How to learn editing photos

[Mavicpilot2]

Hi!

Just bought my Mavic Pro and have started to take some photos. I also try to learn how to edit the photos in the best way but I am struggling to know how to edit them in the best way.

Do you think that this photo has been edited in a good way? Don`t be afraid to critize, I am here to learn

First photo is the original and the second one is the edited one.

Many thanks!

 

[reinerboehme]

Result with Aurora 2019

 

[bushpil0t]

beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you wanted a darkly burdened feeling the first one works better, if you wanted sunshine and kisses then the second one is in line, you have to decide how much detail to show, the shadows, the highlights. After getting what you want in focus, or not, take it from there, it is your story and you get to tell it how you want. That said, take a class from a pro and get some learned advice.

 

[Cymruflyer]

There are so many things that can be done to a photo it is hard to know what you would like the final image to look like. There are soooo many great videos on YouTube about photo manipulation, I would suggest you take a few days and look through those. Look at Photoshop editing, if you have a copy of Photoshop, that is.

There are a number of other great software makers that allow you very easy control of editing your photos. I would suggest you look at On1, and NIK as well as Topaz Labs. The best value would be Topaz Studio because of all of them, the Topaz brand gives you free updates for life, whereby all the others charge you every time a new updated version comes out.

Now you do not always need to update if you are happy with what you currently have, when updates are released, however, the fact that Topaz have always allowed its owner/user to have free upgrade whenever a new, updated version comes out, is for me a great service its customers. None of the three I mentioned are expensive, when compared to Photoshop, which also has a big learning curve, if you know nothing about Photoshop or editing, as great as Photoshop is.

Also there are many, many videos to help teach you how to use, and/or better your photo editing skills, from all three brands I mentioned. You won't go wrong if you buy any of the three. And of course if you go for Photoshop, you can no longer buy it outright, you now have to rent it, so to speak. They now only offer a monthly subscription and once you stop paying that, you no longer have access to that programme. None of the other three work that way. Buy it once and keep and use it forever, which I much prefer, I do not like to be held to a monthly ransom.

 

[Cymruflyer]

Here are two after 30 seconds play in NIK for B&W and Topaz for colour image. But not meant to be a finished photos, just a quick play to show you. The colour is very similar to yours, which was nice by the way.

 

[Cymruflyer]

For some reason I could not get two at once to go through. Here is the B&W.

 

[Cymruflyer]

Hi!

Just bought my Mavic Pro and have started to take some photos. I also try to learn how to edit the photos in the best way but I am struggling to know how to edit them in the best way.

Do you think that this photo has been edited in a good way? Don`t be afraid to critize, I am here to learn

First photo is the original and the second one is the edited one.

Many thanks!

Having problems uploading your photo, lets try again

 

[Cymruflyer]

One last try...

 

[Cymruflyer]

For some reason I am have no lucky trying to upload the other colour example for you.

 

[jwischka]

Hi!

Just bought my Mavic Pro and have started to take some photos. I also try to learn how to edit the photos in the best way but I am struggling to know how to edit them in the best way.

Do you think that this photo has been edited in a good way? Don`t be afraid to critize, I am here to learn

First photo is the original and the second one is the edited one.

Many thanks!

So a few things.

