Hi Ron,
Firstly, thank you for joining the Academy and for posting your question here in the forum. (Sorry the forum is a bit quiet, but we are working on that). I have split your post into its own thread so that it doesn’t get lost.
Regarding the editing package – I think I’d need a little bit more information. Are looking to do bulk editing? By that, I mean copying processing info from one image to the next or are you looking just to be able to edit one image at a time? Secondly, are you shooting in RAW?
Effectively there are two times of editing packages. The first manages your workflow and is good for bulk edits – similar to Lightroom. The other is for editing images (more or less) one at a time like Photoshop.
For a Lightroom alternative, you might want to look at On1 PhotoRaw 2020; For a Photoshop alternative, I’m hearing good things about Affinity Photo. However, I have to add I’ve not used either of them.
Bonfires are tricky. The biggest problem is the dynamic range (ie the range of brightnesses that the camera can see) – they are very bright compared to what is around them. You have to decide whether you want to the fire exposed correctly or scene around it. If you expose for the fire you can get interesting silhouettes in front of the fire. If you expose for the scene around the fire the flames are likely to be be blown out. Of course shooting RAW will help as that will give you a large dynamic range. Perhaps I ought to create an inspiration sheet just about bonfires at some point.
I hope that helps a little
Ian.
