Apple mostly neglected this software program for several years before finally making an official announcement of it being discontinued permanently, which means nobody should be starting out on it today. Aperture – A product from Apple that was discontinued in late 2014 in favor of the “Photos” app, was a strong competitor to Lightroom available to Mac users.Beginner, hobbyist, and professional photographers use Lightroom to organize and edit their images quickly and effectively. Lightroom – Also made by Adobe, is a robust program that was developed specifically for photographers.

(Photoshop Elements is more user-friendly.) There are so many tools within Photoshop that photographers (particularly novices) often find the software to be quite daunting.

Photoshop – Powerful program used by professionals such as designers, painters, and videographers.

Camera RAW – Great for editing your images, but does not have an organization component.

Bridge – Offers organizing tools, but lacks any tools by which to process your photos.

It’s a robust program, so there’s often a steep learning curve for beginning photographers, particularly those who have little experience with Photoshop.

GIMP – Stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a free program suited for both Mac and Windows.

Or if you have realized that post processing is a fairly important step in contemporary digital photography workflows (it doesn't take long) then the options can seem overwhelming. When you’re starting out, you may think you don't need to do any post processing of your images on the computer. Adobe has a pretty good thing going when the name of their software package becomes a generic verb. Surely you have heard it people talk about “Photoshopping” an image. If you’re a beginning photographer you’ve likely heard photographers mention that they use these programs to manage and edit their images on the computer. Here is why Lightroom is the best option for a beginning photographer. All of these software programs allow you to “post process” and/or organize your photos on your computer.

Photography lightroom