MacBook Air late 2010 revival - Lightweight photo editing. Which program?

[Thornblom]

I'm going to revive my old Macbook Air late 2010 13 inch (256gb, 4gb) with High Sierra.
My girlfriend is going to use that computer for simple photo editing for a while, before deciding if she is going to buy a Mac or not.
What she does is totally hobby level, and does not require an advanced program such as Photoshop etc.
Do you have any suggestions for software for her usage on an old MB Air running High Sierra? I know that Apple provides Apple Photos, but I have no idea how well it will run on such old computer with 4 gb of ram?

 

[Howard2k]

Lightroom?

The licence is moveable between both Windows and Mac I believe. Certainly it used to be, I suspect it still is. So if she puts LR on the Mac and then switches to Windows she can keep her licence. Verify with Adobe to be sure.

Unfortunately it's now subscription based, so I'm holding onto my non-subscription product as long as I can.

 

[Thornblom]

Lightroom?

The licence is moveable between both Windows and Mac I believe. Certainly it used to be, I suspect it still is. So if she puts LR on the Mac and then switches to Windows she can keep her licence. Verify with Adobe to be sure.

Unfortunately it's now subscription based, so I'm holding onto my non-subscription product as long as I can.

That is an option. I however belive that she wants to start off with a free software to develop her basic skills. Does Adobe offer such?
I’m a programmer myself, my knowledge of this is pretty much none..

 

[Howard2k]

That is an option. I however belive that she wants to start off with a free software to develop her basic skills. Does Adobe offer such?

They do offer a trial, one month I believe.

 

[flaubert]

Well, there are a lot of options for her. In the truly free software realm, there is of course Gimp, the grandaddy of free photo editors. It's not for everyone, however, and by itself doesn't really do photo collection management like Lightroom does. If your competitor is Lightroom, then perhaps you want to look at Digikam, which is FOSS software with basic editing and photo collection management. If she needs to be able to process RAW photo files she can add DarkTable, another FOSS project.

For basic photo editing with a clean interface and support (and a modest price tag), I like Pixelmator from the Mac App Store. And Apple Photos will probably run well enough, even with the 4 GB of RAM, if she clears out other apps so that when she is in Photos it is the only app running. That's probably going to be a requirement for anything I've suggested here (and may be especially relevant for the FOSS software, as it won't be especially slim to run). I guess my progression would be try Apple Photos; if more editing tools are needed go for Pixelmator; if more editing is needed with photo management look at Digikam.

 

[Micky Do]

I'm going to revive my old Macbook Air late 2010 13 inch (256gb, 4gb) with High Sierra.
My girlfriend is going to use that computer for simple photo editing for a while, before deciding if she is going to buy a Mac or not.
What she does is totally hobby level, and does not require an advanced program such as Photoshop etc.
Do you have any suggestions for software for her usage on an old MB Air running High Sierra? I know that Apple provides Apple Photos, but I have no idea how well it will run on such old computer with 4 gb of ram?

Photos 1.5 works fine on my early 2009 Mac Mini with 5GB RAM, running El Capitan and the original HDD. I use it to provide pictures for the sports pages of the local newspaper and for use on-line.

I'm using a Fujifilm X20 Camera, which has a 12 megapixel sensor.

I used iPhoto before that, when I was running Mountain Lion on the Mini. It was OK from my point of view...... providing plenty of published photos. (I don't know if High Sierra comes with Photos or iPhoto)

The upgrade to El Capitan last year (the latest the 2009 Mini can run) came with Photos 1.0, which was dreadful.

That was among the reasons I got a MacBook Air (non-retina, 2017 spec) last year (travel and changing work needs were other reasons). Having checked out more recent iterations of Photos (on computers in a store) I knew I could live with it.

After a bit of a learning curve I have come to like Photos. Each new version has seen worthwhile improvements to editing and organising capabilities........

.......But I prefer working on a desktop with a decent sized monitor. What joy when I discovered that Photos 1.0 had been upgraded to Photos 1.5 several months ago. While it is still quite basic compared to the latest versions of Photos, it is much more usable and adequate for my needs, so I am back to using the old Mac Mini for photography.

I see no need to go to subscription based apps for most amateur photography. I'll leave Photoshop (which I have used, albeit many years ago) Lightroom and the like for professionals, or the seriously enthusiastic.

One thing I have discovered.... that others should be aware of, once you have upgraded files to a newer version of an app, you can no longer open files with an older version. Hence Pages documents created on my MacBook Air cannot be opened by the older version of Pages on the Mac Mini. And photos imported into the latest version of Photos on the MacBook Air cannot be opened with Photos 1.5 on the Mac Mini......

..... Unfortunately, as I tried making a library on an external drive hoping to be able to use it with both computers. Didn't work out that way.

 

[flaubert]

That was among the reasons I got a MacBook Air (non-retina, 2017 spec) last year (travel and changing work needs were other reasons). Having checked out more recent iterations of Photos (on computers in a store) I knew I could live with it.

<snip>

.......But I prefer working on a desktop with a decent sized monitor. What joy when I discovered that Photos 1.0 had been upgraded to Photos 1.5 several months ago. While it is still quite basic compared to the latest versions of Photos, it is much more usable and adequate for my needs, so I am back to using the old Mac Mini for photography.

Your 2017 MacBook Air supports a pretty decently sized monitor: 3840x2160. Set your laptop off to the side, connect up a nice ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and you’ve got yourself a decent workstation with whatever monitor you’re currently using (may need an adapter). But running your MBA you’d be able to run any version of MacOS, up to and including Catalina.