Pixelmator VS Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC - compare differences & reviews? - At a glance:
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Pixelmator vs adobe lightroom free. Pixelmator VS Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC
15 Free Lightroom Alternatives in .
If you want to dive deeper, you should check Luminar vs Lightroom comparison which will help you understand the differences in both the editors. Headline artificial-intelligence A. Another new feature to Luminar is the AI Portrait Enhancer, which helps you to do the work of a portrait photo retoucher in seconds — removing blemishes from the face of your subject, whitening their eyes and teeth, or even making their faces slimmer, can all be done in a few mouse clicks.
Adobe Lightroom, by contrast, offers very few A. Lightroom, on the other hand, will apply its edits to the entire image, requiring you to manually mask things out. Luminar makes it simple for a non-professional photographer to turn a bland photo into something a pro would be proud of. Getting images into Luminar is simple — just drag and drop.
Aside from all the great features, the main benefit of Luminar over Lightroom and all the other image editors available in is its simplicity. For those familiar with Lightroom, the editing panels in Luminar look almost identical — all the main adjustments for RAW files are there, including more advanced features like Curves and LUT Mapping. Performance depends heavily on the size of the original file, and your computer hardware. Finally, there were complaints about crashes and performance issues with the initial release, but thankfully, with the v4.
While the aforementioned Luminar is, without doubt, a fantastic alternative to Lightroom, it does fall short of being a complete replacement, lacking certain file management features that professional photographers rely on. Thankfully, it works well in conjunction with Lightroom as a plugin , but what about those of us who want something to replace Lr completely? The answer lies in a popular product by Exposure Software review , now in its 6th iteration. Exposure X6 is an advanced image editing app that rivals Lightroom Classic, with powerful features, intuitive controls and ease of use, all for one affordable fee i.
As a fully-featured RAW image editing software, Exposure X6 offers all the photo manipulation and file-management tools for advanced photographers, while still being simple enough for beginners to start using right away. It can also be used as a plugin for Lightroom , but we recommend ditching Adobe completely in favour of X6, to save on those monthly fees. Those transitioning from Lr will find the Exposure workspace very similar, with an additional benefit — panels and editing tools can be completely customized to suit your needs.
Photo management in Exposure is impressively fast. Incidentally, migrating images from an existing Lightroom catalogue is simple, with all existing edits, stars, flags, keywords and other metadata included with the files. Filtering in Exposure is a breeze, with the ability to quickly find your images based on all the usual variables.
One handy feature is the ability to collaborate on image editing, via a cloud-based service such as Dropbox. This allows you to access your edits on multiple computers, or give access to your team if you shoot as part of a studio. The ability to customise your tools and workspace is a great feature. Another useful feature is the 3D Colour Masking tool, which allows you to create and control a mask based on hue, saturation and vibrance.
Performance-wise, Exposure is fast to import and export images, and suffers from very little lag while editing, even on heavy RAW files. Best of all, perhaps, is its price.
All in all, Exposure is an impressive piece of software that should fulfil all your needs as a photographer seeking a way to interact with your images, and produce stunning results. ON1 Photo RAW is another of our favorite alternatives, and the version brings in a number of new features see review. Like Luminar, it combines an image organizer, Raw processor, layered editor, and effects app all in one.
The develop module is structured much like Lightroom, and as mentioned before will seem a bit more complex to those new to photo editing. That being said, ON1 has all the photo adjustments you would expect from a Lightroom replacement, including excellent AI auto options for tone. Used well, it can save quite a bit of time when making multiple selections. These work much the same as Photoshop and inPixio , with masks, blend modes, and an easy way to merge layers.
Not everyone uses these features, but if you do and want an all-in-one editor, ON1 has an edge up on the competition here. As far as portrait editing is concerned, ON1 has long been at the top of the field for its price point. From there you can adjust the skin, eyes, and mouth of each individually. ON1 also has several quality built-in presets. Also, the latest version added over new looks, as well as a number of new backgrounds, textures, and skies.
It comes with a number of templates, including various options for individual prints, contact sheets, and tiled package prints. It also lets you add watermarks before you print. Other new features include SmugMug integration, better noise reduction, an excellent map view mode, new timeline albums, and a new focus mask overlay so you can tell which photos are in focus. Just about everything most photographers would ever need is here one place.
When discussing Lightroom alternatives, any serious photographer needs to consider Capture One Pro. See also our Capture One vs Lightroom guide for a more in-depth comparison. With its latest release, Capture One Pro 21 offers exceptional RAW image file processing, image cataloging, layers, local adjustments, keystone adjustments, as well as just about all the features one would expect out of a pro image editing app.
There are a few different programs available including both free and paid. If you shoot with a Sony or Fujifilm camera, there are specific versions of the software, making colour management even more efficient. There are also usually discounts on these versions. Viewing your photos in Capture One Pro review is an eye-opener, thanks to colour profiles which are tailored for every camera. With Lightroom, imported files have a more neutral starting point.
