ON1 Photo RAW

ON1 Photo RAW covers browsing, raw processing, retouching, layers and masks in one application, which is the pitch: the two Adobe programs most photographers rent, without renting them. It runs on your own machine and keeps working when you stop paying, because there is nothing to stop paying. The catalogue handling is the part that divides people.

The list price is $99.99 for a perpetual licence covering two computers, and ON1 discounts it often enough that paying full price is a mistake. A year of updates is included, and an auto-upgrade option locks in the current price for next year's version. There is a free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. What you are buying is the absence of a recurring bill, so compare it against a year of whatever you pay now rather than against a month.

Photographers who want to stop renting an editor and are willing to trade some polish for that. If your workflow depends on other people's Lightroom catalogs, moving will cost you more time than the subscription costs money.