too complicated, lots of modules to do the same thing, but one works a bit better, masking is terrible... I wouldn't imagine editing a large batch of photos with it.
Perpetual license for Photomator is $120 in August of 2024, not $55, if that was in fact true a year ago; maybe that's a typo in the video. Got me all excited, until I checked the actual cost.
no it's not bad! how long did you take to learn anything, or did you go straight from adobe to any other product without learn anything! the problem with adobe people is they are spoon fed adobe and can't learn any other way or software without learning how to use it! sad; really sad!
Problem is after years of Adobe changing is difficult because you cannot take the third party plugins with. Affinity should import PS plugins, but I didn't succeed.
The only thing that bugs me that not all Sony cameras raw formats supported on macOS (both Apple Photos and Photomator rely on this). I have to use Adobe DNG Converter to convert .ARW to .DNG. It's not hard, but still one extra step. How it's with other apps? Do they rely on macOS raw support, too?
You need to go to the App Store and download the thing from Apple that gives you pro raw support - forget what it’s called but it’s like a plugin for the OS to read the files and made by apple
I actually only started using lightroom a little while ago I mostly used Phase one before and it just works s whole lot better with cap1 since it's made by cap1... Also tethered shooting with cap1 is just better
Thanks for the video… Interesting that you did not use Gimp….I know a lot of people in club photography that use it..and it is free… You are obviously on Mac, but Windows photo viewer has also added some editing features that will be enough for many people…if they are on Windows..
Professional photography industry in New York and Los Angles is dominated by Capture One - no one uses Lightroom although PhotoShop is the standard for retouching
Still miss aperture, that was the best app
Would be nice to see them give it another go
Capture one
Affinity photo has content aware fill right? I am confused :D I use it all the time.
Certainly does!
yeah, it's called the inpainting brush... he hovered over it but didn't use it... granted the name is kinda confusing coming from Photoshop.
@@Tacoccino i just checked...this is close enough ..i never new it had something like this !! Thanks !!
@@Tacoccino It doesn't work as good though.
@@eugenn2848 true, but he made it sound like it doesn't exist at all in Affinity. But you're right, it's not as good.
Darktable is good after you study it for a week or two. Once you understand it, processing a photo goes very quickly.
I absolutely love Darktable. Its fantastic. ❤
At first is counter intuitive, until a rainy afternoon is spent working it out and the lightbulb moment happens.
I've unistalled / unsubscribed everything else. It can only get even better.
same with rawtherapee. I tried both got stuck really quickly in darktable ... some aspects i really hated a lot. some gui parts are not clear ... for example the reset of the modules... i needed to search on google to get this.
Rawtherapee is hard as well. but i really like the batch/queue clear separation of things. creation of your profile for RAW conversion. etc.
Confirm. Learning a few fundamentals the software requests you really pays out on the long run. Phantastic example of opensource software!
Actually, you can create a separate photo library in Apple Photos. Hold the Option key while opening the Photos app, then select "Create New" and save the new library in a different location. This library won't sync with iCloud, allowing you to manage large photo collections without using up iCloud storage. To switch libraries, just hold the Option key when reopening Photos and select the library you want. Hope this helps!
Oh awesome will have to test that next time
Apple Photos editor has a healing brush now as well
Does this apply to photometer?
@@HarrisonTong they own pixlemater now lol
You've must have missed the latest Capture One. It has AI masking and is very snappy. Btw, I too play around with multiple editing tools. But do 80% in C1. Use NIK collection, ON1 plugins, Affinity photo, have the LR/PS for my astro panel
Their AI masking works great. If capture one gets the an AI denoise to be as good as adobe, that would be amazing.
still, it's same expensive if not more than Adobe unfortunately :( and their support for the versions you buy is terrible, some months and you dont get even bugs fixed =/
A helpful overview, although I'm familiar enough with several of the editors you describe here to know that some of your critiques are incorrect. Taking Affinity Photo as an example, at 15:01 you say that Affinity Photo doesn't have HSL adjustments when it does (when you open Adjustment Controls at 15:29, HSL adjustments are third from the top). Did you just miss those adjustments in your quick review (or were you looking for something more? Similarly Affinity's Inpainting Brush Tool is pretty good at making things disappear even in area with complex patterns (like water or grass). Your critiques of Photomator and DXO PhotoLab left me with the same impression
Affinity does not give you control over the colors in the raw file only once it’s in the editor which can often not be pushed as far due to bit depth.