1. Composition and good technique in camera is more important than editing, usually. I think this is even more true with a slightly less forgiving camera like the M2P (compared to modern SLR/ILCs).
2. Getting something perfect SOOC is nice, but it also probably means you're leaving detail on the table, especially in the shadows. It's always good to not have to process a shot more than your typical import preset, but if you want to get the absolute best results, some processing is probably necessary. (See also: ETTR).
3. It's not clear since you posted the JPG here, but always shoot in RAW, if you can. JPEGs are great for presentation purposes, but they also discard a significant amount of tonal information (even for a 12-bit signal path, the jpeg contains less than 10% of the tonal information that a RAW file does - for a 14-bit path it's closer to 2%).
4. At the end of the day, digital images are numbers and image processing is math.
5. Don't skimp on software - it's as important as your hardware. It blows my mind when photographers spend thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars on cameras and lenses, then grouse about paying $10/month to Adobe, as if Photoshop and Lightroom don't provide any value to the whole process. Here's the truth: with a few exceptions, the best photo processing software costs money. My personal opinion would be to avoid doing things halfway - in other words, spending money on programs like (but not limited to) products from ON1 and Skylum (i.e. Luminar/Aurora), which are cheaper, yes, but are also objectively not as good when it comes to the actual output they produce. If cost is really an issue, my suggestion would be to go with FLOSS packages (Darktable, RawTherapee, GIMP) that are capable of producing decent outputs and cost literally nothing.
6. Watch videos (YouTube) about some of the different tools in particular packages. This is where using a common package (Lightroom) really helps, because there are going to be a ton of tutorials on how to do pretty much anything you want. Some people on YouTube are great and provide a lot of insight, some are paid shills trying to sell you their presets and courses. All of them can teach you something.
7. Along with 6: avoid presets and filters (though not profiles, if you're using Lightroom, which are a different thing). The best way to get a distinctive look for your photos is not to use someone else's presets, but to really learn how all the various tools work in a particular package. Start to play around with various sliders and see how they affect the image. See which ones have a bigger impact, and which ones are more subtle.
8. There are a lot of fads in image processing. Some of them are useful. Others less so. Almost every major package has added support for LUTs in the last year and a half, which certainly has uses - and especially has uses if you're trying to get your still images to look like some video footage you shot. LUTs are really powerful for certain applications, but they're not all that great as a general photo editing tool. When a new feature comes out, learn what it's doing, learn how to use it, then evaluate whether it's actually an improvement over your current process.
9. Local adjustments are critical. This is a more recent thing for me, but I am increasingly likely to not touch the "main" sliders for my landscape images at all, instead using local adjustments in Lightroom to target specific areas of the image. Overall this is kind of a style / preference thing - I could also edit one area of the image (e.g. the sky) to where I wanted it using the global settings, then go back and edit the ground with local adjustments based on those settings.
   • There are a lot of cool things you can do with advanced masking tools like luminance and color masking. Learn how to use them.
10. Don't be afraid to experiment. Two great features in Lightroom: 1) the history, which shows you exactly what you've done to the image and lets you return there at any point, as well as save snapshots, and 2) the virtual copy features, which lets you have a variety of different looks for the same image. Processing is free, and you'll get better at it the more that you do it.
11. Tying in with 7, but try to understand what the actual sliders are doing, rather than just moving them around. So, for example, it's important to know that vibrance and saturation will both affect the intensity of colors in your image, but they do so in different ways (vibrance is basically non-linear and affects the most muted colors first, where saturation is linear and affects everything evenly). But it's also important to know that you can change the saturation for individual channels of your images (if, say, you want to bring down the saturation of the yellows). Or you could add a bit of yellow in just the highlights by using the split toning tool. In other words, knowing what tools you have available to you and what they do is tremendously helpful in assessing what you can do creatively with your images.
12. Reprocess your images frequently. New tools come out that have the potential to make work you shot years ago look better. Moreover, as you learn new techniques, you'll be better at processing than you were when you first looked at the images. I typically go back once a year or so and reprocess some of the shots in my gallery that I took years before, applying new tools and techniques to those old images. Sometimes I like the result more, sometimes I don't. But I always learn something about how to process going forward that feeds back into my workflow.

With regard to your specific edit: I think it's fine - certainly an improvement over the original. I think I would have increased the microcontrast (clarity) on the dock section, and probably reduced the exposure on the water to make it a little more black (or just changed the black clipping level, depending on which turned out to be more effective).

Hopefully that's helpful. Happy to answer any other questions you have.

 

[Cymruflyer]

So a few things.

3. It's not clear since you posted the JPG here, but always shoot in RAW, if you can. JPEGs are great for presentation purposes, but they also discard a significant amount of tonal information (even for a 12-bit signal path, the jpeg contains less than 10% of the tonal information that a RAW file does - for a 14-bit path it's closer to 2%.

5. Don't skimp on software - it's as important as your hardware. It blows my mind when photographers spend thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars on cameras and lenses, then grouse about paying $10/month to Adobe, as if Photoshop and Lightroom don't provide any value to the whole process. Here's the truth: with a few exceptions, the best photo processing software costs money. My personal opinion would be to avoid doing things halfway - in other words, spending money on programs like (but not limited to) products from ON1 and Skylum (i.e. Luminar/Aurora), which are cheaper, yes, but are also objectively not as good when it comes to the actual output they produce. If cost is really an issue, my suggestion would be to go with FLOSS packages (Darktable, RawTherapee, GIMP) that are capable of producing decent outputs and cost literally nothing.

7. Along with 6: avoid presets and filters (though not profiles, if you're using Lightroom, which are a different thing). The best way to get a distinctive look for your photos is not to use someone else's presets, but to really learn how all the various tools work in a particular package. Start to play around with various sliders and see how they affect the image. See which ones have a bigger impact, and which ones are more subtle.

9. Local adjustments are critical. This is a more recent thing for me, but I am increasingly likely to not touch the "main" sliders for my landscape images at all, instead using local adjustments in Lightroom to target specific areas of the image. Overall this is kind of a style / preference thing - I could also edit one area of the image (e.g. the sky) to where I wanted it using the global settings, then go back and edit the ground with local adjustments based on those settings.

• There are a lot of cool things you can do with advanced masking tools like luminance and color masking. Learn how to use them.

