A brief and abortive foray into other raw processors

[Archiver]

I've been using Lightroom 4.4 for many, many years. I missed buying a license key for Lightroom 6, which means that LR4 is the last standalone version of Lightroom I can access, unless I brave the high seas. It's been pretty good, doing more or less what I want it to do, and I know it inside out. The only problem is that cameras that came after the Panasonic LX7 are not supported, which means using Adobe DNG Converter to transform later raw files into something LR4 can handle. This creates another layer of work that I have borne with for years, but I finally wondered if any other raw processor will give me the same or better look as LR4.

Well.

Two prominent options are Raw Therapee and Capture One Pro. RT is freeware, with a slightly clunky interface and a surprising number of options that LR4 seems to lack. C1 has a subscription and standalone payment process, both of which are quite expensive. As of Dec 2024, C1 standalone is $549 USD, and subscribing for a year is about $300 USD. Yuck.

I tried both programs with a number of files from my Leica M9, Panasonic GX85, G9 and S5, which are my most used cameras. After a couple of hours of adjustments and experimentation, it seems that C1 Pro does a better job that Raw Therapee with these files in terms of colour and exposure adjustment, and Raw Therapee uses an awful HSV colour channel implementation that is nothing like the HSL slider feature of Lightroom. The images were acceptable, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to tweak HSV the way I wanted.

Most critically, LR4 gives me effortless and pleasing adjustments to M9 files, where both C1 and RT require a lot more fiddling. Oddly, raising M9 file exposure in LR4 results in a bright and attractive image, but it isn't the same with RT or C1.

So I'm sticking with LR4 for now, although I'll try Luminar later. I am attempting to slowly wean myself from Adobe and their subscription model, and their use of you assets to train AI.

Back to editing the Christmas images. Have a great new year, everyone!

 

[chuckroast]

You might also consider Darktable. It runs on Linux, MacOS, and Windows:

darktable

darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer

www.darktable.org

 

[chuckroast]

I should also mention that I don't do a ton of digital post and what I do is pretty elementary, so take that into account, but find no need for Photoshop whatsoever. Photoshop was designed as a general graphics manipulation tool that does far more than any photographic application might ever need.

When Adobe decided to charge everyone by the drink, I really didn't need it, so I learned to use GIMP. For my purposes - with a Nikon D750 and, now, Leica D-Lux Typ 109 - it's more than able to handle anything I've thrown at it. Tutorials are abundant and it's free.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I have LR6 stand-alone, but it does not handle my Nikon Z5. I also have LR4.4 on this machine and others.

I am using ART- "a bit hacked" as I found you could use LR6 ".DCP" files with it, and in LR4.4.

ART. Darktable, and Raw Therapee- Share Notes Open-Source Image Processing Software.

I installed "ART", Another Raw Therapee" fork on my HP Tower yesterday. I bought a Nikon Z5 this week, and needed new software to process the .NEF files from the Z5. As Adobe no longer sells Stand-Alone licenses for Lightroom, I am done with them. I've used Adobe Photoshop for 30 years, starting...

rangefinderforum.com

 

[DownUnder]

I may be setting myself up for online assassination by saying this, but I've long believed many if not most of us have no need for all the bells and whistles of Photoshop, Lightroom and all those other do-it-all (and expensive) programs that will auto-everything for us except making the coffee.

More than a decade ago after a difficult time with Photoshop Elements - which I have to admit was probably more due to me than the program as it seemed even school kids could do wonderful things with it - I opted for one of the many free programs available online. I have never, ever regretted this.

As I do little other than tinker with colors, fix up tilting horizons, crop out a few unwanted bits and now and then a little sharpening, I realised very early on that the Big Boys In The Game were not for me. Also need I say it, far too expensive for anyone on a moderate budget as I was then as a struggling freelance architect in an industry more than overloaded with competitive and struggling young'uns determined to undercut me in all the work I was tendering for.

I was also dabbling in stock photo sales at that time, and I quickly realised the art directors/photo editors/book editors who were looking at and occasionally buying one or two photos from me, mostly for book publishing, had no interest in my playing small games with my visuals.

It quite astounded me that some of the photos I thought would be my least saleable posts were quickly snapped up by these worthies, and when the final results were available I was amazed at how good the quality was - mostly thanks to their alchemistry with, annoying as it may be for me to admit it, such programs as Photoshop and Lightroom. But then, as any sensible Sagittarius will say, far better be it for them experts and not me to have to do all the pre-publication work.