I found affinity’s brush to not work as good (compared to photoshop) on the handful of images I tried
I agree with your assessment!!!
Darktable: you can set your environment to different modes with different amount of tools
normaly you dont work in the mode with all the (weird) tools
My friend says his copy of CS6 "Fell out the back of a truck" 😂
More like fell out of the pirate ship ;)
@@HarrisonTong CS6 as the last boxed cd version, Casual.
@AlienGrade I know, I’ve used it. I don’t think that’s what the comment is implying 😆
I bought it used close to a decade ago, used it for a few years and then sold it for more. That should tell you in what state Adobe was back then... xD
Yeah - is was a rather good program but it's getting old by now and won't open most recent camera raws. Plus it really misses some newer features.
If you load the Photopea page and switch off your wifi connection, the app still works. It doesn't appear to actually upload the files. It's using them locally.
And if you tell your browser to never unload that tab or delete its cookies then it will work offline forever. Its basically free photoshop at that point.
@@Florianski ooh good tip!
Amazing! Thank you so much for this no-nonsense review and comparison. Surprised you didn’t include Darkroom in it (pretty good but new features were delayed last hear, hopefully they’ll catch up this year)
Adobe still can't handle Fujifilm RAW files properly. Capture one has built in tethering. Darktable is awesome & free (once you learn how to use it). AI is a double edged sword.
What are the issues with Fuji in Lightroom?
I am fuji and lightroom. Both work amazingly together for me.
@@k1euit creates horrible "worm" effects in fine detail.
Darktable handle Fuji well. Not only that, it has Velvia and Provia simulator that works.
@@DarktableLandscapesBS
Thanks for the very thorough (and occasionally brutally honest) walk through of the various programs. I am very new to digital photography (picking up the hobby right before retirement) and now have 4 or 5 apps to play around with as I learn.
Have you ever tried Pixelmator Pro?
Exactly, why only trial Photomator?
Love both!
I fricking love darktable (might be because I used to study programming), yeah, some of the names annoyed me because they were different, but they were mostly descriptive enough provided you know physics and color theory.
If you are working on a raw file in Affinity Photo you can choose the non-destructive editing option, the HSL filter is found as an adjustment layer, the fill method you used is incorrect, the correction brushes were used without softness, the hardness at 100%, bad technique, I recommend familiarizing yourself with the software before doing this type of review, Affinity Photo has an option similar to "content-aware fill" as found in Photoshop (not AI).
Apple Photos does support spot healing brush, also can import without uploading to iClouds, though the app is buggy and normally crash, and laggy UI when editing many big raw files
Agreed plus I use external ssd for library and it never crashes for me
Oh and it’s xtrans raw conversion is so much better on green foliage where LR is absolutely shite
Paint 3D users 🗿
😂😂😂😂
Even PowerPoint of all things is a better image editor than Microsoft’s low effort defaults.
Photomator is polished because it is based on Pixelmator, a rather old piece of software that does both PS and LIghtroom stuff to a decent degree- and has a very cheap perpetual license.
FYI: you can change the icons for Affinity toolsbar to make it kind of match Photoshop
Oh awesome, I’ll definitely have to check that out next time I do this
How?
You missed out GIMP which is a shame, it's an aquired taste
C1 is just the industry standard for most proffessionals working these days. Their raw converter is IMO far superior to lightroom, and the option to use sessions is now my only way to work
When I started using Photoshop in circa 1995 on a Mac performa with 8 MEGABYTES of ram and 500 MEGABYTE hard drive it was extremely time consuming.
I had to find my own way to create ways to use it. There was no A.I. around the place so you understood exactly how everything was achieved. I think this is probably
why the programme became so good, with real hands on experience educating the programme makers. With A.I. now doing everything I fear that the 'human' element
of development and experimentation will be lost.
People said the same about Darkrooms back in the day, tools (not generation from scratch) are always a good thing
Pixelmator Pro?
thank you very much ! looking forward to software, so helpful .
