Photography plays a huge part in my writing career and personal life. For the majority of my photo editing needs, Adobe Lightroom Classic has long been my go-to software for projects large and small. It’s the juggernaut of the industry, known for its excellent features and great support. What’s not to love?

Its subscription fee, however, can be a pain. At the time of writing, Adobe Lightroom, along with 1TB of Adobe cloud storage, costs $12 per month or $120 per year. In contrast, Darktable is open-source and completely free. Its powerful suite of modules has garnered the love of many pro photographers, with some swearing by it over Lightroom.

Although Adobe's monthly fee isn't much for established photographers, it can hurt for budding photographers penny-pinching to fund better gear. Given the cost benefits of Darktable, I wanted to explore how the features of the two software compare. Here's how the two stack up.

Lightroom’s interface is superbly arranged. It plates all the most common settings first in their respective panels, with more advanced options tucked away behind a click or two. Once users become accustomed to the basic modules, they can fine-tune them manually to get the best results. Lightroom also has a few options to help photographers package their photos. It has a customizable slideshow mode and even an option to export the photos as a basic web gallery to be deployed as a part of a website.