In the world of RAW photo editing, Lightroom seems to be king at times. It has been around for ages and has grown into the most popular RAW image editor. Its popularity is based on its intuitive user interface, detailed controls over how an image turns out, an in-depth cataloging system that makes it easier to manage your images, and integration with Adobe Photoshop for even more editing.

• Free Alternatives To Lightroom For Mac
• Alternative To Lightroom For Mac
• Adobe Lightroom Alternatives 2019
• Free Adobe Lightroom Alternatives
• Adobe Lightroom Substitute

But despite its greatness, Lightroom is quite expensive if you plan to use it for a very long time. That’s because it has to be subscribed to for a monthly fee. This, obviously, adds up to a whole lot of money over the years which might be okay for professionals but not ideal for people simply looking to convert their RAW images before sharing with friends and family.

Luckily, there are a number of free Lightroom alternatives that such people can use. These range from basic image editors for quick and easy edits to those that let you tweak every aspect of a photo imaginable.

There are many alternatives to Adobe Lightroom for Mac if you are looking to replace it. The most popular Mac alternative is darktable, which is both free and Open Source.If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Adobe Lightroom and many of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. It is a free Lightroom alternative, open source and looks closer to a Lightroom bootleg than any other program. Like Capture One, it supports RAW files from over 400 different cameras. Again, it is non-destructive, allowing you to keep the original file and reverting back to it easily. For those looking for a strong photo editor for Mac, RAW Power is one of the very good Lightroom alternatives for the purpose. As many users of Apple’s computers would know, the company replaced its excellent Aperture editor with the new Photos app which comes as a pre-installed Mac photo editor. LightZone doesn’t use traditional layers. Rather, it offers an alternative that involves stacking tools on top of each other. You can then rearrange, add, and delete tools in this stack. This is a solid free Lightroom alternative for people who need basic photo editing tools.

Free Ligroom Alternatives for Editing Raw Files

If you want to use Lightroom for editing RAW files, then these are some of the best free options you can use instead.

1. DarkTable

For people wanting to edit RAW files, it may not get better than DarkTable. This is a fully feature-packed piece of software that you can use for free. The sheer number of tools and controls it has makes you wonder how such software can be free. With DarkTable, you can not only adjust the basic exposure of images but also go in-depth with color corrections and white balance, etc. The software is being improved regularly and has a healthy online community supporting it as well. Some very advanced features like the ability to selectively edit portions of your images are missing, but that can easily be forgiven. If you can get to grips with the cluttered interface of DarkTable, it’s a truly excellent piece of free software.

2. Luminar (free trial)

In case you are looking for a Lightroom alternative that does all the work that Lightroom can do but in a much more intuitive interface and with automated features, then Luminar is the software for you. Luminar has made a lot of waves in the photo editing world in the past couple of years and the main reasons for this are its design, its feature set, its performance, and its price.

While not free, Luminar is a very affordable option when you consider that it’s a direct competitor to Lightroom in terms of what it offers. You can check out the free version of Luminar to take it for a test drive and see whether it’s something that works for your needs or not.

3. LightZone

A fairly straightforward and easy to use RAW editor, LightZone is perfect for those users who don’t want the most advanced features but rather a free editor that lets them improve their images before sharing them. This is done by using one of the many Styles the program offers.

These can be used either as one-click solutions to your needs or tweaked in more depth using the many manual controls that show up with each Style. LightZone is not the perfect free Lightroom alternative if you want something very advanced, but for moderate editing, it’s hard to ignore.

4. RawTherapee

Free Alternatives To Lightroom For Mac

Whether you want to adjust the exposure by tweaking the Highlights and Shadows, change the ambiance of your scene by altering the White Balance, or make your image cleaner by reducing the amount of noise, Raw Therapee lets you do it without spending a penny. It’s a feature-packed free Lightroom replacement that has a number of advanced editing tools. It may not appeal to the most advanced users because it lacks some very advanced features, but then again no free editor might.

For everyone else, the ability to make non-destructive changes to photos without having to buy anything makes Raw Therapee a very strong free Lightroom alternative.