I had purchased perpetual licence photoshop and used for many years, then changed my pc for a mac and tried to get the mac version….and found it had no choice other than to go for a subscription. As a hobby photographer i had no intention of giving adobe ongoing access to my money !!! Just not worth it for me.
Haven’t needed adobe since Affinity came out ❤ Yes it does have content aware as the other company calls it
Ive just started the trial of affinity photo and illustrator. Looks pretty good so far. Going to take some learning.
I keep waiting for you to clear your throat. ;) Luminar NEO has improved a great deal in the last year. Their Remove Crap tool has improved a lot, as have their masking tools. I hang on to PS CS6 for some things, but I can mostly edit in NEO, Affinity, and ON1 RAW. Now, if only I could put all the best features of those programs into ONE program, I'd be thrilled.
Clearly, he just tried these softwares for content and views with no intent on understanding the philosophy and use case for each of these softwares. Darktable for example is not for programmers. It is for people who know more about the aspects of image processing than just using sliders to add effect to the image.
Try editing thousands of pictures for clients where you have to wait for the preview to update after you make an adjustment. I am aware it’s powerful in certain instances but the criticism doesn’t come out of nowhere.
@@HarrisonTong your criticism about darktable is all about the advanced options you didn't understand and want them to be burried behind the scenes like lightroom does which is clearly the opposite of what darktable is all about.
Still, he has a point. Even if it is for people who understand the concepts behind image editing, you have to package this stuff in a usable package.
Darktable sometimes feels like that they put scientific papers directly into a UI.
I am not against that these applications should have some scientific terms in the UI (e.g. other applications mention hsv, RGB, cielab everywhere), but where Darktable imho fails is to realize that they are not market leaders and cannot introduce new terminology into the world of image editing.
Either they should try to stick to the normal industry standard naming or slightly deviate from it. You can still write in the manual which mathematical operations are behind it but not in the main ui.
I still use Darktable, but I have to agree the UI is weird.
- The strict principle of modules is weird. E.g. I think cropping would be done better as a separate thing.
- some modules might do multiple things, but then it wouldn't hurt to extract this subset as a separate module. For example, the colour calibration RGB does white balance and channel mixer. It might be the same from principle, but for usability, move the channel mixer out of colour balance module and have it as a separate module. It might still be the same behind the scenes, but just separate it and call it obviously to the industry standards.
- same thing with Tone Equalizer. Why not just call it tone curve, remove the simple option (which I would assume not many people use) and streamline the usage.
For me, Darktable feels heavily inspired more by Davinci Resolve than by Lightroom. But Resolve is hugely popular, in contrast to Darktable.
@@HarrisonTong if you do the adjustments with the right mouse button, the updates are instant if your hardware is fast enough and compatible
Been using Darktable for a while. Found it is actually easy to use. The masking tool is very powerful, fast and useful.
I was forced to leave Aperture 10 years ago, and now force to leave PS and LR.
I can no longer edit 10,000 wedding photos of my old clients becuase Apple decides not to support Aperture. That is the main reason I opt to learn Darktable.
Coming in to this a year late… Props for trying all these out!
Photomator is like the younger sibling to Pixelmator Pro (the healing on this is outstanding btw), by the same company, which absolutely rocks. I might try photomator just to see if it can handle RAW DJI Mini Pro 3 files.
Apple Photo has always supported storage on the Mac (without iCloud). Having said that, Aperture's replacement by Apple Photo is the reason I went with Capture One back in 2016.
Capture One is very good. The developers are constantly making the software better. "AI" tools are included and being added all the time.
I bought the Affinity suite for their Publisher and Designer packages. Photo is okay, but doesn't come close to Pixelmator.
Good video. Thank you.
I use DXO photolab, or on1 photoraw (lightroom equivelant), instead of lightroom, and Affinity photo2 instead of Photoshop. Also use Neo, to do things like skin retouch...
Whatever gets the job done 🙂
Thank you for putting my on photomator, trying it
Awesome content by the way
A correction, if I may. With Apple photos it only the catalogue that sinks that will cause you storage issues. You can create a standalone catalogue on your local hard drive that doesn’t sync to the cloud so you can have multiples.
