Lightroom Alternatives Worth Checking Out
Photography news // Adobe causes a firestorm, Ban on DJI drones, new cameras & lenses announced
Photography News Roundup
Here’s some of the photography news that I’ve been following lately.
Adobe’s Terms of Service Update Causes Massive Backlash
Companies update their terms of service all the time. Most of the time, it’s boring and a non-event. But Adobe’s recent update has been anything but.
With some new troubling language and botched handling, Adobe has created a firestorm. Not just with its customers, but also apparently with its employees.
Adobe updated its terms of use for its apps, and it includes some disconcerting language. As Adobe themselves explain one of the changes:
Clarified that we may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review.
Then they tried to patch things up with a tweak that clarified that they weren’t using our content to train their AI engine Adobe Firefly (exception: images you’ve submitted to Adobe Stock).
The dust is by no means settled yet, and there are all sorts of arguments and counterarguments about the implications of this and the related changes. But if you’re using Adobe apps, especially for professional work, it’s worth watching closely.
Ban on DJI Drones?
The US House of Representatives included language in a military funding bill (which then passed) that effectively banned DJI drones on surveillance grounds. The key to it: DJI is a Chinese company. One of the sponsors (Elise Stefanik; R-NY) said that “DJI poses the national security threat of TikTok, but with wings.”
But it’s not only that simple. DJI had already implemented privacy and safety features that the US Government demanded. And now they’re being turned around and used as grounds for the ban.
It’s all quite a mess (there’s a great rundown of how it got to this here). And, crucially, it isn’t law yet. But it has potentially big implications not just for hobbyists, but especially for commercial aerial photographers.
US Department of Justice Sues Adobe Over Subscription Policies
And if that wasn’t enough, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Adobe alleging that it’s unnecessarily difficult to cancel subscriptions and that early-termination fees aren’t clearly disclosed.
Nikon Z6 III Available for Preorder
Nikon has officially announced the long-rumored Nikon Z6 III mirrorless. It falls in Nikon's upper mid-range, but they've bumped up some of the specs to higher levels, bringing it closer to flagship models like the Z8 and Z9 and a decked it out with a new partially-stacked sensor. It's available for preorder now with an anticipated shipping start date of June 25. Available as body only ($2499) or with a 24-70mm ƒ/4 S lens ($3100).
DxO Turns 20
French imaging software company DxO turns 20 this month, and to celebrate, they’re offering 20 percent off all their products for 20 days.
They rose to prominence with their massive and excellent database of optical calibrations and tests of lenses and cameras, which they were then able to integrate into software for digital corrections. They’re also well-known as the saviors of Nik Collection, a long-time image editing suite that Google bought and then discarded and left for dead.
I particularly recommend checking out DxO/Nik Color Efex for color images, DxO Silver Efex for fine-tuned black and white conversions (my favorite way to process B+W), and DxO PureRAW for some innovative and really useful prepping of RAW files. They also have PhotoLAB for RAW processing, which is an interesting potential Lightroom alternative, albeit not a 1:1 direct replacement.
Ansel Adams’ Estate Scolds Adobe
Adobe’s PR team has been in another firing line, too. Ansel Adams’ estate has publicly berated Adobe for selling generative AI imitations of his work through their AI and stock images marketplaces. They were even labeled as “Ansel Adams-style,” which is pretty brazen.
It’s one thing to find his work inspiration; it’s quite another to make money selling cheap knock-offs, especially for a company like Adobe.
Photographers & Artists Abandon Instagram’s Ship
Meta is training its AI on content posted on Facebook and Instagram, something that many photographers and artists have a problem with (me included, which is why I’ve recently deleted most of my Instagram images).
So quite a few photographers and artists are heading for Instagram’s exits and walking across the street to Cara, a startup social media app that has similar functionality to Instagram but has an explicitly non-AI approach. It’s a tiny platform for now so has nowhere near the reach yet, but it has seen massive sudden growth in recent weeks.
The Washington Post has a good write-up on it here. And if you want to try it out (or get in early with your preferred handle), you can find it here.
I’ve set up an account and am looking forward to diving more deeply into it. It looks like it has a lot of potential, and I like its artist-friendly approach.
Ricoh Camera’s Worksite Features
This falls into the category of something I’ve considered and just thought it interesting.
Ricoh (aka Pentax) is continuing with their line of quirky adventure cameras, releasing two new waterproof compact cameras. These don’t necessarily break much new ground, but this feature of the WG-1000, the higher of the two models, caught my eye:
Since the WG-1000 can be safely sterilized with solutions containing ethanol, sodium hypochlorite (approved as a disinfectant of food additives) or chlorine dioxide, it can be used at medical facilities and production lines.
New Leica iPhone App
Leica’s ain’t cheap, and they’re not a realistic or responsible expense for many of us. But Leica has now come out with an iPhone app that digitally mimics that classic Leica look: Leica LUX.
It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than a Leica camera, but it’s not all that cheap for an app, and it works on a subscription basis (with a free trial). It also doesn’t work with RAW files because, like apps like this, it relies on post-capture processing.
New ƒ/1.8 Zoom from Sigma
Sigma has announced a new 28-45mm ƒ/1.8 zoom for full-frame mirrorless cameras. They’ve had a similar lens available for APS-C for a while, but this is the first f1.8 zoom for full-frame.