5. Photolemur

If you find Lightroom a little too hard to use and can’t figure out which tools you need to use in order to make your photos look better, then Photolemur might be able to help you out. The main reason for this is that Photolemur incorporates advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies that find out what is wrong with your photos and then fix them automatically. This gives the user much more time to be creative as all the technical mistakes with exposure and colors are taken care of automatically by the software.

Photolemur comes in a free demo version that can be used for as long as you like. However, you will have to put up with limited file sizes and a watermark on exported photos.

Free Lightrom Alternatives for Advanced Jpeg Editing

If you don’t need to edit RAW files but want to have advanced tools to edit compressed images, then these are some of the best free editors to try:

6. GIMP

The best and quickest way to describe GIMP is that it’s like a free version of Photoshop. It has so many tools and features that most beginners might just get intimidated at first. However, if you stick with the software you’ll soon understand why it’s one of the most popular names in the world of free image editors.

GIMP’s extensive control over an image’s various characteristics, from exposure and colors to noise and sharpness makes it perfect for advanced image editing. It not only allows you to visually tweak photos but also lets you create digital artworks and work in layers, a lot like Photoshop. It has a very active community of users as well, making it easy for newcomers to understand the software. With all of these features, it makes a lot of sense for users who just want to edit their compressed photos to use this as a free Lightroom replacement.

7. Photo Pos Pro

The best thing about Photo Pos Pro is that its interface can be geared towards both beginners and experts. If you want to make quick and simple edits, you can choose the beginner interface and you’ll get access to filters and other automated edits.

However, if you opt for the more advanced interface, you’ll get a software that lets you do a lot of what Photoshop and Lightroom let you do. You can edit your images in layers and use the very effective healing and cloning brushes. To add to the functionality of the program, you can also make use of various plugins. All in all, Photo Pos Pro is a very solid free Lightroom alternative whether you’re a novice or an expert at photo editing.

8. Pixelmator

If you want a free Lightroom alternative that’s packed with features that make it easy to edit compressed images, then try Pixelmator. It’s an excellent piece of software with good design and very effective tools. Everything from exposure control to color corrections is possible with Pixelmator. It also has a tool that automatically makes adjustments to your photos after analyzing them carefully. This makes the software perfect for users who want quick solutions to their problems.

If you wish to remove certain objects from your photos then you can do that as well. Pixelmator, overall, is a strong contender for the top spot in the free image editor niche and does very well indeed as a free Lightroom replacement.

9. InPixio

InPixio is another good option for those who want to get some basic to moderate image editing done. It’s a collection of different programs that work together to give you a lot of control over your photos. The main part of InPixio is the Photo Editor that gives you tools to edit your image as well as presets and frames to add some flair to them. Then there’s the Photo Clip that you can use to remove certain objects from your images.

Another important portion of the software is the Photo Maximizer 3 that helps clear up images. All of this combined with other useful tools makes InPixio a good alternative to Lightroom for many enthusiast photographers.

10. Paint.NET

If you use Windows, then a very good free Lightroom alternative is Paint.NET. It has a very well-designed interface where tools are logically placed, making it easy for everyone to start editing their images right away. The ability to work in layers and to make use of various blending modes makes it a very strong image editor.

Paint.NET also supports plugins which means it can be improved in many different ways depending on your needs. One really good thing about the software is the incorporation of keyboard shortcuts which really go a long way in making it quicker and easier to use. For a free image editor, Paint.NET sure gets a lot right in the way of making it a free Lightroom-like editor.

11. Microsoft Photos

Windows 10 comes with a very solid pre-installed editor by the name of Photos. Unlike previous image viewers Microsoft included with Windows, Photos goes beyond just viewing images and adds some very good editing tools. With Photos, you can easily alter the Light in your images by using a singular slider or going in-depth to change the exposure, contrast, highlights, and shadows individually. You can also edit the Color of your photos by changing the saturation, warmth, and tint. Images can also be made more clear with the Clarity slider.

Other than these manual tools, Photos also offers some interesting filters for quickly changing the way your images look. The intensity of these can be set as needed to get the right kind of look. If you need some more creativity, you can draw on your images or add 3D elements as well. So if you have a Windows 10 computer and you don’t need to edit RAW files, give Photos a chance as a free Lightroom replacement before you shell out any cash for Adobe’s product.