PS Some here will have noted that I haven't named the free software I use. After all so many are available, and most do superb work if by different means, like those roads to Rome. Needs must, and a little search/research online will reveal the treasures that are available without having to pay a king's ransom every year for the best one.

 

[Darthfeeble]

I didn't see any mention of what platform everyone is running. I'm on a Mac and vaguely remember my time with Microsoft. Apple provides a decent photography program as part of the OS, I don't know what Microsoft offers. Sounds to me that most of the posters so far could just be as happy with out of the camera jpegs. Nothing wrong with that, there's a whole bunch of folks that insist on OOC in the film world, why not digital. Most relatively modern cameras offer some sort of manipulation to the jpeg files so if that works for you it's even less to deal with. I, on the other hand just enjoy post processing. I actually like it more than taking the picture. Heresy!! If you like Topaz plugins, they offer a really nice PP program to go with their more well know stuff and it's free.

 

[boojum]

I may as well put my oar in the water. I did use Lightroom until it moved to a monthly rental. I have fooled with others, mostly on Linux after pretty much moving there. I just wanted to get away from the MS constant cost of doing business. I like the Linux eschewing the corporate cash register structure, too. I am old enough to remember when most of the stuff was either freeware or shareware and plenty of it was good.

This leaves me with Darktable, RawTherapee and ART. @Sonnar Brian pointed the way to ART so on the rare instances when I have to do RAW work I use that. For JPG work I use GIMP. They do everything I need to do.

I have some folks over in the Leica Forum cult who are insistent that the camera cannot convert RAW > JPG as well as they can on a computer, My comment has been, fine, you have strong opinions on that, show me the proof. I have been all through this on the MP3 VS WAV wars. My position is that for all practical day-to-day purposes the differences are negligible at best. Last I checked on that board I was almost the Antichrist. I'll go back and see how they are fuming.

I can show you SOOC JPG's that are stunning. Some companies have color science engineers who can work miracles. And some do not. Here's what 8-bits can do when it really wants to.

B0000862 by West Phalia, on Flickr

B0000628 by West Phalia, on Flickr

B0000389 by West Phalia, on Flickr
​

I have been lucky enough to get some used cameras and lenses which are very good. @Sonnar Brian may have beat me into submission on the M9 + Sonnar solution, I am not sure. And the results are so good. But nothing I have or have seen can do with color and light what these Swedes have taught the X2D + XCD 55V to do. You see, I am so lame with image editors that I must have good SOOC camera-lens combos.

​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Here we go again, a bunch of wealthy old men stamping their feet like spoiled children over paying $10 a month for software that is essential to our work. There is NO FREE SOFTWARE that is anywhere near as good as Lightroom for RAW processing. None. I have tried most of the free and cheap alternatives and every one of them, with one exception, produced inferior image quality.

The one good one was Skylum Luminar, which I'll talk about more in a moment. The rest produced poor color rendering (Except Capture one, whose color rendering is wonderful), and poor fine detail resolution compared to Lightroom. That's a big one, guys. Why invest in the expensive lenses you guys all own scads of if the RAW software throws away fine detail when it demosaics the raw image? Also, if you do high ISO work a lot, as I do, Lightroom's new AI Noise reduction is incredible; ISO 3200 images from my Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras (which do not have great high-ISO image quality using normal noise reduction) look like they were shot with the base ISO..incredible resolution, no smearing of detail, excellent sharpness. That alone makes it worth every penny.

The only two alternatives to LR that have any usefulness are:

Capture One: Excellent color. Easy to use. Detail rendering is great, but ONLY with LOW ISO images. High ISO images fall apart badly in C1. Since I shoot often with high ISOs, that's a no-go for me. If I did studio work only, it would be a great choice.

Skylum Luminar: Excellent Color, Excellent detail rendering at all ISO settings. NOT easy to use. When I used it several years ago, it was also rather slow. Newer versions are said to be better in that regard. If you absolutely HAVE to spite Adobe, this is the best all around alternative; but it is a pain to use.

Everything else is a waste of your time, and if its something you have to pay for...that just makes it worse. Adobe's subscription is NOT expensive. It's cheaper than it was buying the software before. Photoshop by itself cost $700; and that did NOT include lightroom. Lightroom was another $400. Everytime Adobe updated the software, which was about once a year, they dinged you for another $150 for PS and $100 for LR. Just the damned update prices were a lot more than a year of the subscription. Its simple math.