10. Don't be afraid to experiment. Two great features in Lightroom: 1) the history, which shows you exactly what you've done to the image and lets you return there at any point, as well as save snapshots, and 2) the virtual copy features, which lets you have a variety of different looks for the same image. Processing is free, and you'll get better at it the more that you do it.

11. Tying in with 7, but try to understand what the actual sliders are doing, rather than just moving them around. So, for example, it's important to know that vibrance and saturation will both affect the intensity of colors in your image, but they do so in different ways (vibrance is basically non-linear and affects the most muted colors first, where saturation is linear and affects everything evenly). But it's also important to know that you can change the saturation for individual channels of your images (if, say, you want to bring down the saturation of the yellows). Or you could add a bit of yellow in just the highlights by using the split toning tool. In other words, knowing what tools you have available to you and what they do is tremendously helpful in assessing what you can do creatively with your images.

Regarding your comments, though I agree with most things said, there are a few inaccurate things you said. Gimp for example is nice but has a more difficult learning curve than some of the others alternatives mentioned, though it is free, but free is not always better, as you know.

Lightroom and Photoshop are great, I have used them for many, many years but they are not low priced and if you stop paying ransom/rent you will no longer have them to use. If the price stays the same, in three years you will have paid out $360 to use them and the next day if you stop paying, you have nothing to show for that money because you will no longer have them to use. On the other hand, if you bought any of the others mentioned, they would be cheaper and you would have them forever, not just while you paid rent.

As for always shooting in RAW, this is good advice for those who want to do great things with their images but the files are huge and will take up a ton of storage space over time, as in terabytes and terabyte. I suppose it really depends on what the photographer wants to do with their images. If it is to just enjoy and do the odd 16x20 or so enlargement, then a JPG is going to serve them just fine, plus they won't have to edited every single image they wish to keep, whereby you do if you want a half way decent image shot in RAW. Plus to do that editing you will need a certain amount of expertise to know what you are doing and many are not there in such advanced editing skills and may never want to be that good.

As for discounting On1, you may have not looked at that for a long time, because NIK, On1 and Topaz all have sliders to work with just like Lightroom and they allow you to work in RAW and they allow you to save an image rather than your original when you have played around with it in post, plus they have a range of presets that allow you to instantly look at different option to use to alter your image to a look that you might like. And they allow you to make adjustments via sliders, to every one of their preset functions to help you get a unique look and they all allow you to save your original image.

So, basically, Topaz and On1 and Nik allow you to do everything you suggested doing, when using the more expense Lightroom and Photoshop, both of which have higher learning curves, but at a much lower price and an easier work flow and once purchased, you own them forever. I am not knocking the functions and features of Photoshop and Lightroom, they are amazing and probably the best on the market, but at a cost and a cost that you will forever have to keep paying out like rent or a ransom that never ends.

I would be suggesting to those new to editing, that those programmes mentioned as alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom should not be considered, because that would be bad advice. Those considering should just go the website of each and browse through some tutorials to get a better understanding of what is on offer and how they work, then make a decision on which one or ones to go with.

 

[beach_Dr]

If you want to learn about how to edit, consider joining a local photographic club. Normally many members eager to help and give formal feedback on images.

 

[jwischka]

Regarding your comments, though I agree with most things said, there are a few inaccurate things you said. Gimp for example is nice but has a more difficult learning curve than some of the others alternatives mentioned, though it is free, but free is not always better, as you know.

Of course. All of the FLOSS packages are... well, written like most FLOSS. That is to say, they mostly look like they were written by a programmer and could use some serious help in the UX department. Darktable and RawTherapee are better than GIMP, but they're not as user friendly as I would like. That said, I think they're no less user-friendly than something like ON1, and my initial guess (though I've not done a strict analysis) would be that they probably produce better images.

Lightroom and Photoshop are great, I have used them for many, many years but they are not low priced and if you stop paying ransom/rent you will no longer have them to use. If the price stays the same, in three years you will have paid out $360 to use them and the next day if you stop paying, you have nothing to show for that money because you will no longer have them to use. On the other hand, if you bought any of the others mentioned, they would be cheaper and you would have them forever, not just while you paid rent.

To slightly modify your quote from above, though, "cheaper is not always better, as you know." Sure, those packages are "cheaper" - though to take an example of ON1, if you buy it for full price ($129 if you don't pre-order - which you absolutely should not given their history of crappy initial releases) the first year, then pay for the $50 early bird upgrade the next two years, you've spent $229 compared to $360 for Photoshop/Lightroom. Which is 1/3 less, yes, but it's much closer than the "buy once own it forever" rhetoric suggests. To say that you buy it, then have it forever is sort of a misnomer, because you have the version you bought and only the version you bought, not the one with the latest bells and whistles and all the features they claimed were going to be in last year's version that never got implemented. There are advantages both ways, but it's not exactly apples-to-apples to compare a one-time purchase three years ago (which would, if you're talking about three years ago today, be a version of ON1 that didn't open RAW files at all - Photo RAW was "pre-released" about this time two years ago) - to a subscription that offers frequent feature updates (and, in the case of Adobe, unfortunately, frequent performance setbacks ).

