View Full Version : Opensource alternative to Lightroom
Roko
March 29th, 2012, 10:53 PM
If anyone's been looking for a free alternative to Lightroom, I've recently come across "Darktable"
darktable | the photo workflow software (http://www.darktable.org/)
I've had a chance to fiddle around with it the past couple of nights, and I'm liking it so far -- I think it will replace UFRaw and the GIMP for the bulk of my RAW image processing. I find the user interface to be relatively easy to figure out. I can't compare it to Lightroom, however if you Google around, some people have done comparisons between the two.
The only catch is that it's currently only available for Linux and Mac OSX, so no Windows support. (But hey, Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) (a version of Linux) is free, and runs nicer than windows, so why not install it anyways? ;) ).
lonebrave
March 30th, 2012, 03:09 AM
Thanks for the info. I know some others that will be interested, too.
bfowles
April 2nd, 2012, 06:26 PM
There is also RawTherapee RawTherapee Blog (http://rawtherapee.com/). Works on a wide range of operating systems including Windows.
Roko
April 2nd, 2012, 06:35 PM
There is also RawTherapee RawTherapee Blog (http://rawtherapee.com/). Works on a wide range of operating systems including Windows.
Neat, thanks for posting that. I'll have to try it out, perhaps on this past weekend's photos... :)
Sent from my SGH-I897 using Tapatalk
Broct
April 2nd, 2012, 07:15 PM
Just upgraded to lightroom 4, but I will check this out too. Thanks for sharing!
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
SCUBA482
April 4th, 2012, 09:34 PM
Just upgraded to lightroom 4, but I will check this out too. Thanks for sharing!
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
Did you have LR 3 prior to your upgrade? What are the major differences?
Ardy
April 7th, 2012, 07:17 PM
Hi Guys I mostly use Irfanview which is free, uses all keyboard links to drive it and fast, it runs on most platforms. It also has a good RAW add-on. It is an excellent easy to use editor. IrfanView Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.irfanview.net/faq.htm) .
I have also just placed an order for Corel Paintshop Pro X4 ($39) as I do appreciate what PhotoShop can do, (I have a copy) but it is so difficult to get your head around, everything seems against logic in there ie I haven't found a simple way to accept a crop without doing a drop down.
Anything that gives you the control of Adobe without the head bending I would like to know about.
Ardy
April 15th, 2012, 09:03 PM
Hi Guys I mostly use Irfanview which is free, uses all keyboard links to drive it and fast, it runs on most platforms. It also has a good RAW add-on. It is an excellent easy to use editor. IrfanView Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.irfanview.net/faq.htm) .
I have also just placed an order for Corel Paintshop Pro X4 ($39) as I do appreciate what PhotoShop can do, (I have a copy) but it is so difficult to get your head around, everything seems against logic in there ie I haven't found a simple way to accept a crop without doing a drop down.
Anything that gives you the control of Adobe without the head bending I would like to know about.
Just a quick update. Got the Corel Psintshop pro X4 last week and did some work with it. It is very good and intutive, I will not be going back to PS. The only thing I had to do was to change my associations back to Irfanview from ProX4 as like all large packages I takes too long to open and I find irfanview just so much easier for viewing both jpg's and raw files as you don't have to go through a raw processor it just opens them like it was a jpg.
Roko
April 16th, 2012, 12:08 AM
Cool, thanks for the update. I've used Irfanview briefly before for some batch image editing work at work, but haven't played with it much beyond that, especially not or fixing photos.
I've been playing around with Darktable some more, and I really like it. I had stability problems, but I attribute that more to having borked my OS.. A fresh updated install of Kubuntu, and it's running nicely now. It's really helping me fix lighting and colours in some of my less than perfectly exposed images.
Still haven't had a chance to install RawTherapee yet, but I want to give it a go as well.
trange
April 16th, 2012, 08:34 AM
For those interested, here is a link to a creative commons book for Darktable.