Lightzone Inquiry - Problems Loading

I've been using Lightzone as my photo editor, and have been pretty happy with how it works and how it just lets me get stuff done.

In the last day or so, I noticed that Lightzoneproject.org is no longer reachable, although updates still appear to be available on github. The computer that I use for editing and scanning is an older iMac running Mojave. All of a sudden, when I attempt to open up Lightzone 4.2.3, there is some sort of small dialog box that momentarily flashes (too quick to read) on the screen before Lightzone loads. When it does, it is impossible to open a file with Lightzone, nor does anything appear in recent files under the menu. Checking Console, there is mention of "Service exited due to SIGKILL" which I would assume is associated with the problems that I am having, and may be a software conflict of some sort. As an aside, Lightzone 4.2.3 will run fine on another iMac which runs Catalina.

At this stage, I am not entirely sure what is taking place here. I have tried reinstalling Lightzone 4.2.3 and earlier versions, like 4.1.9 with the same results. I have some work that needs to be done and don't have a gigantic amount of time here. I am wondering if an OS upgrade might take care of this. I can't envision that it is a hardware problem. I will try booting with all extensions and add-ons off and try opening the program. If that doesn't work, then I might need to go with an alternate photo editor, such as Affinity. (Photoshop would not be an alternative, for several reasons.)

Suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Lightzone looks like it's one step away from abadon-ware unfortunately. The project site is down, and the code was forked from a now defunct commercial product. Basically it's a labor of love with probably only one main developer. if I were you I would start moving to Affinity or something with wider community acceptance.

You can give RawTherapee a try, depending on what you want to do. If it's "development" of alot of raw files, then that's a good choice. If you're looking for more deep editing, then Affinity is probably better, though it's not as fast when you have to do hundreds, since you have to open one at a time. RawTherapee has an interface more like Lightroom.

Could be that the website is simply having issues and will be back up in the near future. That said, for alternatives I'd highly recommend darktable as a good LR alternative and Affinity Photo is certainly a decent editor, especially at its modest price point.

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Originally Posted by Alan9940

Affinity Photo is certainly a decent editor, especially at its modest price point.

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Affinity isn't a "decent" editor, it is an EXCELLENT editor.

Well, upgraded from Mojave to Catalina on the affected machine last night. Sad to say, no success with running Lightzone on my photo workstation computer, while it appears to work fine on this one. Odd. At any rate, the advice you've me given is good, so I'll purchase a copy of Affinity and begin the learning process on that.

Thanks again!

Ed

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Originally Posted by EdC

Well, upgraded from Mojave to Catalina on the affected machine last night. Sad to say, no success with running Lightzone on my photo workstation computer, while it appears to work fine on this one. Odd. At any rate, the advice you've me given is good, so I'll purchase a copy of Affinity and begin the learning process on that.

Thanks again!

Ed

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And you can always try the free demo first to be sure it does what you want/need!

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Originally Posted by martiansea

And you can always try the free demo first to be sure it does what you want/need!

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I appreciate that bit of information! I didn't know that was an option!

Thanks,

Ed