As for always shooting in RAW, this is good advice for those who want to do great things with their images but the files are huge and will take up a ton of storage space over time, as in terabytes and terabyte. I suppose it really depends on what the photographer wants to do with their images. If it is to just enjoy and do the odd 16x20 or so enlargement, then a JPG is going to serve them just fine, plus they won't have to edited every single image they wish to keep, whereby you do if you want a half way decent image shot in RAW. Plus to do that editing you will need a certain amount of expertise to know what you are doing and many are not there in such advanced editing skills and may never want to be that good.

Storage is cheap. I have a 32TB NAS. Even if you don't want to invest in a real system to store and backup your images, most photographers - even those shooting a lot and shooting in RAW - aren't going to spend more than $100 a year on storage. Cloud backups (specifically Amazon's Prime photo service) are reasonable inexpensive. The "it takes more space" argument just doesn't hold for me these days. Yes, if you want snapshots, jpegs are fine. If you want the highest quality possible, shoot RAW. But honestly, the number of times shooting in RAW saved my bacon even when I was just shooting snapshots makes it more than worth it, in my opinion.

As for discounting On1, you may have not looked at that for a long time, because NIK, On1 and Topaz all have sliders to work with just like Lightroom and they allow you to work in RAW and they allow you to save an image rather than your original when you have played around with it in post, plus they have a range of presets that allow you to instantly look at different option to use to alter your image to a look that you might like. And they allow you to make adjustments via sliders, to every one of their preset functions to help you get a unique look and they all allow you to save your original image.

I didn't discount them because of their user interface or processing workflow. I discounted them because they - in my opinion - do not produce the same level of image quality, particularly in their demosaicing algorithms, as either Lightroom or Capture One (and, to a lesser extent, DxO's PhotoLab). ON1 is particularly noteworthy here. Consider a side-by-side-by-side I did with Lightroom, Luminar, and ON1. I haven't gotten a chance to return to that series since I've been out and about taking fall photos, but I hope to get back to it later. The basic upshot, though, is that, in a number of situations, the small-shop packages (and again, I mainly mean Skylum and ON1 here, since those are the ones I've looked at most closely) produce results that are not as good as their more established competitors (Adobe, Phase One, to a lesser extent DxO). That's not to say ON1/Skylum are bad per se, but they simply aren't as good from an image quality perspective. (If IQ isn't your main concern, then you may have reasons for wanting to use one or the other... but for me, IQ is the sine qua non of the business. I can put up with a lot of shenanigans by Adobe if they ultimately produce the best image).

So, basically, Topaz and On1 and Nik allow you to do everything you suggested doing, when using the more expense Lightroom and Photoshop, both of which have higher learning curves, but at a much lower price and an easier work flow and once purchased, you own them forever. I am not knocking the functions and features of Photoshop and Lightroom, they are amazing and probably the best on the market, but at a cost and a cost that you will forever have to keep paying out like rent or a ransom that never ends.

Again, you're speaking like you can use a 3-year-old version of ON1 (Perfect Photo 10) in perpetuity. Do Photoshop / Lightroom cost more? Sure ($360 / $220 over a three year period, as mentioned). Capture One costs even more if you keep it up to date (which is one reason I don't own it)! But my larger point is that photographers spend far more than $120 a year - generally speaking - on upgrading their gear and think nothing of it. Heck, you'll spend more than $120 on an XQD memory card. Why not think of the $120 a year as the price you pay to keep your software up to date?

I would be suggesting to those new to editing, that those programmes mentioned as alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom should not be considered, because that would be bad advice. Those considering should just go the website of each and browse through some tutorials to get a better understanding of what is on offer and how they work, then make a decision on which one or ones to go with.

I would agree with this, if features equated to quality. They do not. Plenty of programs have the same feature set, but the quality of their implementations are vary widely. Just because something says it has "class-leading" noise reduction or "AI-powered adjustments and controls" doesn't mean those things actually produce decent photographs when you start using them in the real world.

And look - I'm not suggesting packages like ON1 don't have their place, no matter how critical I've been of them on the internets. I think they work pretty well for the mom-tog crowd that is interested in ingesting a lot of photos pretty quickly, using a bunch of presets to get something that looks decent (albeit trendy), and then shove it out the door to clients and never look at it again. And there's something to be said for that, really. But if you really want to learn how to edit - especially if you're interested in landscapes or fine art rather than portraits - those aren't the tools you should be starting with.

 

[Cymruflyer]

Of course. All of the FLOSS packages are... well, written like most FLOSS. That is to say, they mostly look like they were written by a programmer and could use some serious help in the UX department. Darktable and RawTherapee are better than GIMP, but they're not as user friendly as I would like. That said, I think they're no less user-friendly than something like ON1, and my initial guess (though I've not done a strict analysis) would be that they probably produce better images.



