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Comment by Arainach | Hacker News Reader

This seems like an overreaction that punishes you more than Adobe. There are a number of other tools - until fairly recently Capture One offered perpetual licensing, for instance. Giving up RAW to spite Adobe is like being angry at Microsoft Office subscription pricing and saying you'll abandon word processors and just use a typewriter instead.

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I don't have spite for Adobe, that seems like a projection on your part. But I can't justify the purchase, and have adapted the way I take photos as part of that.

It's more like finding the subscription for a CAD program too expensive, and swapping to something more primitive instead. If that offends you, I think you gotta have a long hard look in a mirror some time.

The point is that there are many options, at many different price points including free, that don't involve giving up 95% of the data your camera sensor provides and don't lock you into getting the exposure perfectly right the first time or else.

FastRawViewer, DxO, Affinity, Darktable, Capture One. Those are just the ones I personally have installed. There's also RawTherapee, a number of camera OEM-specific tools, and more.

I looked to see if any of these tools support the hdr gain map export that Lightroom supports, and of course, absolutely none of them do. I can't use these.

The person I'm replying to didn't like Adobe and so went back to shooting JPEG. You can't do HDR Gain Mapping from a JPEG either.

You actually can! See libultrahdr and all images that come out of pixel phones.

Back when Adobe upended their perpetual licensing, Capture One was touted as _the_ alternative and I gave it a try since my new Sony camera's RAW format wasn't supported by the last perpetual-license Lightroom version anyway. And man, coming from Lightroom, Capture One was one of the most horrendous usability experiences I have ever had in a creative tool. Even after keeping on trying for a long time, I could absolutely not find a workflow that worked for me and that wasn't filled with obstacles, pains, slowness, inexplicable UI design choices and illogical workflows that totally broke the creative process. It made me miss and appreciate Lightroom so much. But as a photo hobbyist I couldn't justify Adobe's then-new licensing model anyway and the hobby just dwindled away. I ended up finding other paths to express my creative side instead.

If Capture One still is like this, I wouldn't really be surprised if there's truth to the other comment here claiming that their current owners are trying to offload them.

Well, C1 is still the best. But you need two monitors for a smooth experience. Image on one, tools on another. And it's a breeze. Lightroom is like trying to swim in a pool of mud with tin ankle bracers :D.

Capture One is a shitshow, however, and their new owner is actively trying to offload them, so a risk.

Capture One still offers a perpetual license for US$349... it's the option down at the bottom, of course. And they still do discounted upgrade pricing on that, too.

They didn't do that last time I looked. You can only trade in your perpetual license for a discounted 'upgrade' to the subscription version.

Like all software companies that go down the subscription hole, they do their best to hide it. You literally have to login and click on a bunch of things to get to that point.

And I'm sure this will all change when the new vulture capital fund that snaps it up tries to extract every last microcent of "value" from the brand.

I should also note I jumped ship to DxO as soon as C1 started going down the subscription hole. And frankly, I'm kind of glad they're struggling. I guess they thought they were going to replicate Adobe's "success" with subscriptions without first being a near-monopoly.

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