Capture One Pro has more ways to manipulate colour than Lightroom, allowing you to make colour balance changes to shadow, mid-tone and highlights, and a channel dedicated to skin tones. Take a look at the video below to see how a talented portrait photographer uses the software to edit all his high-end fashion portraits.
From there you can adjust the affected color range, hue, saturation and lightness. The 3-Way option even lets you adjust the color tint separately in the shadow, midtone and highlight areas. Need to smooth out the skin tones? No problem. Simply choose the Skin Tone tab, select a color range, and adjust the uniformity sliders. Instead, everything sits in one interface and you toggle through buttons to change functions — this mixed asset management can be confusing at first.
There are tons of adjustment options, many of which the average photographer would never use. If you thought Lightroom was tricky to master, just wait till you start exploring the capabilities of C1! Tethering features in Capture One Pro makes it the obvious choice for studio photographers. This is no surprise since tethered shooting functionality is one of the main reasons the software was developed.
Lightroom only has adjustment points for brushes or gradients. When you use layers in Capture One Pro, you can make targeted local adjustments to your photos and still use the majority of the editing tools available, not just the ones in a given tool. This is a huge benefit for those who like a fine level of control over photo manipulation. For everyone else, however, it may be slightly overkill. Updates and support for new cameras and lenses are excellent in DxO PhotoLab 4, with the software detecting the imported RAW file and downloading any modules profiles for the files.
The non-destructive editing is smooth and fast, and version 4 brings a number of useful features, including:. Darktable is our choice of the top free Lightroom alternative. Like Lightroom, this app has a full-featured image adjustment suite and extensive library management options. As far as the UI is concerned, Darktable looks a lot like Lightroom. Once you get used to the interface you can fully customize Darktable , setting it up for just the editing tools you want to use.
You can also set up automatic scripts to seriously streamline your workflow, and make repetitive tasks fast and more efficient. Lightroom is great for retouching and colour grading photos. However, when it comes to tweaking stuff, we need to import a half-edited photo into Photoshop to finish the job. I used to spend way less time editing photos in Lightroom than in Photoshop.
Pixelmator Pro shines in this department by providing both super easy ML-driven retouching tools and also advanced photo manipulation capabilities like Photoshop. Unlike Lightroom, where you select an area using the radial tool or the linear gradient tool and then apply adjustments to the area, Pixelmator Pro allows local adjustments in two ways:.
The guys behind Pixelmator Pro made a fantastic video on how to use all the retouching tools in the app. This feature gives me a great starting point for my editing workflow. After the initial automated adjustments are made, I can continue from where Pixelmator Pro left off and add some finishing touches of my own. Although it works on a majority of photos, for some of my photos I prefer starting from scratch on my own.
This is a life-saver when it comes to taking colour grading inspirations from other awesome photos. Pixelmator Pro can automatically apply colour adjustments based on a reference photo that I choose. For example, see this:. However, not every photographer shares their presets. This feature allows me to harness colour grading from every photo present on the internet.
Adobe Lightroom is an insanely popular photo editing software. With popularity, comes a boatload of tutorials and courses.
Therefore, right now:. One of the impressive aspects of using Lightroom was that I could watch tons of how-to videos on YouTube and get better at my photography game. Although there are a couple of official tutorials from the Pixelmator team, the number is meagre. Photo editing and photography, in general, is based on core concepts which can be applied to any tool regardless of how they are structured.
I was able to apply most of my photo editing knowledge from Lightroom to Pixelmator Pro almost immediately. This tiny little UX problem adds some manual effort for every photo I edit. Not a good thing to have. The album feature helped get a snapshot of all my processed photos in the app and anything that I had queued up for processing.
If your photography workflow is anything like mine, then absolutely yes. One lifetime copy of Pixelmator Pro on macOS is worth just four months of Lightroom subscription payment. More on this topic.
Keep switching your system theme based on the time of the day? Here's how to keep your wallpaper synced. Things 3 is a beautiful to-do list app. But, when it comes to flexibility, Todoist is miles ahead. Some of the best selling stock photos on my Creative Market shop came from this process: One of my best selling photos on Creative Market.
That is when one of my friends introduced Lightroom to me. The main selling point was that it was powerful, like Photoshop but with less work to do. Then, my photos started to look this these: One of my photos edited in Lightroom. Lightroom made it easy and fun to apply those retouches.
But, the problem was: I was neither shooting nor editing photos very often This meant, I had to pay for Lightroom every month to have it parked on my laptop. I paid for over a year where I maybe used Lightroom for about times. With Pixelmator Pro, I like: How I can have the best of both worlds in a single app Lightroom is great for retouching and colour grading photos.
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