Problematic name aside…it just plain sucks. It's not in the same ballpark as Blender, not the same league, not even the same sport.

Yeah, it's technically just about as powerful as PS but ho-lee-crap is the UI/UX awful. I've been trying to learn it for probably 20 years and I still don't really get it, to the point that the $20 a month for the Evil Empire (plus a terabyte of storage, which isn't bad at all) is looking very useful.

And a pretty young lady.

Thanks so much for sharing!

But apparently y'all like me

I did get a 96 overall in Arts 271, B&W Photography (I still have my entire portfolio, negatives prints and grading sheets), and I always get praise when I share, but since I have literally no other artistic talent I can't convince myself!

You don't need to excel in any other art form; photography is your medium.

TY for sharing.

I'm a 30-year veteran of the "culinary arts", and while I have been an Executive Chef and created entire dishes from scratch, that have made my guests very happy, I've never seen it as an "art" so much as a "craftsmanship", if that difference makes any sense.

...at the Italian restaurant.

Can't speak for the newer ones.

A lot of people are very pleased with the jpegs that cameras kick out, never mind the raw files, and I am generally so impressed with what Nikon does, that I almost always need only the mac Preview app to get a great photo. (similar to seashore)

Seriously, I used to use (the late) John Bradley's xv program to adjust light levels on many a picture. (long ago)

I use GIMP only to do some healing, and since I dabbled in oils when I was young, some airbrushing along with it.

Keeping things as simple as I can.

Nikon's jpgs are usually quite nice, but I like to process my raws my own way to pull up the shadows and give them just a little more pop and contrast, think HDR Velvia…I'm just taking some time to accept that I need to be paying $20 per month to an Evil Empire for that privilege.

I can stumble through the GNU Image Manipulation Program but it doesn't give the same results as Photoshop. Once I bite the bullet and subscribe, I'll post the "developed" images.

DarkTable
https://www.darktable.org/

Raw Therapee
https://rawtherapee.com/




Diffraction, Free for a limited time. (hmmmm)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/diffraction-image-editor/id1544476110?mt=12
https://www.schubert-it.com/diffraction/



I abandoned Adobo long ago.

Secret sauce for most of my jpegs.
If there is sky background,
Use mac Preview.app
Ask "auto levels"
Turn down highlights a bit (darkens the sky)
Slide the "levels" mid-range control to get a bit more gamma in the mid-ranges.
Turn up shadows to where they look right (works well and compensates for the previous two)
And if they are a bit flat, slide the black point (left control) up a tiny bit.

Most come out great.
On extreme shadows, I go into GIMP, select the really dark part, and raise its brightness just enough to look real. Sometimes, this is hard. (to select)

Gimp has been useful for erasing power lines, even insects that show up on my beautiful flower shots AFTER I take the shot. (heal, airbrush and so on). That's where my amateur painting skills show up.

Gimp removed power lines from this scenic.
Coolpix P510 (It is my carry-everywhere camera) so old that no RAW images were made.



reduced to 1.5MB for posting.

…but I've been using the Evil Empire since 1997 and they are very good at building a consistent workflow and UX.

It's like asking me to change my chemistry for my B&W film, it's a hard sell.

…it's hard to not do a bunch of DOF studies