Non-subscription editor for iPad Pro / iMac ??

[James Bleifus]

Like James, I prefer Lightroom as well for iPadOS, but you might look at Pixelmator Photo. It’s affordable, the developer has been aggressive at improving it, and there’s no fee.

Cheers, James

 

[luqing]

for ipad, Snapseed and Affinity Photo. As for iMac, there are plenty of choices, such as Gimp, pixlr, Photopea, PhotoDirector, PaintShop Pro and etc.

 

[Disappointed_Horse]

for ipad, Snapseed and Affinity Photo. As for iMac, there are plenty of choices, such as Gimp, pixlr, Photopea, PhotoDirector, PaintShop Pro and etc.

I find Snapseed is not handling RAW files well these days. They often cause the app to lock up on my iPad Air. It's a great editor when it works, but hasn't had any substantial updates in a long time and I fear Google is letting it die a lingering death.

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Another big YES! vote from me for Affinity Photo. It is a powerful and glitch-free substitute for Photoshop. And it incorporates most of the Photoshop keyboard commands and logic. If you know Photoshop, then you know Affinity Photo too.

I don't know who wrote this in 2021 about Affinity,

I would never use this program even if someone bought it for me.

but I couldn't disagree more. Affinity rocks! I converted to it a couple of years ago, and I'll never ever go back to Adobe.

 

[Flashcam]

I won't rent no stinkin' software!

YesSir! Agreed!

 

[dpurdy]

Another old thread revived. It has been on my mind lately as well. I won't pay 265 a year for photoshop. I am however using Photoshop Elements 2022 on my newish Mac and Photoshop CS5 on my oldish Mac. They both give me all the RAW controls plus editing thing I need. I am going to look up that Affinity mentioned above and see if it still exists in 2024.

 

[runswithsizzers]

"I won't pay 265 a year for photoshop."

@dpurdy, If by "265" you mean $265 US dollars, then I'm curious to know where you got that number? Your location is showing as Portland, OR, so in the USA you should be able to get both Lightroom Classic and Photoshop for $9.99/month, or $119.88/year: <https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html>
The chart in that link shows the Lightroom + Photoshop plan for $9.99/month includes support for both desktop and iPad versions.

Maybe you were looking at the $19.99/month plan which includes 1TB of cloud storage? But cloud storage is not required to use Lightroom Classic or Photoshop, so you can pay extra for cloud storage, or not, your choice.

As someone who prefers to work with RAW files, I think Lightroom is the ideal editor. And the ability to organize my photos, manage keywords, write captions, create books, use the Negative Lab Pro plug-in, and publish photos to my SmugMug website are all significant Lightroom benefits, for me. Once-in-a-while I still use Photoshop, but the vast majority of my digital editing workflow is now done in Lightroom.

I have used Photoshop Elements in the past, and it is good, too. I do remember what a struggle it was for me to switch from Elements to Lightroom because the tools and interface are so different. It was probably 6 months or longer before I started to get comfortable using Lightroom (I am a slow learner). But now (seven years later), I consider the investment in time and money to be well worth it, and am glad I made the switch to Lightroom.

 

[dpurdy]

"I won't pay 265 a year for photoshop."

@dpurdy, If by "265" you mean $265 US dollars, then I'm curious to know where you got that number? Your location is showing as Portland, OR, so in the USA you should be able to get both Lightroom Classic and Photoshop for $9.99/month, or $119.88/year: <https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html>
The chart in that link shows the Lightroom + Photoshop plan for $9.99/month includes support for both desktop and iPad versions.

Maybe you were looking at the $19.99/month plan which includes 1TB of cloud storage? But cloud storage is not required to use Lightroom Classic or Photoshop, so you can pay extra for cloud storage, or not, your choice.

As someone who prefers to work with RAW files, I think Lightroom is the ideal editor. And the ability to organize my photos, manage keywords, write captions, create books, use the Negative Lab Pro plug-in, and publish photos to my SmugMug website are all significant Lightroom benefits, for me. Once-in-a-while I still use Photoshop, but the vast majority of my digital editing workflow is now done in Lightroom.

I have used Photoshop Elements in the past, and it is good, too. I do remember what a struggle it was for me to switch from Elements to Lightroom because the tools and interface are so different. It was probably 6 months or longer before I started to get comfortable using Lightroom (I am a slow learner). But now (seven years later), I consider the investment in time and money to be well worth it, and am glad I made the switch to Lightroom.

I could be wrong I guess because I didn't spend much time researching it. I just searched how much is Photoshop and came to the info that to use photoshop you have to subscribe to the cloud which the price I saw was 22.50USD a month if you signed up for a whole year and if you did there are lots of ways to get photoshop to work on it for free. So 22.5 USD comes to around 265 a year.. my approximate type math. At that point I stopped researching photoshop.

 

[runswithsizzers]

I could be wrong I guess because I didn't spend much time researching it. I just searched how much is Photoshop and came to the info that to use photoshop you have to subscribe to the cloud which the price I saw was 22.50USD a month if you signed up for a whole year and if you did there are lots of ways to get photoshop to work on it for free. So 22.5 USD comes to around 265 a year.. my approximate type math. At that point I stopped researching photoshop.

That is weird. As far as I know Adobe has offered Lightroom Classic plus Photoshop for the same price of $9.99/month for years now. I do vaguely recall there were some reports that some people were shown different prices for Adobe products on different websites.

Actually, I am able to confirm that different Adobe websites do show different pricing -- or more accurately, different product bundles. Below are two screen shots, both from Adobe websites.

The screenshot below is from the same link I posted above <https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html> It shows a Lightroom and Photoshop bundle available for $9.99/month:

But the screenshot below from <https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html> does not show the cheaper Lightroom plus Photoshop package, only the more expensive combination that comes with 1TB cloud storage (vs. 20GB for the cheaper plan). The $22.99/month price on the left for Photoshop (no Lightroom) includes something called the "Adobe Express Premium plan" which sounds like something that might be of interest to graphic designers, but maybe not so much for photographers. Personally, I prefer to get Photoshop and Lightroom together for $9.99/month.

I guess the bottom line is, Adobe bundles Lightroom and Photoshop in several different packages at several different price points, and a person may have to look around to find the best package for what you want to do.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

Adobe kind of hides the $10 subscription.

Another one to look at is Hasselblad’s Phocus. That is available for iOS as well. And it is free.

 

[abruzzi]

That is weird. As far as I know Adobe has offered Lightroom Classic plus Photoshop for the same price of $9.99/month for years now. I do vaguely recall there were some reports that some people were shown different prices for Adobe products on different websites.

Actually, I am able to confirm that different Adobe websites do show different pricing -- or more accurately, different product bundles. Below are two screen shots, both from Adobe websites.

Actually what the did was weirder. I went looking and all I saw was the $19.99 plan with cloud storage. I looked, and look, and all external links to the $9.99 plan than anyone sent me, resolved to the $19.99 plan. It was very frustrating, until I tried a different browser. Firefox gave me the $19.99 plan, Chrome gave me the $19.99 plan, but Safari gave me the $9.99 plan. These were all from the exact same link.

 

[runswithsizzers]

Actually what the did was weirder. I went looking and all I saw was the $19.99 plan with cloud storage. I looked, and look, and all external links to the $9.99 plan than anyone sent me, resolved to the $19.99 plan. It was very frustrating, until I tried a different browser. Firefox gave me the $19.99 plan, Chrome gave me the $19.99 plan, but Safari gave me the $9.99 plan. These were all from the exact same link.

That is weird. BTW, I used the Safari browser to find the link to the $9.99 plan, so fits with your experience.