To slightly modify your quote from above, though, "cheaper is not always better, as you know." Sure, those packages are "cheaper" - though to take an example of ON1, if you buy it for full price ($129 if you don't pre-order - which you absolutely should not given their history of crappy initial releases) the first year, then pay for the $50 early bird upgrade the next two years, you've spent $229 compared to $360 for Photoshop/Lightroom. Which is 1/3 less, yes, but it's much closer than the "buy once own it forever" rhetoric suggests. To say that you buy it, then have it forever is sort of a misnomer, because you have the version you bought and only the version you bought, not the one with the latest bells and whistles and all the features they claimed were going to be in last year's version that never got implemented. There are advantages both ways, but it's not exactly apples-to-apples to compare a one-time purchase three years ago (which would, if you're talking about three years ago today, be a version of ON1 that didn't open RAW files at all - Photo RAW was "pre-released" about this time two years ago) - to a subscription that offers frequent feature updates (and, in the case of Adobe, unfortunately, frequent performance setbacks ).



Storage is cheap. I have a 32TB NAS. Even if you don't want to invest in a real system to store and backup your images, most photographers - even those shooting a lot and shooting in RAW - aren't going to spend more than $100 a year on storage. Cloud backups (specifically Amazon's Prime photo service) are reasonable inexpensive. The "it takes more space" argument just doesn't hold for me these days. Yes, if you want snapshots, jpegs are fine. If you want the highest quality possible, shoot RAW. But honestly, the number of times shooting in RAW saved my bacon even when I was just shooting snapshots makes it more than worth it, in my opinion.



I didn't discount them because of their user interface or processing workflow. I discounted them because they - in my opinion - do not produce the same level of image quality, particularly in their demosaicing algorithms, as either Lightroom or Capture One (and, to a lesser extent, DxO's PhotoLab). ON1 is particularly noteworthy here. Consider a side-by-side-by-side I did with Lightroom, Luminar, and ON1. I haven't gotten a chance to return to that series since I've been out and about taking fall photos, but I hope to get back to it later. The basic upshot, though, is that, in a number of situations, the small-shop packages (and again, I mainly mean Skylum and ON1 here, since those are the ones I've looked at most closely) produce results that are not as good as their more established competitors (Adobe, Phase One, to a lesser extent DxO). That's not to say ON1/Skylum are bad per se, but they simply aren't as good from an image quality perspective. (If IQ isn't your main concern, then you may have reasons for wanting to use one or the other... but for me, IQ is the sine qua non of the business. I can put up with a lot of shenanigans by Adobe if they ultimately produce the best image).



Again, you're speaking like you can use a 3-year-old version of ON1 (Perfect Photo 10) in perpetuity. Do Photoshop / Lightroom cost more? Sure ($360 / $220 over a three year period, as mentioned). Capture One costs even more if you keep it up to date (which is one reason I don't own it)! But my larger point is that photographers spend far more than $120 a year - generally speaking - on upgrading their gear and think nothing of it. Heck, you'll spend more than $120 on an XQD memory card. Why not think of the $120 a year as the price you pay to keep your software up to date?



I would agree with this, if features equated to quality. They do not. Plenty of programs have the same feature set, but the quality of their implementations are vary widely. Just because something says it has "class-leading" noise reduction or "AI-powered adjustments and controls" doesn't mean those things actually produce decent photographs when you start using them in the real world.

And look - I'm not suggesting packages like ON1 don't have their place, no matter how critical I've been of them on the internets. I think they work pretty well for the mom-tog crowd that is interested in ingesting a lot of photos pretty quickly, using a bunch of presets to get something that looks decent (albeit trendy), and then shove it out the door to clients and never look at it again. And there's something to be said for that, really. But if you really want to learn how to edit - especially if you're interested in landscapes or fine art rather than portraits - those aren't the tools you should be starting with.

With out going into detail point for point of what you wrote above, I get what you are saying here. However, you are firstly assuming that most people, possibly including the OP here, are photographers looking for the most high end final image quality, when for most user here, I would expect, they just want some great looking image and are mostly posting on the internet. Images of such high quality that you speak of are of absolutely no use because no hosting site will have that sort of capacity to display such large file size that most if not all, are using, nor can most people's monitors resolve such quality, at this time.

I also suspect that the image difference you speak of will not be detectable by the average person's eye, when looking at their computer monitors and let's be honest, most people do not zoom in at 400% plus when looking at an image to try and detect loss of quality. Therefore, much of what you say may be true to a lessor or greater degree, though is not really relevant for most uses of images taken by a larger majority of those users reading this.

