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.

[Aldowski]

Strongly agree for the RawTherapee.
 

Using it for years; for both ARW and JPG; also for both A7II and A3000.
 

It has huge number of options, may look overwhelming, but after some (learning) time very useful and powerful.

 

You can save steps into profile (as actions at Adobe), have more profiles for different types of photos, apply specific one to any photo.

 

There are even possibilities for further automation.

I did not go thru all options, of course, but, out-of-the-box this application is amazingly good.

 

[Kinglee007]

Affinity Photo handles Sony raw files.  In addition there is a free version of Capture One for the Sony files that can be hard to find. 

Try searching for Capture One Express Sony and see if you can find it. 

[Kinglee007]

14 hours ago, Kinglee007 said:

Affinity Photo handles Sony raw files.  In addition there is a free version of Capture One for the Sony files that can be hard to find. 

Try searching for Capture One Express Sony and see if you can find it. 

Go here for the Capture One software for Sony:

https://www.captureone.com/en/capture-one-express/sony

[FunWithCameras]

I know this is a very late answer, but you might like to know that Capture One make a free version of their software available called Capture One Express for Sony - it handles all Sony models, as far as I know.

I downloaded and installed it because it was one of the first to support the A7R5, but I had used it quite a while ago with an A7RII (I think). It's kind of like LightRoom, so not my favourite UI, but it works well. And it's free! 

If you like it a lot you can upgrade to Capture One Pro, but I haven't not found any feature missing that I'd use.

[DenverSteve]

On 6/13/2022 at 5:56 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?

Insert your SD card into your new Apple Macbook or iMac and you can edit without any accessory processing program. 

[Veres Deni Alex]

Been using Capture One for a couple years and never looked back, Now i tried Lightroom again and it feels like a cheap piece of software compared to capture one.

I absolutely hate lightroom, handles colors and adjustments very poorly