@@Coatsey007 have heard this, definitely something I’m gonna look at for next time
Darktable and Gimp. Subscriptions can bite me.
You get what you pay for but they can do the job.
Darktable is good thought. Very good.
Krita ftw bro
I like dark table quite a bit but I find gimp to be extremely lackluster. Personally I use affinity photo because it's only a one time purchase. Plus, I like that I'm supporting perpetual licenses as a valid business practice
I started editing my photos in PS like 3 when it was very manual, glad I did because I can edit great in other programs. This made me happy when Serif brought out Photo I dropped Adobe like a hot potato, never looked back.
Btw: Apple photos does have a spot remover. It is called retouch and is the bandaid logo. It’s pretty bad though
Was curious to see darktable in here. I myself was using it while watching the video lol. I do admit, it's really overwhelming when you jump into it. But you really have to put in the time to create your own layout. Coming from Lightroom, it's really hard at first, but once you manage to get all your "most used" modules sorted out in a good way and you get a feel for it, it's not that bad at all! Can't say I don't hate myself for forcing myself to go more open source sometimes. x) Nice video, thanks!
I grew up on darktable. After 4 years of editing almost every day some young photographer would download LR and destroy me in editing. I tried it again about a year ago and you can't bring up shadows without a bunch of really disgusting effects. In the end I just stick to pirating lightroom.
Used Darktable last week and did find it confusing. Also didn't find the quality of conversion very good in the shadows.
@@betterpixs has it good and bad sides, won't deny. Really love the idea behind it all though
Decided to learn Darktable as participant of the Adobe Exudos. I think it is underated piece of software.
It can be technical, but once you learn it, it can be easy and powerful at the same time.
Having migrated from Aperture to LR, i know I can't trust my work and assets on these corporates.
Affinity Photo2 is probably the closest replacement for Photoshop because it attempts to be similar to Photoshop to some extent. Unfortunately, Photo2 does have some major weak points when it comes to selections and functionality. Selecting tools is a confusing and not quick. When selecting an area of your image in Photos2 you can only pick one (1) color, and then you have to use a slider to increase the sensitivity outside of this color. Thats it. This leaves you in the unfortunate situation of either making a thin selection that doesn't capture all you need or an overly inclusive selection that captures too much, potentially a haze all over. Either way you are faster doing the selection manually or lots of cleanups. In Photoshop you can add additional colors holding down the alt-key and you can adjust your sensitivity separately so you can grab just the color range you need with far less cleanup; lets say only beiges but not the yellows and greens. In Photos2 you get beige but also some greens and yellows and there is nothing you can do about that except very time consuming manual selection. In terms of tool selection pressing a letter "b" sometimes gives you Brush-tool but i think it is actually toggling between the last tool and the current tool. It is confusing. Adjusting layers is also confusing because you need to drag the adjustment layer on to the target layer or it will effect all lower layers, you cant toggle the effect quickly; you have to remove it from the target layer and then toggle it off. These are just a few problems I have experienced, there are many more, and the non-existent "AI" remove tools or spot healing brush mentioned in this video is a major drag. I didnt ditch Photoshop because it sucks, Ive used if for decades, I play it keyboard like Mozart using it, but because of Adobe Corporation. Their profit driven immorality, FAR too expensive, no purchase option, and I dont want to submit to their exploitation of my privacy or intellectual rights. There are many videos that explain in detail the demonic business practices of Adobe.
Where's gimp? It's one of the most popular photoshop like photo editor.
But does it develop RAW files? It was pretty much a Lightroom alternative video, less of a Photoshop alternative video.
@@JikoMuskato He talk about Affinity photo that is a Photoshop-like program. I think that GIMP is a good option for free.
Sony Imaging Edge installation also took me a while 😂 All I could think was WHYYY😆
Love the video!
Nice to see a fellow "Hammock" fan!
Great music choice!!! 😄
I use capture one and Adobe photoshop.
Capture one for color editing and skin tone editing and photoshop for retouching object removal etc
Update tho there is AI masking and erasing now it’s just different from Lightroom’s
This a great comparison video.
I would really suggest trying the latest version of Capture One again. It has improved so much in the past year.