 

[wlewisiii]

I used Photoshop for a longtime but when Adobe went subscription, I went "Bye!". Then Capture 1. Same thing happened. I used ART and liked it with the DCP files Brian helped me get.

Now, especially with Pentax, I'm using a tweaked version of RawTherapee from The Pentax Forum as put together there by user "The Squirrel Mafia". While ART cleans up the UI considerably, he's made a bunch of really nice additions for various Pentax digital cameras and modes. None of which helps you, alas!

I would suggest trying both ART to see if the UI is any better for you and drop your LR DCP files into it. And Darktable isn't bad either.

 

[boojum]

Here we go again, a bunch of wealthy old men stamping their feet like spoiled children over paying $10 a month for software that is essential to our work. There is NO FREE SOFTWARE that is anywhere near as good as Lightroom for RAW processing. None. I have tried most of the free and cheap alternatives and every one of them, with one exception, produced inferior image quality.

The one good one was Skylum Luminar, which I'll talk about more in a moment. The rest produced poor color rendering (Except Capture one, whose color rendering is wonderful), and poor fine detail resolution compared to Lightroom. That's a big one, guys. Why invest in the expensive lenses you guys all own scads of if the RAW software throws away fine detail when it demosaics the raw image? Also, if you do high ISO work a lot, as I do, Lightroom's new AI Noise reduction is incredible; ISO 3200 images from my Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras (which do not have great high-ISO image quality using normal noise reduction) look like they were shot with the base ISO..incredible resolution, no smearing of detail, excellent sharpness. That alone makes it worth every penny.

The only two alternatives to LR that have any usefulness are:

Capture One: Excellent color. Easy to use. Detail rendering is great, but ONLY with LOW ISO images. High ISO images fall apart badly in C1. Since I shoot often with high ISOs, that's a no-go for me. If I did studio work only, it would be a great choice.

Skylum Luminar: Excellent Color, Excellent detail rendering at all ISO settings. NOT easy to use. When I used it several years ago, it was also rather slow. Newer versions are said to be better in that regard. If you absolutely HAVE to spite Adobe, this is the best all around alternative; but it is a pain to use.

Everything else is a waste of your time, and if its something you have to pay for...that just makes it worse. Adobe's subscription is NOT expensive. It's cheaper than it was buying the software before. Photoshop by itself cost $700; and that did NOT include lightroom. Lightroom was another $400. Everytime Adobe updated the software, which was about once a year, they dinged you for another $150 for PS and $100 for LR. Just the damned update prices were a lot more than a year of the subscription. Its simple math.

I am certainly glad that you are free from bias on this issue.

Let us start with just what does one want to do with image editors? I use them hardly at all. I use images SOOC. Therefore it is not essential for my work or my play. Why rent image editors? Take your time with the answer. Thank you.

I am old but I did not know I was wealthy. You are so much more informed than I about me. You are handy to have around. Thanks again.

Please note, too, that I am not telling anyone how to do things. I am only saying what works for me. Thanks for the third time.

 

[DownUnder]

Here we go again, a bunch of wealthy old men stamping their feet like spoiled children over paying $10 a month for software that is essential to our work. There is NO FREE SOFTWARE that is anywhere near as good as Lightroom for RAW processing. None. I have tried most of the free and cheap alternatives and every one of them, with one exception, produced inferior image quality.

The one good one was Skylum Luminar, which I'll talk about more in a moment. The rest produced poor color rendering (Except Capture one, whose color rendering is wonderful), and poor fine detail resolution compared to Lightroom. That's a big one, guys. Why invest in the expensive lenses you guys all own scads of if the RAW software throws away fine detail when it demosaics the raw image? Also, if you do high ISO work a lot, as I do, Lightroom's new AI Noise reduction is incredible; ISO 3200 images from my Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras (which do not have great high-ISO image quality using normal noise reduction) look like they were shot with the base ISO..incredible resolution, no smearing of detail, excellent sharpness. That alone makes it worth every penny.

The only two alternatives to LR that have any usefulness are:

Capture One: Excellent color. Easy to use. Detail rendering is great, but ONLY with LOW ISO images. High ISO images fall apart badly in C1. Since I shoot often with high ISOs, that's a no-go for me. If I did studio work only, it would be a great choice.

