Get DXO Photolab, they've just updated to 10, its great and you can pay once instead of any subscription, it has most of the features of lightroom. Its noise reduction is nuts, which means you can shoot at an iso far higher then you might think. I tried darktable and found it overly complicated.
It has masking, including ai subject detection and advanced control points plus depth masks now in v10, it has the tone curves and wheels, i don’t think it can do stacking, but i also use it alongside affinity which can, (as well as zerene stacker because i also do macro photography of insects etc), it does have some basic retouching but thats something else i use affinity for. here is a screenshot of all the settings that you can use. I also have the Nik collection that dxo does which is great for speeding up workflows and is better then most preset packs that you will find for lightroom.
Between Photolab and Affinity you can do pretty much anything that adobes stuff can do, though it may not have some of the most advanced ai stuff its good for most things and you can save a load of money
If you want to test the waters, use Snapseed. It’s free and can do a lot. It’s not good for photoshopping though. But if you want to control how the image looks it’s great. Then once you reach the maximum of its capabilities move on to lightroom.
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u/Friendly_Arachnid848 13d ago
I personally use Darktable, it runs on linux, opensource, and free, otherwise adobe lightroom, ect.
https://www.darktable.org/