The AI options are really, really useful right now.
I have never used the Adobe products (and probably never will...).
Instead i have been using C1 and Affinity Photo as my editing combo.
Although C1 is going the expensive route of the Adobe products lately...
I may have to explore other options like you have here.
As a "serious hobbyist" that doesn't make ANY money with photography (although i wish i could...), I can't afford to shell out this much money all the time, just to be able to keep up with the developments of the software.
Great job!
This is a great video, can you please make updates on the photomator and maybe review pixelmator as an alternative for the photoshop
Thank you!
Great suggestion!
Great Information. Thanks for taking the time to do all this work. Please get a mic stand and lock your focus.
I expected more people to actually pointing out Gimp the Linux standard image editing software.
I have used a lot Photoshop. Now away from Windows. I use Gimp and they are really similar of course there are difference but I think they are really really close.
Is there a reason why you haven't tried GIMP ?
What i love of photomator is the crop way
16:15 removing objects doesn't work as well as in PS, but it's there in Affinity. Select object, then click Edit -> Inpaint.
Thanks! I'm going to trial capture one 👍
Photomator relies on apple's raw engine. I saw people saying this applies noise reduction within Photomator whether one likes it or not. I run my own tests and that seems to be the case. I found that applying the high res option can help, but this doesn't seem like a long term solution to the issue. As things stand I'm getting considerably better results using darktable. There is a substantial learning curve with darktable,, and I love the performance of Photomator, but the apple raw engine almost makes it a no-go for me at the moment. If that is ever fixed, I'll jump in without a second thought.
Darktable. Forget the AI stuff, and yes one has to learn some modules in detail to use them. But it's powerful and it's free.
I only look at other programs for the layer based editing ( Darktable doesn't have that)
Affinity Photo has 'inpainting' which is the equivalent of Photoshop's Content Aware fill. They have also just added AI Selections in the latest Beta version. If Affinity can add a generative fill feature that works well I wouldn't bother with Photoshop
“A plethora of presets”; Nice!
I feel you misrepresented the Sky replacement feature in Luminar Neo. You used a preset instead of showing the actual Sky replacement tool/process which is far superior especially used with your own Sky photos. The presets I agree are horrendous but I’m sure no one actually uses them
Well done for such a detailed comparison.
Thank you
I'm happy with Darktable
I'm sure it works for many people I just can't see it working for me :)
where's pixelmator pro?
Why no pixelmator pro?
Ive worked on two versions of apple photos... You can export jpeg, png, tiff. You can select between raw or jpeg of you ahoot that way. Im not sure what you mean by icloud library only
It does have a retouch tool, whoch isn't great for large or conpex removals, but is good for spots. Although I actually think the older version of the tool was better
It even has basic perspective correction.
I do use a different software for my naming and filing and a first cull, but my raws all just get dragged into photos after that.
Do any of these have cataloging features like in Lightroom? I usually take a burst when trying wildlife and Lightroom seems to be the only place where I can go through my photos and decide to pick/reject easily.
Darktable has very good cataloging. You can start with simple reject/1-5 stars along with 6 color options. You can also create tags for anything you can thing of like boats, nighttime, Madison Square Garden, etc.
c1 has also a catalog if you want or better can use it. can, because as a professional, you often do so many photos that it get impossible to manage the amount of data on one computer. Also we also regularly work in teams, let do the editing and retouching done by another person, direct on the raw. C1 has a couple of tools build in exactly for this.
Finally my favorite RUclipsr posted
Thank you, very helpful video!!
You're welcome!
Adobe Free. Best I have is Photomator, which is great replacement for Lightroom. Second is Pixelmator for Layer Based Photoshop replacement. LOVE both. I also have Affinity Photo which I use occasionally.
That was very interesting, thanks for taking the time to produce that film.
Thank you 🙏🏻
Is Photometer only for Mac?
Very informative video. Going to get a sub from this small creator.
Very good comparison! Thank you!
Glad you liked it!
For what I saw. Canva is going to acquire affinity, which can make affinity to have AI tools in the future and make a good competitor to Adobe
It would be great if you could’ve also looked at culling. With photoshop and similar software, it’s hard to edit 1000s of photos as you have to open them individually and export them individually.
