How can I edit .arw files without Adobe?

[donwand]

I am done with CC....and done with Adobe.  Last year my laptop broke and my old copy of lightroom 5 is stuck on there.  I got my old serial number from adobe but of course it does not work because they have gone out of their way to keep people from using products with perpetual licensens.  I refuse to keep buying CC...every month...or every year...AND have all my work, edits and presets held hostage.  

I have downloaded darktable...and other lightroom alternatives but darktable does not support .arw files and I don't want to convert to .jpg and lose all the extra data.

How can I work with .arw files without being extorted by Adobe?

[thebeardedgroundsman]

I am very happy with Luminar, although Luminar Neo still hasn't got Dodge & Burn or Clone tools like Luminar Ai.

One off payment and regular updates as they get further on with developing the software.

Using Ai gives me quite a fast work flow.

I have to admit that for de-noise, I use ON NoNoise Ai, which is vastly superior (Again a one off cost)

PS: Luminar are based in Ukraine and are still working hard in spite of the current situation!

[thebeardedgroundsman]

PPS To above post

At £52 I suspect some professionals will think it is too cheap to be good enough for them - however, at that price is it worth not trying it out?

I have recently attended courses run by professionals who have been impressed with Luminar's capabilities, when I have shown them - and they are both looking to move away from Adobe because of the subscriptions.

[tadwil]

On 6/13/2022 at 4:56 PM, donwand said:

I am done with CC....and done with Adobe.  Last year my laptop broke and my old copy of lightroom 5 is stuck on there.  I got my old serial number from adobe but of course it does not work because they have gone out of their way to keep people from using products with perpetual licensens.  I refuse to keep buying CC...every month...or every year...AND have all my work, edits and presets held hostage.  

I have downloaded darktable...and other lightroom alternatives but darktable does not support .arw files and I don't want to convert to .jpg and lose all the extra data.

How can I work with .arw files without being extorted by Adobe?

I don't know about you but I have Lightroom 4.4 installed on the desktop and it's still working.  I don't see why your Lightroom 5 would be any different. 

You can download Adobe DNG Converter (freeware) and convert .arw to .dng and process them in Darktable or any other editing software which do not recognize .arw file format.

[bfish]

Hi, you can use Rawtherapee. It has more possibilities than i.e. Camera Raw from Adobe and it's open source, thus free.

https://rawtherapee.com/

Compatible with Linux, Windows, macOS

I am not sure if you can import your old library from Adobe.