Skylum Luminar: Excellent Color, Excellent detail rendering at all ISO settings. NOT easy to use. When I used it several years ago, it was also rather slow. Newer versions are said to be better in that regard. If you absolutely HAVE to spite Adobe, this is the best all around alternative; but it is a pain to use.

Everything else is a waste of your time, and if its something you have to pay for...that just makes it worse. Adobe's subscription is NOT expensive. It's cheaper than it was buying the software before. Photoshop by itself cost $700; and that did NOT include lightroom. Lightroom was another $400. Everytime Adobe updated the software, which was about once a year, they dinged you for another $150 for PS and $100 for LR. Just the damned update prices were a lot more than a year of the subscription. Its simple math.

I too resent being called one of "...a bunch of wealthy old men stamping their feet like spoiled children..." by a young upstart who should know better than to point a critical finger by name-calling some of his many supporters on this site.

Old I may be, but as for the rest if I have any so-called wealth lying around, I surely do not know where it is. Find it for me and you will get a generous commission.

Otherwise I do agree with some of the rest of what you wrote,. Maybe I'm suffering from a hangover from too much Christmas (it always affects me in some way or other), but I do resent your snide opening. Be told!

Movin' on, one of the points I wrote about in my previous post still stand. For most of us, the bells and whistles of Photoshop and Lightroom may not be worth the investment and to be locked in by The Corporate Photo Products Industry. If you sell photographs for a living you may have uses for what these programs do. If not, as many us don't, well, too bad for that.

Many interesting and even useful suggestions have come to us in this thread - including some for Chris, for which we should kindly overlook what may be his lack of social skills in debating matters online and thank him - but again, to use an old aphorism, it's horses for courses. If it hasn't rained and the racetrack isn't wet, why pay good money to put gumboots on the nags?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I used Adobe Photoshop 3.0- which came with the Kodak DCS200. Over 30 years ago. When they went to the per-month, I stuck with Lightroom CS2.
When Lightroom went per-month, I stuck with LR 6.
ART is very good, and I can match results with Lightroom. You just need to put in some time for learning. Or hacking.
Anything it cannot do for my M9, M Monochrom, and M8: I can write myself in Fortran. I could probably add it to ART, it is open source. I could also convert the big-endian fields of the M240 with a few routines written in the 90s, just have not added them. I've been writing image processing code since 1979. My bad column restoration algorithm for the CCD based M8, M9, and M Monochrom took 1 day to implement. It does not "just average" over bad columns: it computes the DC offset from the underperforming column and restores it.
Adobe can stick it. I am tired of people telling me there is something wrong with me because I refuse to pay tribute to Adobe.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I used Adobe Photoshop 3.0- which came with the Kodak DCS200. Over 30 years ago. When they went to the per-month, I stuck with Lightroom CS2.
When Lightroom went per-month, I stuck with LR 6.
ART is very good, and I can match results with Lightroom. You just need to put in some time for learning. Or hacking.
Anything it cannot do for my M9, M Monochrom, and M8: I can write myself in Fortran. I could probably add it to ART, it is open source. I could also convert the big-endian fields of the M240 with a few routines written in the 90s, just have not added them. I've been writing image processing code since 1979. My bad column restoration algorithm for the CCD based M8, M9, and M Monochrom took 1 day to implement.
Adobe can stick it. I am tired of people telling me there is something wrong with me because I refuse to pay tribute to Adobe.

That's silly. You're not paying tribute; you're paying for a service. Its no different than paying your phone bill, your car insurance bill, or paying for TV service (cable, streaming services like Netflix, etc). Do you whine that you're being forced to 'pay tribute' to use your phone, drive your car, or watch TV? Of course not, so why the emotional tizzy over paying $10 a month for software that you use for something that is important in your life?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

It is not a service. A service is an update to a product, optional. I still prefer Wordstar 6. If you need it- pay for the service to update the software.
What Adobe does: require perpetual payment for a product that they used to sell.
If you do not mind that fine. Do insult everyone else for refusing to pay a perpetual monthly fee for something they do not want.
Too many good alternatives that do what I want. And if there are no alternatives- I write my own.

