What is the best photo editing software for hobbyists?

[huuoshui]

Hi people! I have an old Nikon Z50 camera and I want to learn some good photo editing to give pictures more pop and make them look more impressive like I see others do, but don’t know how.
I have no idea where to start despite reading overwhelming articles on the topic like this: https://pctechtest.com/22-best-photo-editing-software
I have seen Lightroom and photoshop be talked about quite an bit, but considering the cost and that this is just a hobby, it's way too expensive. any other recs?

 

[ac6000cw]

I use Affinity Photo - https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/ph...eSE5GvNzNpeIzC3IptE1L5WBK4CEEW_BoC-MEQAvD_BwE

 

[AM9]

Hi people! I have an old Nikon Z50 camera and I want to learn some good photo editing to give pictures more pop and make them look more impressive like I see others do, but don’t know how.
I have no idea where to start despite reading overwhelming articles on the topic like this: https://pctechtest.com/22-best-photo-editing-software
I have seen Lightroom and photoshop be talked about quite an bit, but considering the cost and that this is just a hobby, it's way too expensive. any other recs?

For many years, I regularly used Paint Shop Pro as a basic tool for editing and finishing still images. It was simple to use and worked well on quite modest PCS. The latest versions seem to be in the hands of Corel, but the old versions (e.g. v7 & v9) originally sold by JASC, were perfectly adequate.
I also have Affinity v1 but it has an arcane way of working.

 

[ac6000cw]

If you haven't used photo editing software before, try a simple one first - the fully-featured editors like Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity etc can be a bit overwhelming for beginners. In reality most of the time you only need/use a tiny fraction of the features - cropping, contrast, brightness and colour adjustment is all that most photos need.

Pretty much any photo editor will do those - free, paid-for or what you already have installed as part of the standard software on your phone/tablet/PC - e.g. the Windows Photo Viewer app can do basic editing.

 

[Trackman]

I use Gimp, mentioned in the link at the top of thread. Free as well.

 

[etr221]

My first thought is to say start by setting a budget - how much are you prepared to pay, if anything - the best free programs like GIMP (a Photoshop equivalent) and Darktable (not listed, but free open source equivalent to Lightroom) as reckoned to be as good as their paid equivalents. And if in the end you don't like them, you haven't lost any money... If you don't want to pay, don't start by going down that route. And - unless you have really demanding requirements - you're unlikely to miss anything, compared to a paid product.

Then look at the start ("Getting to know...") and end ("How the [sic: should be "to"?] choose..." sessions, work out what you draw from them as to what you're after. And look for other, similar advice sites - including hunting down the specialised photography forum/advice sites, and see what they have to say, whether it adds to or is different from the pctechtest piece. Then you can look into what software to choose... which should include looking for other 'n best...' type websites, and reviewing what the product websites have to say - including what support is on offer (GIMP.org has a lot of tutorials and pointers to books...)
https://pixls.us/ is a web site dedicated to support for free/open source software - has good stuff I think if you can find it.