Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop can be costly programs; fortunately, other alternatives provide similar functionality without incurring monthly subscription fees to your credit card bill.
No matter if it is for background removal or meme creation, these free photo editing software options have got your back! Packed with features like image storage and tutorials to guide users’ editing journeys, these photo editors save time and improve images while saving precious photo memory space!
Capture One
Capture One is a comprehensive image processing and asset management solution highly valued by professional photographers. As a powerful RAW processor, Capture One features tools for color grading, tethering, and directly capturing images into its software for instant review – as well as asset management features explicitly designed to benefit studio environments.
Photography Software also supports numerous lenses and camera models, offering photographers significant editing time savings through intelligent adjustments, creating consistent looks across images with Styles, and using Layers’ precision editing functionality to make precise local changes.
With an intuitive, customizable user interface that’s easy to learn and offers plenty of shortcuts and right-click options, this software was also created for collaboration, enabling photographers to share collections easily between colleagues or clients for larger projects or sharing purposes. Furthermore, its more advanced color correction wheel stands out among rival products.
PhotoDirector Essential
Editorial tools include all the usual staples and deliver a comprehensive ecosystem of AI-powered special effects. In addition, it features unique tools like animation creation and being able to ‘draw’ over photos to remove or replace objects.
PhotoDirector offers an intuitive user interface and step-by-step tutorials designed to assist the average user in performing complex edits. Furthermore, PhotoDirector features mode-based editing, which automatically selects an appropriate set of tools based on the task.
CyberLink PhotoDirector offers an excellent deblur tool, making it possible to quickly correct blurry or shaky pictures in just a few clicks. Furthermore, the software enables users to ‘draw’ directly on photos – replacing objects with drawings of similar ones or completely altering backgrounds; plus, it has a powerful search capability, which makes managing extensive photo collections simple while providing strong data protection by restricting access only when needed.
Darktable
Darktable is an open-source alternative to Lightroom that’s free and offers robust editing tools – many of which mirror those found in its commercial competitor – along with many features. However, Darktable requires time and patience to become proficient.
This cross-platform program works on Linux, macOS (macports), BSD, and Solaris 11 with no latency user interface for quick image processing and searching of your collections using tags, ratings, or color labels.
A Lightroom-esque layout that makes working on single images or batch processing multiple images simple. Multiple filtering options and advanced masking for local adjustments are also provided, making this program highly customizable, with plugin support available to expand its functionality further.
DxO PhotoLab
DxO PhotoLab is an advanced image processing and lens correction software solution that challenges other programs with its robust overall adjustment tools and local adjustments. With DxO PhotoLab, you can take photos directly from your camera’s raw file format into corrected and enhanced photos explicitly tailored to you. It provides robust control over every stage of image editing, from raw to refined images, with pinpoint precision.
Retouching software offers excellent versatility in retouching images, featuring tools like clone and repair tools and intelligent auto-spot removal for more natural retouching results. This program stands out among its peers in terms of noise reduction capabilities and haze removal capacities.
The latest version, 6.3, brings some exciting new features, such as enhanced soft proofing and paper/ink simulation profiles for printers. Furthermore, this expands working color space so photographers have greater leeway when editing photos; there’s even a Preserve Color Details slider that protects highlights and shadows when moving images to smaller color spaces!