As for your comments about using three year old software of course you can still use a three year old copy of On1 software today. Most non professional users of Photoshop never upgraded at every step, in fact many of the photographers, both in the KPPA and the OPPA that I belonged to, did not upgrade at every upgrade step that adobe put out there. Some because they did not need the extra features and functions, and some because as you well know, Adobe often had bugs in those first upgrades at each step, that did not get sorted until quite a while after.

Therefore, if the current programme many of us are using, does everything and usually more than we need, that should remain a perfectly usable product for the next few years. If you took that into account, your price comparison would be even wider, to the detriment of Adobe, when comparing outright purchase of one of the other software programmes, compared the cost of monthly rent of the Adobe system spread over three years. So paying for Adobe's rent would end up far more expensive than the outright purchase and ownership of these other programmes mentioned.

Now, if you compare Topaz to Adobe, the price you paid, for example 7 years ago, is all you spent, as I did, longer than that ago. I still have the free upgrades to this day, even if they updated yesterday or tomorrow because Topaz have never charged for updates, what a great company for their customers. Now you can see how much those forced to follow orders from Adobe are over paying compared to anyone of the quite adequate (for many if not most people's use here) compared to other options out there. Remember, most here are not high end professional photographers, therefore, we must address the needs of most of the amateur users and not Pro needs. One further point, with the slower systems that many may have on their current computers, the time it takes to render things being done with RAW files, is longer than that done with a JPEG image.

 

[jwischka]

With out going into detail point for point of what you wrote above, I get what you are saying here. However, you are firstly assuming that most people, possibly including the OP here, are photographers looking for the most high end final image quality, when for most user here, I would expect, they just want some great looking image and are mostly posting on the internet. Images of such high quality that you speak of are of absolutely no use because no hosting site will have that sort of capacity to display such large file size that most if not all, are using, nor can most people's monitors resolve such quality, at this time.

I also suspect that the image difference you speak of will not be detectable by the average person's eye, when looking at their computer monitors and let's be honest, most people do not zoom in at 400% plus when looking at an image to try and detect loss of quality. Therefore, much of what you say may be true to a lessor or greater degree, though is not really relevant for most uses of images taken by a larger majority of those users reading this.

As for your comments about using three year old software of course you can still use a three year old copy of On1 software today. Most non professional users of Photoshop never upgraded at every step, in fact many of the photographers, both in the KPPA and the OPPA that I belonged to, did not upgrade at every upgrade step that adobe put out there. Some because they did not need the extra features and functions, and some because as you well know, Adobe often had bugs in those first upgrades at each step, that did not get sorted until quite a while after.

Therefore, if the current programme many of us are using, does everything and usually more than we need, that should remain a perfectly usable product for the next few years. If you took that into account, your price comparison would be even wider, to the detriment of Adobe, when comparing outright purchase of one of the other software programmes, compared the cost of monthly rent of the Adobe system spread over three years. So paying for Adobe's rent would end up far more expensive than the outright purchase and ownership of these other programmes mentioned.

Now, if you compare Topaz to Adobe, the price you paid, for example 7 years ago, is all you spent, as I did, longer than that ago. I still have the free upgrades to this day, even if they updated yesterday or tomorrow because Topaz have never charged for updates, what a great company for their customers. Now you can see how much those forced to follow orders from Adobe are over paying compared to anyone of the quite adequate (for many if not most people's use here) compared to other options out there. Remember, most here are not high end professional photographers, therefore, we must address the needs of most of the amateur users and not Pro needs. One further point, with the slower systems that many may have on their current computers, the time it takes to render things being done with RAW files, is longer than that done with a JPEG image.

1) Does absolute image quality matter when you're looking at a 1000x600 image on the internet? Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter if you want to print a 16x20 and hang it on your wall? Maybe. If you looked at the side-by-side I referenced earlier, you would see that the image differences are more than detectable by the average amateur, to say nothing of the professional. That's not to say that the packages aren't capable of producing decent results in a variety of situations. They are. Where this really matters, though is when you start working with images that are more challenging than the snapshots you take of your neighbor's kids and puppies. In those cases, the shortcomings of the individual RAW processing engines are more likely to emerge. When photographing a sunset, for example, having a program that's capable of rendering the highlights faithfully without blowing them out (when they aren't blown in the underlying file) may mean the difference between having a workable shot, or having something that goes in the recycle bin.

2) As you yourself have noted, the learning curve on each of these programs is non-zero. As a result, it's a better idea to learn one program well than to dabble in several occasionally. And if you're going to learn one and only one program, I'd still contend that Lightroom is the one that's got the best chance of doing everything you want to do photographically and getting the best general results on the widest range of images. Are there places where you can get better results using different packages? Sure. I use other stuff all the time when LR doesn't accomplish exactly what I need. But if you were going to limit me to one and only one photo package that I had to process ALL of my photos for the next year or two in, I don't have any doubt at all what I would pick.