It’s not a small lens by any means, but it could potentially replace a couple of primes in your kit if you’re partial to fast glass. For now, it’s only available for Sony E and Leica L mounts and available for preorder.
Pentax’s New Film Camera is Here, But It Isn’t What I Expected
There have been rumors milling for quite some time of a new film camera from Pentax. But this was not what I expected. I was expected something more along the lines of a reimagined K1000, that solid workhorse of a camera that many of us of a certain generation learned photography on.
Instead, what Pentax has released is a compact with a fixed 25mm lens. It’s called the Pentax 17. And it looks like it’s a better fit for the quirky Ricoh brand (which Pentax also owns). And the most confusing part of it to me is that they’ve gone with half-frame (which is presumably where the 17 comes from, ie. half-ish of 35mm). That is, it divides the conventional 35mm frame in two, creating half-size portrait-orientation images. It’s clearly aimed at social media posting, and their marketing department seems to be counting on this taking off on Tik Tok.
While half-frame film cameras have existed before, they’re not exactly common. And there are inevitable image quality issues of cramming more image onto a finite space of film with finite resolution. I’m also a bit confused about the processing and scanning logistics—it’s not clear to me how that works with the drastically fewer film processing options that are now available. So it’s not something I’ll be rushing out to buy; I’ll stick with my trust Nikon FM and Olympus 35 for now.
Photographer Spotlight
I recently wrote about shooting stitched panoramas handheld without a tripod. And I’ve since come across the stunning photography of London-based architectural photographer Peter Li.
He shoots immersive vertical panoramas (or vertoramas) inside some of Europe’s stunning cathedrals and other grand interiors. At least some of them are shot handheld.
You can see some of his work on his website.
Lightroom Alternatives Worth Checking Out
Adobe has caused an uproar in the past couple of weeks with an update to its terms of service that seems to suggest that Adobe reserves the right to access your work for just about any purpose.
There are bitter arguments still raging about whether that's actually what it means, and Adobe has since tweaked some of the language. But two things are undeniable:
Adobe has handled the situation clumsily. And that has left a sour taste with more than a few of their users.
It raises some really important issues that are only going to become more prominent. Such as, how private are these cloud-based services really, and are they incompatible with the security requirements of professional photographers working in NDA situations?
And it also comes at a time when there's a very robust debate about tech corporations taking (or stealing) content to train their generative AI systems and, in some cases, regurgitating it back without compensation or attribution. And some of them have been caught doing so despite explicitly saying they weren't. Adobe might not be the egregious offender here in a rogue's gallery of egregious offenders, but they have explicitly acknowledged that it uses Adobe Stock images to train its Firefly AI engine, but denies that they've used other customer images (and have since tweaked their terms of service to make that explicit).
All of it has left a bit of a sour taste for many and provides a motivation for some photographers to look at other options. That's not always easy. Through a mix of acquisition and development, Adobe has accumulated some top-notch tools for working with imagery, and they have something of a stranglehold on the market.
But it’s not absolute. There are some other very good options available out there.
So I thought it a useful time to revisit the world of Lightroom alternatives. It's something I've dived deeply on before (you can read it here), and I've tried out all of the major contenders for a post I've had up for quite a while. I'm not going to recap all of them here; I'm just focusing on some of the best options.
Lightroom has a huge market share in this space, but it's by no means the only option. There are some excellent paid apps, but also some surprisingly good free ones. None of them is a direct 1:1 copy of Lightroom, but that's a good thing because it increases the odds of photographers finding a good fit for their needs and preferences.
The closest competitor is probably Capture One Pro. It started out as an app focusing on PhaseOne medium-format digital cameras. But it has since broadened its scope and is now a full-featured image management and processing app. It's geared particularly toward the professional end of the market, but if you're willing to invest a little time in the initial learning curve, you can get some excellent results from it.
Next in line are probably ON1 Photo RAW and Luminar NEO. Both of these can be used either as standalone apps or Lightroom plugins, but for the purposes here, the standalone app usage is much more relevant. They're both very actively developed, and they're not afraid to experiment with some innovative and interesting features. That's particularly true with their AI image enhancement tools (or, more accurately, machine learning). While those aren't to my taste personally, there are many photographers who appreciate features like one-step sky replacement or adding lighting effects. Sure, you can do those types of things in Photoshop too, but the virtue of these apps is that they've made the process quicker, easier, and cheaper.
Lightroom, of course, is notable for integrating two core functions: image processing and media management. It's a combination that's hard to get right, as the folks from Bibble found out the hard way some years ago. So some of the best apps focus more on the RAW processing part than the media management, instead using a hybrid approach to file/database management or just using the underlying file system directly.
And, finally, there are also some surprisingly capable free alternatives. They don't always have the same polish or integrate the newest RAW formats as quickly, but they're impressively full-featured. The one I'd recommend checking out first is Darktable, and I have a detailed rundown on it here.
For several years now I've been using DxO PhotoLab instead of Lightroom. It includes PureRAW's noise reduction, and is built on DxO's lens correction testing.
That it does not mimic Lightroom's catalog mechanism I consider a distinct advantage - I can simply find a file on disk and immediately start working on it.
It also works as a plug-in to Lightroom and Photoshop, shipping pictures back and forth as DNG (universal RAW) files, so features one has but not the other are always available.