Do not insult people on this forum. It is not whining- it is a decision. Just because you drink the Kool-Aid, does not mean everyone else has to. Emotional Tizzy: You started that because people do NOT want to pay Adobe a perpetual fee.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

It is not a service. A service is an update to a product, optional. I still prefer Wordstar 6. If you need it- pay for the service to update the software.
What Adobe does: require perpetual payment for a product that they used to sell.
If you do not mind that fine. Do insult everyone else for refusing to pay a perpetual monthly fee for something they do not want.
Too many good alternatives that do what I want. And if there are no alternatives- I write my own.

Do not insult people on this forum. It is not whining- it is a decision. Just because you drink the Kool-Aid, does not mean everyone else has to. Emotional Tizzy: You started that because people do NOT want to pay Adobe a perpetual fee.

There doesn't have to be an 'upgrade' for something to be a service. Is this month's electricity 'upgraded' from the electricity you paid the electric company for last month? Does your car insurance company upgrade your coverage with each payment? Even if that were a valid argument, and it isn't, Adobe is constantly issuing upgrades that add functionality or improve the image rendering, without charging us the $150 they charged for upgrades to Photoshop or the $100 they charged to update Lightroom.

I've already demonstrated that its cheaper than paying the $700 that Photoshop used to cost and the $400 that Lightroom cost. Its simple math, Brian. Everything else is emotions getting in the way of rationality. I didn't drink any kool-aid; I use this software to make my living, and simple math shows it was the best deal, especially when my testing of the alternatives showed lower fine detail resolution due to poorer demosaicing and sharpening/noise reduction in the alternatives.

Most of us are not programmers who can write our own.

 

[mapgraphs]

Software subscriptions are a proven revenue generating business strategy. IBM is probably the godfather of it all. I can recall when buying commercial software, it included free updates, then free upgrades to the newest version, then upgrades at a nominal fee, then new versions at a slight discount. Now you get to experience beta testing with a small monthly fee. Nice game. It works well for IT departments because everything else they buy is probably on a lease basis. At some point IBM started calling their big iron "servers" transitioning their enterprise offerings as being internet enabled. Thank you IBM. I worked on an IBM training package called OS/2 And You that simulated OS/2 functionality on a 286 running IBM DOS. Bit depth has come a ways since then, but a bitmap is still just a bitmap.

I'm still using 32bit image software created in 1994 that ran flawlessly on Windows 3.11, upgrading once. This software continued to run on the subsequent Win versions to 2013 when I upgraded to the version I'm still using on Win 11. It's a vector based imaging package that has never crashed on me. I can't say the same for the comparable Adobe offering. I stopped using anything Adobe twenty years ago. If the software is written well enough, there's no need to subscribe to a fix program bundled with minor updates. I do get that there's a false sense of security built into the practice...

And I'm still using the original bitmap editor I got bundled with a new digital camera back in 2007. It handles the jpg files from every digital camera I have, with the ability to lift six stops, resample and do global adjustments, no bugs, no upgrades, no subscription. ...Everything posted on my flickr account was processed with it. And then, there's always GIMP.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

And I did not pay anything for ART that I use now, and will not have to pay anything for it. I have done direct comparisons between my installation of ART and Lightroom: no difference in the output. It does everything I want, and if it does not: I run my own software. I was reading TIFF files using Fortran from Digital Cameras in the 1990s. My wife had a 1-MPixel microscope camera that cost a fortune. TIFF 6.0 allowed multiple images to be stored in one file, which the Microscope software did. All images from one session were stored in the same TIF. Photoshop could only process the first image, so I wrote a Fortran program to split them all into individual files. Cancer Research. We developed code to recognize cancer cells in the image.

Brand Loyalty to the point of insulting everyone else that does not use the same product is unacceptable. It shows the brand is very shallow, and people must convince themselves it is the "one and only way". It does not matter what the brand or product happens to be.

In the intervening time of my last post: disassembled and did a CLA on a 1971 J-3. It will be a wartime Sonnar by the end of the day. You can't pay people these days to do that conversion.

 

[shawn]

Lightroom is my primary editor (and it is non-destructive) and also my image storage database which is a huge part of what I use it for. I stuck with LR6 and avoided the subscription model for a long time but ended up subscribing awhile ago. The cost is roughly the same as it was with the yearly upgrades from LR 2 to LR3...etc..etc and I get Photoshop too which I didn't have at that price before. Not at all saying it is the only way but it does do so many things well and has some features that are massive time savers, for me, compared to other programs. For example, multi-shot panoramic photots which I take when scanning large negatives (up to 6x24). I then use Negative Lab Pro to invert the negatives within LR.