3) You keep raving about Topaz. To be fair, I don't have any experience with their stuff, but the $600 sticker price on the "Go Pro Adjustment Bundle" seems insane. Even at 50% off, it seems exorbitant. Clearly their business model is nickel-and-diming you for every little thing you want to do. Proponents of unbundling always claim this is a better deal for the consumer, but I've never found that to be the case.

4) Sure, you can use a 3-year-old copy of ON1 today. That wasn't my point. My point was that a 3-year-old copy of ON1 Perfect Photo 10 doesn't come close to doing what the average amateur or professional photographer needs to do today, particularly with today's camera/drone hardware. For starters, it doesn't open RAW files. Moreover, the hot mess that was the first version of Photo RAW (released just under two years ago) took a year of updates just to become viable at all (the initial version didn't do all sorts of things, including allowing you to crop your image). Did they eventually fix a bunch of that stuff and make the package workable? Sure. But both ON1 and Skylum have a track record of overpromising and underdelivering on their releases, not to mention huge slips in their release schedule. And really, at the end of the day, my beef with companies like ON1 and Skylum is more about their business practice than it is about their software. I could put up with quite a lot (as I do with Adobe) if their software was actually better. But in my general experience, it isn't.

5) Important note on 3-year-old software packages: there is exactly one that will open RAW files from the Mavic - the old standalone version of Adobe Lightroom. Why? Because it's the one that supports DNGs. None will open the files from my D850, though. If you plan on upgrading your camera, eventually you're going to need to upgrade your software too.

6) Further to all of that, you can say, "Buy it once and you have it forever" - and those companies certainly do. But the business reality is that those companies go out of business unless you buy new versions of their software every year, or jump on their subscription bandwagons. In short, while they may crow and make a lot of noise about how you don't have to upgrade their software every year, their underlying financials rely on the fact that you will. And if you don't then they're not going to be around much longer.

Look - I totally get that you like those packages. And more power to you. But if the OP is going to invest a ton of time into learning a software package, I think the objective best advice would be to dive into Lightroom. It's the de facto standard for a reason, and there's likely to be very little it can't handle in the long run. Can you save a few bucks by using DxO PhotoLab (which actually produces some really nice results), or ON1 (which in my experience doesn't, generally), or Luminar (same)? Sure. But in my opinion, if you're that concerned about money, ownership, and ongoing subscription costs, you should skip the cheaper software and go all the way to darktable/RawTherapee, which produce decent results, are frequently updated and really aren't much worse than Photo RAW 2018 from a UX perspective, while costing literally nothing. Seriously, I'd challenge you to go download darktable and play around with it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

But again, to return to what I said in 2): If I had no idea what kind of pictures I was going to take over the next 5 years, and no idea what equipment I was going to use to take them... and if you told me today I had to choose one and only one piece of software to use for that length of time, it's not even a question which package I'd choose. It would be Lightroom - if for no other reason than it's one of the few packages I'm confident will still have active support in 5 years.

 

[Cymruflyer]

I don't want to drag this out each time I respond so this will be short. As far as RAW files are concerned even Adobe are not that quick to match every new camera that launches, it takes them a while sometimes before they have a conversion for a new RAW file. With that said, you can use any software that does not open RAW files if you wish, because there are a number of free RAW opening programmes available on the internet and have been for a number of years. The opening of a RAW image file is not the be all and end all of any single editing software programme, so don't falsely judge it just because of that. Use one of the free programmes to open any of your RAW files then take it onto your editing software.

As for Topaz being expensive, yes if you bought all they offer at once, it would be, but not nearly as expensive as if you bought just three of the Adobe offerings, when they sold you, "buy it once and keep it forever" software. Why not mention how expensive the Adobe Creative Suite was, because that would be a better comparison of having lots of things in a bundle that many if not most of us, never need. You can get away with 3 maybe 4 of the total that is offered in their suite by Topaz, for a lot less than $600 and that will be your only payment, ever, and you will get to keep it and get free upgrades for ever.

Is it as good as, say Photoshop? No, but then for all that that does, most people here would only be taping into maybe 15% of what it is capable of, if that much. So for what I would guess most of us here need, the lower priced programmes will suffice. With that said, I use Photoshop for about 75% or a little more, of everything I do with a photo. I love the Adobe products, I just don't like the way they made everyone bow down and obey their orders of monthly rent or NO SOUP FOR YOU, the way they did.

I suppose it would be interesting to do a poll and find out what everyone would be satisfied with regarding the end point of their photography. I shall have to check out those others you mentioned, some I had not heard of, thanks, I enjoyed the discussion. By the way, Topaz, On1, Nik and Gimp to name a few, have ALL been going longer than 5 years and even if they suddenly stopped, you could still keep using their software because you own it, not so with Adobe.

