- Location
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Name
- Sue
I've been caught up in the gotta have Photoshop thing for a while, caved in and bought the subscription, changed my mind, got a refund, and had to rethink. Stay with the old, or look at something different.
In the end, I just began to cast about for two programs
1) something to manage the photographs.
2) Something fairly decent for editing. I know I am not going to get anything *as* powerful as Photoshop, but there are a few things that come very close.
First: The Manager.
Requirement: It must be able to look in a set of folders defined by me, and also be able to automatically recognise changes and additions to those folders without having conniptions. That immediately lets out any app which maintains its own database. So, iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom are all no longer an option. I do not use these apps for editing, *only* for managing. I have downloaded trials of ACDSee Pro and Aftershot Pro. Aftershot Pro seems to maintain an own database: strike. ACDSee Pro seemed to be something worth a second look. But it kept crashing at a certain point when looking at my 2013 folder so it struck out too.
So I have moved to something very simple. Well, two things really. The first is Mac only and costs around $12. The second is cross platform and is free.
1) Unbound: Unbound for Mac Its also available for iPhone and iPad at small cost. There doesn't seem to be a sync option between them but no big deal.
2) XNViewMP for Windows, Mac and Linux: Image Viewer | Photo Viewer | Image Resize | XnView This has become very attractive to me, for one reason: You can determine which apps you want to be able to call from XNView. right clicking on a photo will bring up a list, and that list is editable. You can have as many or as few as you want to have immediately available from inside the app. Unbound just seems to make arbitrary decisions, but at least you can choose "Other" and then get that app of choice running
Secondly, which editor.
We all have bought a dozen or more plugin suites to go with Photoshop, but what to do if we decide to dump photoshop? Well, the good news is that many of those plugins also have standalone apps. This includes the Nik, Topaz and DXO plugins and probably many more I don't know about. They can be listed individually from XNView, or you could choose to run Photoshop if you want, and just play with them inside that.
For me, having decided to leave Photoshop alone for now and go looking for alternatives... I had already bought both Acorn, and Pixelmator, for Mac. Both of these are very good editors in their own right, but in spite of the preference of the mac community for Pixelmator, I find Acorn to be much more powerful and more photoshop-like.
The one that surprises me most at the moment, is The Gimp. We all know of it, some of us have used it in the past, and gone back to Photoshop. right now, though, it seems to me that gimp has come a long way since the last time I was using it. Perhaps I am just more used to knowing what it is I want from a Photo editor (Levels, curves, various other). The most interesting addition for me, however, is the addition of a plugin called (and I don't know why) G'MiC. Its a suite of plugin tools and includes some of those we all want... film emulations. I have already become besotted with the emulation of Kodak Chrome slide film. Now, I do not know if its in the standard Windows or Linux downloads, I chose to get Simone's distro for mac, which includes it and some others. You may have to hit the registry and do a search.
Its worth taking another look, if you, like me, just have decided to abandon the Adobe ecosystem. GIMP
So, for me, the current decision is
1) XNViewMP for management of photos
2) The Gimp as main editor, as well as all those lovely plugins, should I want them, which remain available via XNView.
In the end, I just began to cast about for two programs
1) something to manage the photographs.
2) Something fairly decent for editing. I know I am not going to get anything *as* powerful as Photoshop, but there are a few things that come very close.
First: The Manager.
Requirement: It must be able to look in a set of folders defined by me, and also be able to automatically recognise changes and additions to those folders without having conniptions. That immediately lets out any app which maintains its own database. So, iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom are all no longer an option. I do not use these apps for editing, *only* for managing. I have downloaded trials of ACDSee Pro and Aftershot Pro. Aftershot Pro seems to maintain an own database: strike. ACDSee Pro seemed to be something worth a second look. But it kept crashing at a certain point when looking at my 2013 folder so it struck out too.
So I have moved to something very simple. Well, two things really. The first is Mac only and costs around $12. The second is cross platform and is free.
1) Unbound: Unbound for Mac Its also available for iPhone and iPad at small cost. There doesn't seem to be a sync option between them but no big deal.
2) XNViewMP for Windows, Mac and Linux: Image Viewer | Photo Viewer | Image Resize | XnView This has become very attractive to me, for one reason: You can determine which apps you want to be able to call from XNView. right clicking on a photo will bring up a list, and that list is editable. You can have as many or as few as you want to have immediately available from inside the app. Unbound just seems to make arbitrary decisions, but at least you can choose "Other" and then get that app of choice running
Secondly, which editor.
We all have bought a dozen or more plugin suites to go with Photoshop, but what to do if we decide to dump photoshop? Well, the good news is that many of those plugins also have standalone apps. This includes the Nik, Topaz and DXO plugins and probably many more I don't know about. They can be listed individually from XNView, or you could choose to run Photoshop if you want, and just play with them inside that.
For me, having decided to leave Photoshop alone for now and go looking for alternatives... I had already bought both Acorn, and Pixelmator, for Mac. Both of these are very good editors in their own right, but in spite of the preference of the mac community for Pixelmator, I find Acorn to be much more powerful and more photoshop-like.
The one that surprises me most at the moment, is The Gimp. We all know of it, some of us have used it in the past, and gone back to Photoshop. right now, though, it seems to me that gimp has come a long way since the last time I was using it. Perhaps I am just more used to knowing what it is I want from a Photo editor (Levels, curves, various other). The most interesting addition for me, however, is the addition of a plugin called (and I don't know why) G'MiC. Its a suite of plugin tools and includes some of those we all want... film emulations. I have already become besotted with the emulation of Kodak Chrome slide film. Now, I do not know if its in the standard Windows or Linux downloads, I chose to get Simone's distro for mac, which includes it and some others. You may have to hit the registry and do a search.
Its worth taking another look, if you, like me, just have decided to abandon the Adobe ecosystem. GIMP
So, for me, the current decision is
1) XNViewMP for management of photos
2) The Gimp as main editor, as well as all those lovely plugins, should I want them, which remain available via XNView.