I also shoot panoramic photos with my 4 camera rig and sequential panoramics with a drone. In Lightroom it will auto group all the files by capture time (group the collection of photos in one panoramic) and then I batch process the groups. It takes a minute or two of my time to potentially deal with hundreds of panoramic files making up dozens of panoramics. I've tried a bunch of other pano software and nothing is as quick as this is and LR does an amazing job blending exposures.

Having said that there are a few other editors worth checking out.

If you are looking for a Photoshop replacement I think Affinity Photo is a great replacement. One time purchase and it even can run Photoshop plug ins.

DXO Photolab is very good if it supports your cameras. The plug ins for Film Packs and Viewpoint for perspective control are great. If you shoot a lot of wide angle, Viewpoint is very handy and can help correct for volume anamorphosis which LR can't do. It's Deep PrimeXD Noise Reduction is phenomenal and better than what current LR can do. It has a photo library function too but I have never used it. DXO is buy once use forever with paid upgrades for major version changes. This is probably the closest to a LR replacement type program of what I list.

If you are using a Mac try out RPP64. Get the latest version from their google support page, their webpage is never updated for the latest version. There is a learning curve to RPP64 but it has beautiful colors, even more so with their film emulations. I particularly like their Ektar versions. RPP64 is donationware. All core functions work fine as is, if you donate some thing to them they will send a code to unlock Lightroom integration.

The other software that is strongly worth checking out is Iridient Developer. This is paid software but runs forever and you get at least 18 months of upgrades after purchase. The developer Brian is amazing. This summer I contacted him about a couple of obscure bugs I found and he verified them, fixed them and released updates within a week or two after each report I sent him. He wrote many of the raw processing algorithms in his code (as well as sharpening method) and even has different types of RAW processing depending upon the look you want. His software handled Fuji's X-Trans extremely well way before Adobe got it better and it even handles Sigma Foveon Merrill raw files along with some special things for them like extended dynamic range conversions to monochrome. I don't bother with Sigma PhotoPro anymore, I do everything for my Sigma SD1M in Iridient.

If you like B&W Iridient can convert directly to B&W without demosaicing first. Get the sharpness of a monochrome camera without buying a monochrome camera.

Brian also makes Transformer software which takes different brands RAW files and uses his processing to convert to DNG. You can use these to get older versions of Lightroom to work with more current cameras.

 

[chuckroast]

Here we go again, a bunch of wealthy old men stamping their feet like spoiled children

This has to be deconstructed...

Wealthy - This is relative because there are least three levels:

1. Wealthy enough to retire
2. Wealthy enough to have a jet
3. Wealthy enough to have a girlfriend and your wife doesn't care

I am close to 1., will never hit 2., and my wife assures me that while 3. might be theoretically possible, I have no shot.

Old - Perhaps by chronology but certainly never by maturity

Men - How dare you assume gender??? Some days I identify as a John Deere tractor and some as Caterpillar D-8. You see, I am Hydraulic Fluid...

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This has to be deconstructed...

Wealthy - This is relative because there are least three levels:

1. Wealthy enough to retire
2. Wealthy enough to have a jet
3. Wealthy enough to have a girlfriend and your wife doesn't care

I am close to 1., will never hit 2., and my wife assures me that while 3. might be theoretically possible, I have no shot.

Old - Perhaps by chronology but certainly never by maturity

Men - How dare you assume gender??? Some days I identify as a John Deere tractor and some as Caterpillar D-8. You see, I am Hydraulic Fluid...

Most of the people I see online throwing the biggest tantrums about Adobe are men who own $20,000+ worth of camera gear. I see the same thing with film scanners. Guys with tens of thousands of dollars worth of cameras and lenses balking at spending a couple grand on a scanner that is capable of resolving the fine detail those expensive lenses provide. They use cheap flatbeds or crappy Plustek scanners or jury-rig camera scanning setups, often with cheap crappy lenses instead of proper macro lenses because they have an emotional mental-block against spending anything to properly scan their film.

Why bother buying top of the line cameras and lenses if you're going to throw away that image quality with crappy software or crappy scanners? When I was in art school, the photography professor had a big sign just inside the entrance to the university art building's darkroom. It said: "If you're not going to do it right, don't bother to start. You're simply getting in the way of someone who has a future as a photographer." I agree with that 100%.