12. Apple Photos

Just like Microsoft, Apple also includes Photos software with macOS. It’s a nicely designed editor with plenty of tools that should be enough for basic to moderate image editing and a straightforward interface that makes it quick and easy to select and edit images. There are a number of tools including Light, Sharpen, White Balance, Retouch, and Levels. You can open up some categories like Light to bring up more options for granular control over the exposure.

Apple Photos is good as a free Lightroom replacement also because it offers image management as well – something that many other free options don’t include. Another very good thing about Apple Photos is that it can supports plugins that add a whole lot of functionality from RAW editing to HDR editing. That is why Apple Photos has become such powerful software that is used by both novices and advanced users.

13. PhotoScape X

PhotoScape X is for those people who want to have more fun with their photos. It does have image editing tools that let you alter the exposure and color of your photos, but what it excels at is its inclusion of more creative elements. For example, with PhotoScape X, you can add clipart directly to your photos to make unique posters or signs. You can also play around with text and even bring in symbol fonts from your computer. Cropping images into a circular shape right from within the software with a simple tool is also possible.

Alternative To Lightroom For Mac

All of this is complemented by more tools like Combine, Color Picker, Splitter, and even a RAW Converter. The reason PhotoScape X isn’t on our list of the free Lightroom alternatives for RAW editing is that the RAW Converter is very basic and really not the main focus of the program. Despite that, PhotoScape X is a really fun, yet practical, piece of free software that will appeal to many casual users.

Lightroom Alternatives In-Browser Editing

If you’d like to use an editor that exists purely in the browser, without the need to be installed on your computer, then these are the best options:

14. Pixlr

For an editor that lives in your browser, Pixlr sure does a whole lot you’d want from a free Lightroom alternative. It has so many tools and controls that it is sometimes difficult to really find a few things. You can do pretty much anything you’d want to your photos with Pixlr from adjusting exposure and color to using layer masks and different blending modes to make the most of your creativity.

Pixlr not only works with JPEG images but also has the ability to open some Photoshop files, making it truly powerful in all it can do. It’s compatible with multiple devices, from computers to smartphones. For editing compressed images in a browser, it doesn’t get much better than this.

15. Polarr

If you want something with a stellar design, straightforward and logically placed tools, and a whole of such tools that you can use for free in a browser, look no further than Polarr. It has existed for some time now and is definitely a great free Lightroom replacement if you don’t edit RAW files. When you open Polarr, you find all your various options on the right side of the image in the form of sliders. Some of the tools include Vibrance, Whites, Blacks, Tint, and Clarity.

Basic tools that change the exposure and saturation are also present, of course. The tools work very well together to create some seriously pleasing images, making Polarr one of the more advanced free image editors available today.

16. Photopea

And last but not least, we have Photopea. This browser-based free Lightroom alternative is great for those who don’t want to spend money on Adobe’s products but want something that looks very, very similar to Photoshop. The interface of Photopea will look exactly like Photoshop at first and so will many of the tools it offers.

It even supports PSD files for those who want to jump ship completely from Adobe’s products. You can use Photopea for making basic to moderate changes in your images using its vast array of included tools without having to leave your browser.

And with that, our list of the best free Lightroom alternatives for various kinds of users comes to an end. Before you choose any paid editor, it’s always good to try out some free options like the ones in this article. You’ll never know otherwise if your needs actually warrant you spending a whole lot of money on a premium editor or if you can get by just fine with a free piece of software.

Lightroom alternatives are a must for budding photographers since Lightroom asks you to pay $9.99 every month and paying so much in the initial stages of one’s career is a tough choice to make. Fortunately, many Lightroom alternatives are now available and that too, for free.

Let us find out more about five of the most popular free Lightroom alternatives used even by some very experienced photographers from around the world.

Let us see if features of the alternative apps are similar to Lightroom.

List of Best Lightroom Alternatives 2020:

Now let’s take a detailed look at the features of the Lightroom alternatives software below.

1. Darktable

Darktable is one of the best alternatives to Lightroom that combines the features of a virtual darkroom and lighttable for photographers beautifully. It stores your negatives in a darkroom and then lets you zoom using the Lighttable, further helping you to enhance the raw images.

