What is the best alternative to Adobe ?

The AI can work very well at times. I find it can struggle to determine edges as well trying to refine and feather. I've done a couple sky and background swaps and to me it still looks like a hacked cut-paste job. I need to devote more time to learning how to feather the selection to get smoother results.

My workaround has been to change the initial capture so that I spend less time trying to work with the software. The less time spent attempting to layer, stack, mask, in a composite saves me frustration. Taking untold amounts of time to get to a certain point then find some other layer was off drives me crazy. Something to be said for simple repeatable sets but that may be my view of post shot workflow. YMMV.

yb98 wrote in post #19346328
I said in the first post that I'm mainly interested by the auto masking features that uses AI to automatically create a mask of the sky, a subject, the face, the eyes, etc., or an object.

I'm trying right now Luminar AI, which looks promising but seems to be still a "young" software. I have seen that Luminar neo has just been released but not with all functions available. Unfortunately no trial version is available.

Understood and noted originally. But since you were so focused on one feature (auto mask AI), it was not clear what your needs were beyond that single feature. So simply trying to understand the bigger picture, and not merely a narrow focus.
There are folks who are very intense on noise reduction or sharpening that they get add-ons that specialize, on top of the broader base of function.

A practice swap which didn't work well. I've had success with some background and layer blends but certain ones are total fails. I may do some green-blue screen attempts to see if the AI can manage those. I need lots of practice so just part of learning how the software works.

Things change but currently here is my take. While DXO makes a good product I'm not a big fan of the company. C1 Pro is a pro level developer but too much for what I do. Since LrC improved masking there is even less appeal.

I think that if I dropped Adobe today I'd go with ON1. I have PureRaw, Topaz Denoise and NoNoise. NoNoise produces the best fine detail of the three. Currently ON1 says that NoNoise is optimised for RAW files and you can clearly see that. However it is a cumbersome process to use it with LrC as a RAW file and you lose your colour profiles when it comes back to LrC.

Obviously NoNoise is tuned to work with RAW Photo. I think they promised to get DNG's and TIFF's to look as good so you can use it a plug-in.

Just to add PureRaw has the best workflow of the three IMO. If I was working deadlines, etc I'd be using it. For my hobby work currently I prefer NoNoise. It's a little slower too use but I have the time.

I'm a long time Nikon shooter and I use NX1-LightRoom and Photo shop CS5. I bought the LightRoom and PS years ago and have no intention of paying a subscription fee. I have found that I do better if I stick with one product rather than switching between several different ones. I don't care what you need to do with Adobe, there is a youtube video or 5 showing you step by step how to do it. After 10 yrs of using PS cs5 I'm still learning ways to improve my photos.

Same here, Lightroom 6 and CS5.

I just went through this, as I had a stand-alone older version of Lightroom and Photoshop on my PC.
I switched over to an iMac and needed new software to edit my images (without breaking the bank).
I didn't want to go to a subscription based program and ended up buying Exposure 7 when they had a 40% off sale.

Exposure 7: The winner.
Luminar Ai: Really liked the software's possibilities but it ran so slow I quickly became frustrated.
Capture One Express: Worked well, but the free Express version is limited in functionality.

I tried Darktable, On1 and a few others.
FastRawViewer was nice for quickly culling images, but I can do that in Expsoure.