Besides editing ability, I was looking at organizing ability and speed. One program that advertised itself as loading images faster (and it did do that) unfortunately did everything else slower. Another claimed that it exported its result around four times faster than Lightroom, and it did that, but again, everything else in doing actual editing was extremely slow. I went through about 5 programs, some free, some not. The paid ones offer trial periods for their software. After testing each program I decided to stay with Lightroom and Photoshop for now. What I had hoped to find was one program that had the benefits of both Photoshop and Lightroom in one package - some looked like they attempted that, but they were in the too early stages of development with too many problems. Too bad the best parts of each program couldn't be made into one.
Some of the ones I tried were Affinity, ON1 Photo RAW 2018.1, Raw Therapee, LightZone, and one other one called chasys_draw_ies_4_52_01 - couldn't do anything with that last one. In the past, I also tried GIMP (free), but haven't checked it lately. I'll probably check it this week as we're supposed to get lots more rainy days.
There is a Nik Collection plug-in from DxO that is free to download - it used to cost $500 and does some pretty neat stuff, and the new price of $0.00 is certainly right. I've just downloaded and am installing the newest version.
One free program that I found had some good features and is called LightZone. I sometimes use ON1 Effects 10.5, which is free. It has some nice presets (pre-made adjustments built into the program) plus the ability to edit those presets and create new ones. I also use PortraitPro 17 for portraits when needed - it can do things like change backgrounds, change lighting, add make-up, and make skin look much better with a whole lot of presets and adjustments.
Most of the paid programs come with free trial periods, usually from 10 - 30 days depending on the program. A good idea to try them first - a few programs crashed and one caused my computer to crash, too. Knowing what I know now if I was new to editing software, I would pick Lightroom an Photoshop as my first choice if price didn't matter. For a lower price to entry, my next choices would be Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro (I started with these years ago). However, if you do a limited amount of photography, Lightroom is probably all you will need, along with the free programs mentioned. I may do a future post on just PortraitPro 17.
Below are some examples of editing - each series is from either the same original image or a very similar one - the variations that can be achieved are pretty much limitless:
That's me with minimal editing.
These two are of the same photo, with lots of experimental editing and a lot sharper - part of the reason was to see how sharp this lens (Nikon 28-300) is capable of shooting.
From a different photo.
The following two series should give you an idea of what you can do with editing software. Some edits are pretty subtle, some not so much.
I think this top photo is the original without editing
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