When comparing PhotoFlare vs LightZone, the Slant community recommends PhotoFlare for most people. In the question“What is the best photo editing software?” PhotoFlare is ranked 14th while LightZone is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose PhotoFlare is:
An easy to use GUI, inspired by the equally great PhotoFiltre editor. Very suitable for beginners to add that special touch to photos/images.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro User friendly
An easy to use GUI, inspired by the equally great PhotoFiltre editor. Very suitable for beginners to add that special touch to photos/images.
Pro Very fast
Starts up very quick and most editing features run at a high speed.
Pro RAW support
This program can open most RAW formats produced by high quality DSLR cameras. Great feature to have if you own a high end Nikon or Canon camera. (other brands supported too)
Pro Open Source
Offers a Community Edition which is free and the full code is available on Github.
Pro Cross Platform
Runs on all major platforms such as Windows, Linux and Mac.
Pro Allows users to create and edit RAW profiles
Unlike most other RAW editors, LightZone supports user-created RAW profiles and allows editing existing RAW profiles.
Pro Allows changing the order in which adjustments are applied
You can change in what order sharpening, saturation, tone, etc adjustments are applied simply by switching around their order in the tool stack.
Cons
Con Feature maturity can be low
Some features lack polish or still require more development to make them more useful. Looks like not all features have been given the same development time.
Con Asset management is basic
Browser module includes a file browser, metadata viewer and a really basic metadata editor (allows editing just 6 fields), and allows you to give images a rating, but no advanced asset management is supported. There's not even a way to assign keywords to files.