 

[jwischka]

I don't want to drag this out each time I respond so this will be short. As far as RAW files are concerned even Adobe are not that quick to match every new camera that launches, it takes them a while sometimes before they have a conversion for a new RAW file. With that said, you can use any software that does not open RAW files if you wish, because there are a number of free RAW opening programmes available on the internet and have been for a number of years. The opening of a RAW image file is not the be all and end all of any single editing software programme, so don't falsely judge it just because of that. Use one of the free programmes to open any of your RAW files then take it onto your editing software.

We're going to have to agree to disagree here.

Again, in the whole scheme of editing, how you handle the RAW file (and what program you use to do so) is the single most important part of the process. Moreover, opening the RAW in, say, dcraw, then editing it in, say, Photoshop, is a not-entirely-lossless process - and it's certainly a less-than-repeatable process. Bottom line: if you have a RAW workflow, doing what you are describing is a really terrible way to go about it. (I'm guessing, based on your other comments, you shoot RAW files rarely, if ever).

As for Topaz being expensive, yes if you bought all they offer at once, it would be, but not nearly as expensive as if you bought just three of the Adobe offerings, when they sold you, "buy it once and keep it forever" software. Why not mention how expensive the Adobe Creative Suite was, because that would be a better comparison of having lots of things in a bundle that many if not most of us, never need. You can get away with 3 maybe 4 of the total that is offered in their suite by Topaz, for a lot less than $600 and that will be your only payment, ever, and you will get to keep it and get free upgrades for ever.

Does Topaz do video editing? Desktop publishing? Vector graphics? Multi-track audio editing? If not, then no, I don't think I will compare it to Creative Suite.

I'll return to this: Topaz is in business to sell you software, and to keep selling you software. You may have bought a couple of things and have no need to upgrade, but it's clear from all the "AI" modules they're selling that their goal is to get people to keep buying add-on modules (at $50-80 a pop) for the foreseeable future. There's nothing wrong with that, but like any other package (including Lightroom / Photoshop) you're paying an ongoing fee to get the latest features.

Companies don't stay in business by giving you something that is continually updated (which requires developers, who you generally have to pay) for free. They just don't. Any company that tries is not going to be around long.

Is it as good as, say Photoshop? No, but then for all that that does, most people here would only be taping into maybe 15% of what it is capable of, if that much. So for what I would guess most of us here need, the lower priced programmes will suffice.

That may be true. Here's the difference: in this thread, you've got an OP who's saying, "I really want to learn how to edit pictures," which implies that maybe they're interested in actually using more than 15%. A lot of people (it sounds like yourself included) have little to no interest in the editing process. They want something they can get out of the camera, or fix on the computer with a couple of clicks. That's fine. But that's not really learning how to edit photos.

With that said, I use Photoshop for about 75% or a little more, of everything I do with a photo. I love the Adobe products, I just don't like the way they made everyone bow down and obey their orders of monthly rent or NO SOUP FOR YOU, the way they did.

So you're miffed about the subscription model. I suppose that's fair. Here's the question at the end of the day: Do Lightroom and Photoshop provide $120/year of value for your photography (and for the average photographer)? I would contend that the answer to that is an undeniable yes for the vast majority of people who are serious about photography - particularly in light of how little that is in the grand scheme of what most serious photographers spend on gear. The subquestion to that would be, "Do Lightroom and Photoshop provide $70 a year more value than ON1?" (as an example). Again, in my opinion, the answer to that is yes. I can see a use case for ON1 for a certain type of photographer where the answer would be no. But I think for most people who are serious about photography and editing, Lightroom and Photoshop provide more than enough value (and more than enough value over the other packages) to cover the difference in cost.

I suppose it would be interesting to do a poll and find out what everyone would be satisfied with regarding the end point of their photography. I shall have to check out those others you mentioned, some I had not heard of, thanks, I enjoyed the discussion.

Darktable and RawTherapee are worth looking at. They're still not the most user friendly, but they've got a lot of good stuff from a technical perspective.

By the way, Topaz, On1, Nik and Gimp to name a few, have ALL been going longer than 5 years and even if they suddenly stopped, you could still keep using their software because you own it, not so with Adobe.

It's funny that you mention Nik in that list, because it's death is exactly the kind of event I'm talking about. Before Nik's resurrection by DxO, it had been dead for quite a while. It was pretty actively developed until Google bought the company in 2012, at which point they basically diverted all the development assets into their own computational photography team (which was a smart move for Google, but an awful move for Nik's customers). By the time Google killed the project in 2017, there hadn't been a significant update in at least 4 years. I'm hopeful DxO will breathe some life back into the project, but that remains to be seen. I used to rely heavily on Nik's tools, but when support dried up and it became more difficult to get the tools to work on more modern versions of Photoshop, I had to assess whether I wanted to orphan all of those files and not make additional edits, or try to reprocess them in Lightroom to keep my library more unified. I chose the latter.