Software advice?

[titrisol]

I'd do GIMP and Darktable

Also something like SilkyPix can be very useful

 

[Godfrey]

I seem to be becoming one of those annoying free and open source software advocates since I installed Linux on my old MacBook Air a couple of years ago, but please let me offer a few points here:

First, if you don't want to buy new hardware, Linux gives you the option to install an up-to-date (and therefore much more secure) operating system on your old hardware. I'm running elementary os (not the most lightweight distribution) on a computer from 2014 with only 4GB of RAM, and it runs reasonably well. Not lightning fast, but fast enough that it's still pleasant to use.

Second, if you're not interested in subscription-based software, I think your best route is free/open source software. I think basically all commercial/propriety software is moving towards subscription models.

I use ART (a fork of RawTherapee), Filmulator, GIMP (rarely), and a few other FOSS apps for editing on my Linux box. I have not tried scanning or printing with this machine, so I can't really comment on that, although I understand there is FOSS available that does this well.

Here's a site with a lot of useful information about FOSS photography software: PIXLS.US - Free/Open Source Photography.

Just a few points to consider. And please forgive me for being one of those people.

Speaking of free software: if you run Apple systems, Photos (supplied FoC on all macOS, iOS, and iPadOS systems) has a very good image editor built-in, in addition to its photo management capabilities. And Apple recently started offering Photomator (derived from Pixelmator) FoC for all macOS, iOS, and iPadOS systems, which is an excellent, even more full-featured image processing app.

I've tested and used both. Both work very well ... If I wasn't already so well-embedded with Lightroom Classic, I'd just use them.

G

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

One caveat about Photomator...last I used it, the RAW processing was quite bad, because it employed Apple's in-house engine that applied noise reduction by default, smearing detail pretty significantly. At the time I wrote to the devs asking about this, and they said they were working on a custom RAW engine so they didn't need to use Apple's, and then Apple bought them. I followed up on my query and they said they were no longer working on it. That was a couple of years ago, though, so maybe check in on the state of RAW in MacOS.

 

[Godfrey]

I've processed quite a number of raw files using Photos and other apps which use the Apple raw engine ... no problems that I saw. I never used Pixelmator, but what I've processed with Photomator looks virtually identical to what I see out of Lightroom Classic.

G