what standalone photo editing program is as good as Photoshop?

[mearussi]

Often I'm in  an area that has no internet connection so I need a good photo editing program that doesn't need to "phone home" once a month. What is a good stand alone Photoshop analog?

[routlaw]

Photoshop CS 6. I still use it to this very day. Doesn't require a subscription. Otherwise I'm at a loss for what could be used.

[Remko]

Often I'm in  an area that has no internet connection so I need a good photo editing program that doesn't need to "phone home" once a month. What is a good stand alone Photoshop analog?

It depends on what you want to do. I use Affinity Photo. This application does not yet offer the same functionality *in every aspect*, hence my first statement. For me Affinity Photo is an excellent replacement of PS. I have PS CS 6 and do not use it anymore.

Why not downloading the free trial and see for yourself?

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

At the moment, Serif (the company behind all Affinity products), has an action with 50% off the list price to support everyone in this difficult time. If i am not mistaken the list price was US $60,-

cheers,
Remko

[Panagiotis]

Often I'm in  an area that has no internet connection so I need a good photo editing program that doesn't need to "phone home" once a month. What is a good stand alone Photoshop analog?

I' ve heard good words about Photoline https://www.pl32.com/

[kers]

Photoshop CS 6. I still use it to this very day. Doesn't require a subscription. Otherwise I'm at a loss for what could be used.

working on Apple OSX:
I am on Photoshop CC at the moment, but still have CS6
what is better in CC:

Cameraraw support for new camera models
better Raw developing: ( ACR has some new tools- almost on par with LR CC)

CS6 it is 64 bits, and runs on Mojave ( my latest system) but the installer is not,  so it has to be installed on an older system and upgraded to that new OS- what i notice is it is not working well with actions; after some time (- on OSX 10.12 and 13 it is 5- 10 minutes) they stop.
Just checked mojave : the action works 5 minutes after that: spinning pizzawheel and a system restart!
It officially lost support after OSX 10.11

Other than that it seems to work and the new improvements over the last years are minor.


I have bought a copy of Affinity photo and it is a very good program with development and new added features.It also makes good use af the processor cores. There are very good learning videos on their website.
I am now on the LR+ photoshop CC wagon but am ready to jump off if it becomes to pricey or otherwise...

[routlaw]

FWIW, I have not had the issues Peter Kers describes and am on Mojave as well. Don't want to upgrade to Catalina just yet because there are a couple of 32 programs I would like to continue using for now or at least have at the ready. Not sure what might be causing the issues he is describing but its odd behavior for sure. I agree with him there is little the CC version of PS have that is not available in CS6 but make no mistake the powers that be will make sure it becomes obsolete. Canon no longer supports it with their printer software, but there are work arounds and hacks to accomplish this.

[budjames]

I love Affinity Photo. After switching from Lightroom to Capture One Pro about 3 years ago, I sought out a replacement for Photoshop so that I could finally cancel my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

After becoming proficient in Capture One Pro, I cut my former LR dependency on plug-ins. 99% of the image editing, retouching, cloning and light retouching can be done easily in Capture One Pro. Affinity handles the rest.

Your needs may differ, but as a travel and fine art photographer, my heaving pixel mashing needs are minimal.

Regards,
Bud James

Please check out my fine art and travel photography at www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto.

[mcpix]

If you're on a Mac, Pixelmator Pro is definitely worth a look. Affinity Photo feels more like photoshop, but Pixelmator Pro has some automated ML (Machine Learning) features that blow Photoshop out of the water. I color correct 100s of photos a day and Pixelator Pro is the software I use the most. The other great thing about Pixelmator Pro is that they are constantly listening to their customers and updating the software. I reported a bug in the cropping tool and they fixed it in an upgrade about 3 weeks later.

I also really like Capture One Pro for a Lightroom replacement. It has all the tools of Lightroom plus layers. The interface is a little clunky at first, but once you find where all the tools are, it works great.

Edit: After typing how often Pixelmator Pro updates their software, I decided to check and sure enough they had just released another new update!

[kers]

Good to hear all these reactions...
Good to hear how photoshop actions on CS6 works for you- maybe it is a language problem (Dutch version)

What i did not like about C1 was the lack of lenssupport- distortion/vignetting.
I do not always use that but need it sometimes- LR is much better in that part.
Also it works differently so you have to get used to it; The raw development is OK and sometimes better, but not always compared to LR. Lr gives a more uniform developed image i find.

I bought Pixelmator, but then they came up with ...pro and had to buy it again - so i stopped there- good to hear it is working well.

i read good things about DXO in the article of Dan Wells- Used that some time ago but found it was a black box- i did not exactly know what it was doing...inside... mist control over it. Maybe i have to look into that again.