Also, performance on my older MacBook was pretty bad for a lot of these apps. Lightroom and photomator are workable. But the AI versions were just unworkable for me. Same for darktable. It’s not really a review of performance when you do it on a blazing fast computer.
Alas, Darktable also has really poor GPU support on Macs. I don’t know if this is only a budgetary restriction, as much as an objection to paying Apple’s Xcode developer fee.
There is huge potential, but, as you say, it would be good if someone took the source and developed a nice UX, and added a small fee to cover Xcode developer fee to obtain native Mac GPU [ Metal®️]support
Darktable is fantastic!
Aftershot is cool, photomator too, luminar, camerabag pro, acdsee
The same thing that happened in the music recording industry needs to happen in the photo/video editing, and graphic design/publishing industries. They used to be heavily gate kept by Pro Tools as the industry standard due to its accompanying hardware needed in early low specced CPU computers. As CPU’s got more powerful, the need for the brand specific hardware made less sense and people began toying with alternative (much more creative and innovative) recording software like Ableton, Logic, FL Studio, Reason etc but because the fossils at the studios only knew Pro Tools it stuck. However, the mounting pressure from the artists and waning need for large production studios it has finally broken the stranglehold hold Avid had with its Pro Tools.
Yeah I’m looking forward to that moment
I got a shout out at 5:34 thanks bro... was a fun video in all seriousness
💯
First up, great job covering these programs, In essence you have done exactly what I have done and tried all of theses apps to find the ones that suit your use and I feel you have covered them well as a user. I personally have settled on Capture One for most of my Raw processing, I find this app gives me the best overall ability to process large quantities of images with quality outcomes. I also am very impressed with Photomator and will be like you keeping an eye on its development. And lastly I have to react to the the person who was very upset about your comments about Dark Table, I like you found the app to be very difficult to use in any productive way with large quantities of images, it may well be the Bees Knees of professional programmers/photographers who get deep into the technology but for users who want quick accurate control and productivity it is not for us.
Cheers mate, yeah capture one seems solid all around. Thanks for watching :)
Are you both talking about the Capture One that everyone and their mother uses for tethering?
I use the free Adobe Photoshop Express and it is very good for quick JPEGs adjustments.
DxO is nice. Develops RAWs really well. But it lacls a lot of basic fonctions compared to most players.
- Average selection tools
- Panorama stitching or stacking features
- DxO ViewPoint has to be biught if one needs to correct perspective.
- Weird U-Points instead of a basic radial gradient…
- Availability of luminosity mask conditioned by separate purchase of DxO FilmPack to work. (Even when buying DxO PL’s Elite version!)
- Some functions have been stripped off DxO Nik Collection to push people to buy the other software…
- No Elliptic or octogonal control points
- No iPhone support (not important for me though)
I agree: DxO Denoise is better than standard LR Denoise, bur LR’s AI denoise is even nicer.
For years DxO’s main selling point is Denoising. The rest barely evolves: Prime, Deep Prime, Deep Prime XD, Deep Prime XD2, Deep Prime XD 2 S.
Take a look of camerabag pro and acdsee , also i loved photomator
-The unspoken moral of the story is you get what you pay for. Yes, Adobe is expensive. It's the gold standard for a reason.
-You didn't mention software that comes with the camera... NX Studio for Nikon, DP4 for Canon, Fuji X Studio for Fuji, OM Workspace for OM Systems etc.. I do all of my global adjustments in NX Studio and then export the Tif to Camera Raw for local adjustments.
Well I mean I only have a Sony Camera so the other programs aren’t gonna work with my .ARW files but I hear you
I can see the programs at the end of the video you lost complete interest in reviewing the actual program. You didn't even give an actual rating at the end of the section like you did at the beginning XD
ha ha.. in 1996 I was an interface designer.. I got a major gig with a software company to 'fix' four software titles.. it was hilarious. they were all suffering from 'programmer designer syndrome'.. one of them was a 3D map program, basically a proto google earth.. there was 2 dozen tabs with acronyms of various technical terms!.. I'm like WHAT THE LIVING FORK IS THIS?? this was supposed to be for 12 year olds.. haha..no wonder all the testing was returning 'wtf is this??' so just FYI.. PDS is real.. and has been around since DOS. hehe
Really great video, thank you.
