Hi Allison, Steve, and the Nosillacastaways. Shai here, on the road with the Farewell Tour of the Broadway production of Mamma Mia!<\/p>\n
Recently a request for alternatives to Apple Photos was made on the Nosillacastaway Facebook page, and I have a few that I wanted to let you know about. I know many of you cried out in anguish when Apple decided to put Aperture out to pasture. <\/p>\n
It seemed that the only alternative was Lightroom, and I know that many didn\u2019t want to jump into the Adobe ecosystem.
\nBefore we start though, I have to say that I am a Lightroom user. It works well for my professional workflow, but I am constantly on the lookout for alternatives. If it wasn\u2019t for the fact that I know Lightroom so well, I might have been tempted to move to these other apps myself.<\/p>\n
So the alternatives I am familiar with are: <\/p>\n
These apps range from easy to use to pro level. So, let me give you a very brief overview of each.<\/p>\n
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I have used Alienskin plugins for years, and they are excellent. Exposure X2 is no exception. It is sleek, fast, and has most of the sliders and adjustments that Lightroom has, and a few more such as Overlays and Bokeh. The layout is very similar to Lightroom with menus that can be hidden on all four sides of the screen. You have the ability to do selective brushing on of adjustments, healing and cloning, so you are able to do edits that are independent of each other. These you can adjust later on to your hearts content. <\/p>\n
It also has full metadata and filtering abilities. But, the reason that I use Exposure X2 is for the wonderful film emulation presets. Overall, an excellent piece of software, and one that Lightroom and Aperture users should find very easy to use. Price starts at US $149 at alienskin.com\/…<\/a><\/p>\n On1 Photo Raw – by OnOne Software is a fairly new player to the game. The company has been around for years, and I have used their plugins in the past, but the Photo Raw app has emerged only recently to challenge Lightroom as a way to manage your images.<\/p>\n Photo Raw feels a lot like Lightroom to me. Once again, you have menus on all sides of the screen, and a plethora of adjustments and filters. You also have access to the huge range of effects that On1 are known for. The On1 group have really worked on getting RAW processing speeds up. This is something that Lightroom suffers in doing. <\/p>\n
\nThey are simply stunning, and are the go to for many portrait photographers in the industry.
\nThey match my favorite plugins, which are VSCO<\/a> and Mastin Labs<\/a>, for film emulation quality, but you don\u2019t need Lightroom to run them. <\/p>\nOn1 Photo Raw<\/h3>\n