Kit
Zone
any things have changed
since Photoshop first
came to dominate the
photo editing market.
We’ve all got much
larger more complicated
photo libraries now, and
we need software that can organise,
search and share these growing
collections. There’s also a growing
interest in more evocative ‘looks’ that
can be applied quickly and simply
across a whole batch of photos.
And, most of all, we want to be able
to change our minds – hence the rise
of non-destructive, or ‘parametric’
photo editing, as used by Lightroom,
Capture One and a whole host of
other photo editors. Very often you’ll
come back to an image and see a
better way of adjusting it, or seehow to tweak the settings to get a
better result. Non-destructive tools
enable you to make those changes
months after the initial edit.
Amongst many members of the
photographic community, there’s
a general mistrust of subscription
software. Adobe’s Photography Plan
is terrific value, but many people still
prefer to pay a one-off licence fee and
not have to keep paying monthly fees
on a permanent basis. Often, the
long-term cost of ownership is not
so very different when you do the
calculations, but there’s a significant
difference in how much you pay
and how long you pay it for!
So here’s our pick of 10 top photo-
editing applications for beginners
and experts, cataloguers and preset
fans alike. Rod LawtonM
It’s not all about Photoshop! These days
we want more than layers and masks...
Photo-editing
sof tware
The contenders
1 Adobe Photoshop £9.98/$9.99 per month
2 Adobe Photoshop Elements 2022 £86.56/$99.99
3 Adobe Lightroom £9.98/$9.99 per month
4 Adobe Lightroom Classic £9.98/$9.99 per month
5 Serif Affinity Photo 1.10 £47.99/$54.99
6 Capture One Capture One 22 £299/$299
7 DxO PhotoLab 5 Elite £199/$219
8 Exposure Software Exposure X7 $129
9 On1 Photo Raw 2022 £93.73/$99.99
10 Skylum Luminar AI £69/$79110 DIGITAL CAMERA^ FEBRUARY 2022