The Move to Free Software

My computer serves many purposes, perhaps more than the typical computer user.  Of course I check emails, browse the internet, and use social media, just like anyone else.  As a photographer and videographer, I also use my computer to manage those pursuits.  For professionals, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom are certainly the clear choice.  Premiere is also a solid choice for video editing.  Seeing as Adobe’s new business model is subscription based, keeping their software was going to continually cost me money.  For a while, my dad was supportive of my interests, and paid for Adobe Creative Cloud at the discounted student rate.  However, I can’t rely on that support forever, leading me to reevaluate the software that I use.  I’m not saying that I will never return to Adobe’s product, but for now I’ll have to choose more affordable alternatives.

Replacement for Lightroom

I shoot most of my photos in RAW, meaning that I need to develop them before they reach their final destination.  I started using Lightroom for this task because of its ease of moving from photo to photo, and apply the same developing settings to multiple photos.  However, I am not a fan of how Lightroom uses a giant catalog file.  For the moment, I’ve been trying out LightZone, an open source piece of software that serves roughly the same purpose as Adobe’s Lightroom.  LightZone seems to be designed the way I would have designed it, and I appreciate that.

Replacement for Photoshop

To be honest, I have never utilized the full capabilities of Photoshop.  I’ve used it to make a few graphics, and occasionally some panoramas or HDR images through the plug-ins in Lightroom, but that’s about it.  For now, I’m using GIMP, another open source package.  As far as I can tell, it is a very capable program, and, like Photoshop, exceeds my needs.

Replacement for Premiere

I make videos for YouTube (although not as often recently), and having video editing software is a must.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find any free video editing software that meets my needs.  However, I do have something that is as good as free to me: something I already own.  Before I used Premiere, I used Sony Vegas, and I still have it.  Even though it is an older, consumer grade version (Movie Studio Platinum 11), I should still serve my needs, even if it is, in my opinion, slightly more difficult to use.  This is also one of the factors that prevents me from moving entirely to a Linux based system.

What I’m Not Replacing

The only remaining software is Microsoft Office.  As a soon to be college student, my university has provided it, making things easy for me.  In the same way Sony Vegas is effectively free, Office also is, at least for the next four years.  At that point I’m sure I’ll be reevaluating all of the decisions I’ve made with regards to software.

My Adobe Creative Cloud software will be active until September.  The reason why I’ve chosen to make the move now is so that I’ll have time to transition my files away.  I also have the free time to learn new programs.  Hopefully I can share my experience with each program in more detail.