UKC

Im looking to get a different photo editing suite / software program but havent got the funds to buy Adobe photoshop (seems to be a monthly payment now?)

Ive been using Corel Paintshop pro X7 for several years and get fairly good results with it but feel I need something more.

I usually work with jpeg but occasionally Raw/NEF, rarely make HDR composites, quite happy with Microsoft ICE for stitching panoramas. Currently on Windows 7, plenty of ram and decent processor.

I use lightzone for general photo editing and Gimp for more in depth manipulation.

They are a bit less intuitive than the commercial packages, with a steeper learning curve, but once you get the hang of them fully featured, and free.

Do you want a simple editor to edit one pic at a time? If yes -> GIMP has pretty much everything and them some...

Or mass operations for numerous pics. -> GIMP might still get ya going.

Not really any advanced editing needs, but mass operations and catalolg -> Google Picasa.

You want all the goodies of Lightroom  (workflow management, catalog stuff, mass operations and quite advanced editing). But cheap/free... -> Luminar, Affinity and Darktable. Some are still missing catalog side.

Joker, buy a lisence of and old Lightroom from Ebay... I got my LR5.7 for 5 quid a few years back.
 

I'm using Affinity,  I find it generally excellent. Basically does everything you can do in Photoshop but its a once only price of £50 - you get updates as well. I still use GIMP occasionally for a few things.

thanks for the suggestions folks Ill 'bring out the gimp' and try affinity also