Apparently, the backlash from Adobe’s recent Creative Cloud subscription announcement has lit a fire underneath Corel and its development team.
Corel has started pushing harder into the photography market (they need to keep pushing and push harder) with advertising and brand awareness, and now we are starting to see some actual product moves happening (note to Corel: you need to keep this up and do more if you want to earn the trust for photographers to rely on you for their workflow needs).
In the past few days, Corel released an update to AfterShot Pro (version 1.2.0.7), which is an alternative to Adobe Lightroom (see my initial impressions of AfterShot Pro when it was released last year). The update provides raw file support for the following cameras:
- Canon 100D/SL1, 1D X, 650D/T4i, 6D, 700D/T5i, EOS M
- Leica X2
- Nikon 1 J2, 1 J3, 1 S1, 1 V2, D5200, D600, D7100
- Olympus E-PL5, E-PM2
- Panasonic G5, G6, GF3, GF5, GF6, GH3, LX7, FZ200
- Pentax K-30, K-5 II, K-5 IIs
- Ricoh GR
- Sony A37, A58, A99, NEX 3N, NEX-5R, NEX-6, NEX-7, NEX-F3, RX100
I’ve been told that Corel is working on additional updates to AfterShot Pro as well. So, the software is not dead as we thought might be the case after the recent fire sale we saw on the download options.
AfterShot Pro is still only $29.99 for the boxed version and only $19.99 for the download versions. Check it out here on Amazon.com. If you want the Linux version (yes, it supports Linux), you’ll have to go to Corel’s website to grab it for $49.99.
With the added support for all these new camera raw file types, it’s easily worth a shot at these prices – particularly for all of those who are so put off by Adobe’s new subscription model.
Corel’s return to the photography sector would be very welcome. I used Corel PhotoPaint for many years as my primary image editing program. I changed to Adobe Photoshop only reluctantly as a result of customer pressure. At that time, PhotoPaint was IMHO a better photographic tool than Photoshop. Perhaps it can be that once again.