Key features:

• Your original images are never ever modified and you can always retain the original image while using Darktable.
• Every Darktable on the core has 4 x 32 bit of floating point pixel buffer and has speedups done using SSE (streaming SIMD extensions) instructions.
• It supports automated detection of profiles like sRGB, Adobe, XYZ, linear RGB color spaces.
• It works on Linux, macOS, Windows, Solars11/GNOME platforms.
• You can use 21 languages for translation while using Darktable.
• Latency is 0 with Darktable and provides a complete zoomable interface.
• Images can be exported and shared via your mail, Facebook, G+, or to the simple HTML web gallery.
• It supports JPEG, PNG, and TIFF formats. Even linear high dynamic range images can also be supported.

There are various other options- color image operations, correction modules, and some beautiful basic image operations with Darktable that are worth exploring. Besides, it is a completely free app, and nonetheless impressive. Darktable with all its features is a good alternative to Lightroom undoubtedly.

Read Also: Best Free Photo Slideshow Software For Windows

2. Raw Therapee

Adobe Lightroom Alternatives 2019

Raw Therapee is a Lightroom alternative free tool released in the market, covering a huge range of digital cameras targeted for the newcomers and even satisfying the professional photographers.

Of course Raw Therapee has a lot to offer as a Lightroom alternative.

Key features:

• Image quality is exceptionally of superior kind, offering you the best editing tools for image development together in one place.
• It provides you with cross platform support and thus you can use it on Linux, macOS, even on Microsoft Windows.
• Raw Therapee has a highly interactive community from where you have a lot to learn.
• RAW Support feature provides the best experience with demosaicing algorithms, flat field corrections and also hot pixel correction provisions with many more other features.

You can do much more with Raw Therapee. Explore to know more.

3. Microsoft Photos

Microsoft Windows 10 Photos is another Free Lightroom alternative that offers you some solid image editing and photo enhancement options. Apart from that, with Windows 10 you can do much more like video editing that allows 3D effects and background music addition to the videos. Some of the best features would include:

Key features:

• Has a clean and clear interface.
• Facility to view and organize your photos.
• Editing photos is made richer, be it contrast, saturation, highlights, warm balance and it offers you almost 15 filters to work upon your photos.
• Colour editing and clarity slider with contrast sharpness and black point are also some of the most enhanced features of Microsoft Windows 10 Photos.
• Video Editing has been highly improved in Windows 10.
• Sharing feature helps you comfortably switch your photos from one to the other platform.

Explore Microsoft Windows 10 Photos for more in-detailed features as a Lightroom alternative.

Free Adobe Lightroom Alternatives

4. Pixlr

Pixlr is a 100% free photo editor that is present online and is a free Lightroom alternative. The best part is, you don’t even need an account to edit your photos online. Only if you’re planning to use the Pixlr library that offers a free cloud storage facility, for which you need an account.

Feature wise Pixlr offers you some good options and is quite an able Lightroom alternative on some front.

Adobe Lightroom Substitute

Key features:

1. They offer you a broad range of filters to choose from.
2. Loaded with Layers and brushes makes editing fun.

Pixlr ensures that you have a simple photo editor that helps you edit to your heart’s content. However, you would constantly need an internet connection to keep editing your photos.

Read Also: Best Free Stock Photo Sites To Use in 2020

5. Polarr

Polarr offers you an image editing facility for Windows, Mac and Linux primarily. This free Lightroom alternative has a paid version ($2.50 per month) and a free version.

Polarr apps are separately available for the iOS and Android platform. You don’t however get the RAW image support with Polarr.

Key features:

1. Polarr offers dozens of filters to choose from.
2. You can adjust the intensity of the image with the slider.
3. It offers you masks and brushes with limited functionality.
4. If you are looking for simple and easy image editing then you can come up here on your Polarr App.

Round Off for the Free Alternatives for Lightroom

To bring this article to an end, we can ensure you that the above described apps can be immensely beneficial to you. Whether you are an amateur or an experienced photographer on a shoestring budget, you can always find free apps that do work, and help you a lot better than your expectation.

In order to ensure that you do not lose your valuable time in searching through apps, we have brought to you here five apps that would serve as one of the best Free Lightroom alternatives for you.