I’ve been trying to improve my photography and was trying to decide on an editing software. I don’t have a lot of money to spend on photography so I only have a basic set of lens and I’m hoping to make up the difference with editing. The three names I keep seeing pop up are Darktable, LightZone, and RawTherapee. In your experience, which of these would be best for a beginner while still having all (or at least most) of the same functionality as Lightroom?
One advantage of Lightroom is that it really good for cataloging your photographs. I think the aforementioned free programs can do this as well but they may not be as efficient. I use digikam to organize my photos, process then in rawtherapee, and then send them to affinity photo for any final edits. Affinity photo is a Photoshop competitor that is a one time fee of ~$50 on sale.