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?
Frankly, try them out. They’re free.
Darktable is looks superficially more Lightroom-like than Rawtherapee. It has a searchable library, printing, etc.
In terms of the editing workflow, however, Darktable behaves a bit differently than the Lightroom template. There is generally equivalent functionality for each of Lightroom’s features (except AI masking and AI denoising). But the way to achieve the functionality is often quite different.
So read the manual, watch a YouTube or three, and you should be good to go. Darktable is tremendously good software, and every bit as capable as Lightroom in terms of professional results. Join discuss.pixls.us if you have questions.