I was tired of giving Adobe hundreds (thousands?) of dollars every year. I’ve lost track of how much money I’ve given to them over the years, and I finally had enough of it. So I decided it was time to get out of Adobe’s ecosystem and replace Photoshop and Lightroom with something else on my Mac.
I’ve Lived the Adobe Subscription Life for Over a Decade
I’m an Abode user through and through. From the CS6 days to the early Creative Cloud launch, all the way up to the start of summer 2025, I’ve used Adobe software. Most of that time, I’ve had an active subscription to Adobe in one way or another.
Whether I had a student subscription to the entire Creative Suite, or I had a simple Photography Plan subscription to give me Lightroom and Photoshop (which recently went up in price), over the past decade I’ve given Adobe far more of my money than I care to admit.
The problem is, there’s really not a great alternative to Adobe’s software. As a creative, I need certain programs to do my job, and each year that my subscription would be coming to an end, I’d search for a replacement, only to find none.
I could sometimes replace one or two Adobe apps in my workflow, but I could never replace everything, and that kept me in the Adobe ecosystem far longer than I wanted to stay.
Lightroom Kept Me Tied Down and Prevented Me From Leaving
I was able to successfully replace Photoshop early on with the Affinity suite at one point. Premiere Pro and After Effects were replaced by Final Cut Pro and Motion respectively.
The one app I couldn’t replace was Lightroom Classic. I’m an amateur photographer and have a Lightroom catalog going back almost a decade at this point. I have tens of thousands of photos, almost all of them having been edited in Lightroom at one point or another. Lightroom was irreplaceable for me.
I tried to find a replacement, trust me. I just never could. There are plenty of great photo editing apps out there, but I’d never found any (that I would switch to) that had a library system like Lightroom does. Capture One Pro is something I heavily looked into, but it wouldn’t have saved me any money over Lightroom, so I didn’t want to bother with the change.
Truly, Lightroom Classic is what held me in the Adobe ecosystem for so long. Every year, I’d try to find a replacement. Every year, I’d fail and end up renewing my subscription with Adobe. That is, until this year.
Apple’s Photomator (and Pixelmator Pro) Were the Saving Grace I Had Been Looking For
A month ago, I stumbled upon a YouTube video about a “Lightroom Killer” and I had to watch it. Yet again, my Adobe subscription was coming to an end, and I was hoping I could finally click that “Cancel Subscription” button and stop giving Adobe hundreds of dollars per year.
I watched the video and was very surprised at what I saw. It was an app, published by Apple (which the company had purchased back in November), that looked like Lightroom. It was everything I was looking for in a photo editing app, and so I was very excited.
At first, I was hesitant. Excited, yes, but could it really solve the problem I was facing? And how much would it be? The answer to both of those questions surprised me even more than the discovery of the app, called Photomator.
Photomator
Photomator is an Adobe Lightroom alternative when it comes to editing your RAW photos on macOS.
With Photomator, you can point it to a local folder on your computer, and it will show you your photos just like Lightroom does. While it doesn’t have the same cataloging function of Lightroom (so one photo can’t really live in more than one folder easily), it does at least have a similar layout to Lightroom. So far, so good.
I downloaded Photomator and gave it a shot. I actually already owned the iPhone and iPad app, which was a nice surprise. I didn’t own it yet for macOS, but that was okay as there was a free trial. I installed it, booted it up, and was instantly hooked.
Then, I saw the price. Remember, Apple is the publisher of this app. So, I expected it to be pretty pricey. Imagine my surprise when I saw that it was $8 per month, $40 per year, or $120 for a lifetime subscription. I was paying $20 or more per month for Adobe, and even the Lightroom plan itself is $12 per month (or $144 per year).
Apple’s software was extremely similar to Lightroom and cost a fraction of what Adobe charged. That sealed the deal for me. I immediately signed up for a whole year’s subscription to the app and canceled my Adobe subscription there and then. I was finally out.
I also decided to pull the trigger on the $50 Pixelmator Pro application made by the same team originally, and now also owned by Apple. It’s a one-time purchase, and it replaces both Photoshop and Illustrator for me, as it does both raster and vector design work.
Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is both a raster and vector photo editor, akin to Photoshop, developed exclusively for macOS.
All-in, I was at $90 to replace Lightroom and Photoshop. I already own Final Cut Pro and Motion, so I’m covered on that front. Next year? It’ll just cost $40 for me to get Photomator again, or maybe I’ll splurge and spend the full $120 for the lifetime subscription. This is, after all, the more economical choice.
Either way, I’m out of the Adobe ecosystem and I’m extremely happy about that. While I do sometimes miss Lightroom, Photomator scratches the itch I’ve never been able to scratch without Adobe. Free software simply hasn’t managed to tempt me away from a premium offering, and now it doesn’t have to. The fact that Apple owns the project should hopefully mean regular updates for years to come, so I’m not too worried about suddenly losing support.
Final Cut Pro
Final Cut Pro is Apple’s premiere non-linear video editor, designed to compete with the likes of Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve.
While Photomator and Pixelmator Pro aren’t cheap by any means, they will save me quite a bit of money compared to Adobe over the long haul.
If you’re looking for other ways to transform your Mac’s usage, then check out my roundup of expensive (but totally worth it) macOS apps. Alfred is, by far, my favorite on the list, but you’ll find Photomator, Pixelmator Pro, and Final Cut Pro on the list too!