RAW PHOTO PROCESSOR (RPP) = The best, highest fidelity, most film like result I've yet to encounter. And it's FREE.
The closest in color fidelity is the Exposure X7 Kodachrome 25 filter. But it's a distant second.
Something is in the works. Apple aquired Pixelmator recently.
Greater video! Thanks Harrison! 😊
Thanks for watching!
Is there any free software for editing Raw images?
Obviously you are so simplistic that you can only edit by sliding sliders. Learn before you criticize Darktable
As usual I was too quick an too short. My point was that to give Darktable a fair evaluation, you need to learn how to use it. I agree that is programmer based but that fits my mentality. Once you spend the time (several hours/days) learning Darktable you learn that it is powerful and can do almost everything that Lightroom can do but without the $240 per year ongoing cost. If your mentality is programmer and you are willing to learn Darktable is good.
Darktable is so freaking powerful, it amazes me sometimes.
I have used Darktable since 3.8 and am done with it. I shot some pictures at a workshop put on by Sony using their new A9III. Darktable can't open them because its too new plus it doesn't recognize a couple of my Nikon lenses for lens correction. Then, I took a couple of printing workshops and came home and couldn't find the print module that the manual talks about. I could find it opening up Darktable on my old, slow MacBookPro but my powerful pc running Windows 10 doesn't have that option. I could go on and on and on. It is a good piece of software if you are a Linux geek and love to write scripts but I have better things to do like focus stacking (easy in Adobe). And Darktable is all sliders, dude. Like the incredibly slow diffuse or sharpen module or Aulien deciding to change everything from display referred to scene referred and renaming/combing modules from one release to another. Who on earth has a module called white balance that you DON'T use to change your white balance besides a programmer? Sure, color calibration RGB module and then the CAT tab is where anyone in their simplistic mind would go to take care of white balance:)
If it works for you, great but I am happy to pay Adobe $20 a month just to never open the manual again:)
Darktable is too complicated, lots of modules to do the same thing, but one works a bit better, masking is terrible... I wouldn't imagine editing a large batch of photos with it.
Perpetual license for Photomator is $120 in August of 2024, not $55, if that was in fact true a year ago; maybe that's a typo in the video. Got me all excited, until I checked the actual cost.
Dark table UI is bad but can't look past that price
no it's not bad! how long did you take to learn anything, or did you go straight from adobe to any other product without learn anything! the problem with adobe people is they are spoon fed adobe and can't learn any other way or software without learning how to use it! sad; really sad!
It is good, it is different, inordinary, but it is good and logical once you learn it.
Capture 1's perpetual license doesn't include updates
Still nice to have
Problem is after years of Adobe changing is difficult because you cannot take the third party plugins with. Affinity should import PS plugins, but I didn't succeed.
The only thing that bugs me that not all Sony cameras raw formats supported on macOS (both Apple Photos and Photomator rely on this). I have to use Adobe DNG Converter to convert .ARW to .DNG. It's not hard, but still one extra step. How it's with other apps? Do they rely on macOS raw support, too?
You need to go to the App Store and download the thing from Apple that gives you pro raw support - forget what it’s called but it’s like a plugin for the OS to read the files and made by apple
Here With Adobe Master Collection , ME- Videographer/ Photographer/ Graphic designer & Animator
Thank you very much for this video..
Welcome!
Thanks for the video !
I actually only started using lightroom a little while ago I mostly used Phase one before and it just works s whole lot better with cap1 since it's made by cap1... Also tethered shooting with cap1 is just better
Thanks for the video…
Interesting that you did not use Gimp….I know a lot of people in club photography that use it..and it is free…
You are obviously on Mac, but Windows photo viewer has also added some editing features that will be enough for many people…if they are on Windows..
Please include Pixelmator Pro in upcoming videos. Thanks.
Good video man. Take care of the audio level throughout your videos.
Photomator got bought by Apple now.
Interested to see what happens here, hopefully it gets the darksky treatment
Professional photography industry in New York and Los Angles is dominated by Capture One - no one uses Lightroom although PhotoShop is the standard for retouching