My photo editing needs are pretty modest, not much more than what we did in the darkroom.
I learned basic procedures on Adobe Photo Deluxe, a predecessor to Elements. It was Bundled with my first (1997-98) digital camera, a 2 megapixel Minolta Dimage V that had a crazy tethered lens that you could remove from the camera and shoot around corners or stick it down into a confined space.*
I also noodled around with Paint.net, and together they made a very crude version of Photoshop.
Then I tried Photoshop, and for my needs found it too complicated.
I tried GIMP, which I found to have no soul-it was like kissing your sister- and it was just as complicated as Photoshop.
All of this was before the debut of Lightroom.
As I looked into my next editing software, I learned that some of them offered asset management, and because I lack the Organization Gene, this seemed attractive.
ACDSee Pro 5 seemed to fit my needs, was modestly priced, and the tabs and keyboard commands were what I was used to in Windows. For an old dog, not having to learn new tricks was a good thing.
For my purposes, this software does a very good job. I particularly like the Light EQ feature, which, like an audio equalizer, breaks the dynamic range down into sections that can be adjusted with individual sliders.
It seems that the screen on my new laptop has such high resolution, that the Version 5 display gets squeezed down, so I upgraded to Pro 10.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGakD-Xj7PA
Jimmy's Place 
What do you think about darktable?
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This is the first I have heard of it, but I looked it up, and the first thing that stood out for me was “darktable is created for photographers, by photographers.”. In my mind, this is a good thing as I can only respect someone’s opinion when they are actual practitioners.
The “Lighttable” interface on the home page seems friendly, with real words rather than graphic icons, however, they are throwing me for a loop in the “Features” section with “Zero-latency, zoomable user interface.”
darktable exceeds my needs, but their photoenthusiam is evident, and having such a powerful product available to all can only be a good thing.
Thank you for making me aware of it.
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You are welcome! Our Karma will shine, when we help our photo comrades with powerful free software. 😉
A few weeks ago we wrote something about, how we made a switch to free software, and mentioned some other outstanding and honourable contributions in software for the people.
https://fotoroto.wordpress.com/2018/01/14/open-imaging/
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I am happy you find it of value.
Thank you for the comment.
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