If you’re still looking for another digital editing software, I recommend checking out Luminar. It uses AI tools to make the same edits as Lightroom, only faster. It also doesn’t hurt that Luminar is significantly less expensive than Lightroom, and comes with a 7-day free trial. Before I tell you about Luminar and other Lightroom alternatives, I’ll show you how to cancel your Lightroom account and get a full refund. The process is quick and easy, as long as you follow the instructions below. Try Luminar AI for Free!
Quick Guide: How to Cancel Lightroom and Get a Full Refund
How to Cancel Your Adobe Lightroom Account
Adobe has a hassle-free 14-day money-back guarantee. It’s a great policy as it lets you test the software risk-free. If you see that Lightroom isn’t the right program for you, just cancel your account and get your refund without having to speak with a customer service agent or explain why you’re not happy with the software.
How to Uninstall Lightroom from your Computer
Once you cancel your account and claim your refund, you will lose access to the Lightroom app. You can uninstall it from your computer and free up over 1.2 GB of space on your computer. There are two ways to uninstall Lightroom from your computer.
Creative Cloud
Windows Uninstaller
If you’re still looking for a digital editing program, check out these excellent alternatives below.
Adobe Lightroom Money-Back Guarantee Policy
The 14-day money-back policy is a great way to test Lightroom and see if it’s the right program for you. The policy is applicable to both monthly and annual prepaid subscriptions. Canceling the account is a quick and easy process, and the refund is automatically applied, provided you follow the steps listed above. It’s important to realize that the 14-day guarantee starts the minute you subscribe to the plan. This means that if you purchase the account at 10:00 AM on the 4th of the month, you won’t be able to claim a refund at 11:00 AM on the 18th. You can contact customer support and plead your case, but that will be judged on a case-by-case basis. The refund policy is extended if you purchased an annual subscription with monthly payments. However, you will have to pay a cancelation fee of 50% of the remaining balance on your account. This is because of the steep discount you get when buying the annual package.
I canceled my Lightroom Account and Got a Refund – Now What?
Just because Lightroom wasn’t the right photo editing software for you, doesn’t mean that you should settle for imperfect pictures. Whether Lightroom doesn’t have the tools you need or you’re looking for a less expensive program, we’ll go through some excellent alternatives that might fit your needs. I tested many digital editing programs and came up with the 3 best alternatives for Adobe Lightroom. Each of them comes with professional-grade editing tools, a clean workstation, helpful tutorials, and money-back guarantees. My top choice is Luminar, which uses AI to speed up the editing process, but you can’t go wrong with any of these three options.
Best Alternatives to Adobe Lightroom
1. Luminar: Professional-Grade Digital Editing Tools and AI Auto Corrections
Luminar makes it easy to alter and improve digital images with incredible AI capabilities. Of all the editing software I tested, it was by far the easiest to learn and master. The workstation is nicely organized, with all the tools docked on the right side and no unnecessary clutter. Luminar has advanced tools that can automatically recognize areas of improvement in your pictures, such as too much noise, glare, or exposure issues, and correct it with the click of a button. It’s extremely easy to use, and you don’t need a background in digital editing or graphic design to master the different tools quickly.
Most of the tools work by adjusting a slider to the right or left. You’ll see the changes applied in real-time, and if you don’t like how it looks, just adjust the slider until it looks perfect. The tools are divided into four categories:
Essentials: All the basic photo editing tools that are needed for cropping, rotating, adjusting or removing colors, and adding structure are located here. Creative: Use your imagination to improve your pictures with filters such as adding sun rays, changing the sky, adding AR objects like hot air balloons, and more. Portrait: Glam up your pictures by removing skin blemishes, adjusting facial features, hairlines, body sizes, and adding bokeh filters that blur the background to put the focus on the main subject. Professional: Photographers and graphic designers will appreciate these professional-grade tools for editing any picture.
Luminar has a good selection of free and premium AI templates that automatically adjust your pictures. The template examines the pixels to recognize colors and can determine what areas need to be fixed or adjusted, and then it quickly applies the changes. These edits are non-destructive, so if you’re not happy with the outcome, you can revert back to the original picture and try a different template. You can see in the example below, I took a picture of the sunset over the sea, and the glare of the sun is washing out the beauty and the colors from the water.
I added a template that reduced the glare and enhanced the colors. I like that the adjustments are subtle, so it doesn’t even appear that the picture has been manipulated.
The tool that removes unwanted objects and people from pictures has made it easier for me to take pictures with my wife, who likes to wait until there is no one around before taking the picture. Now, we can just upload the picture to Luminar, highlight the people we want to remove, and Luminar does the rest. Not only was it easy, but the results were very natural. Whether you want to change someone’s facial features, add or remove colors, and anything in between, everything is easy to do with Luminar. Each tool uses a slider; just move it right or left until you get your desired results. If you’re not happy with how it looks, return the slider to the middle. No harm done. When you buy Luminar, you can bundle it with other software that gives you even more editing tools, templates, and filters. Unlike Lightroom, which requires monthly payments, Luminar is a one-time purchase for a lifetime plan. The plans start with a 7-day free trial, and then you get a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you’ll have plenty of time to evaluate the software and ensure that it’s for you. Try Luminar for Free!
2. DxO PhotoLab: Fast RAW Processing and Intuitive Tools
DxO PhotoLab has quickly become one of the better photo editing software programs. With its latest release, PhotoLab has updated its features and improved processing time for RAW images by as much as 1.6x. Getting started is easy. You can customize your workstation by selecting the tools that you will be using most often, so you don’t have to waste precious time searching for them. PhotoLab has a unique editing tool called “U Point.” It is an intuitive tool that makes editing large sections, such as the sky or background of a picture easy. Choose a Control Point or Control Line and highlight the area you want to edit, and the AI technology uses it as a reference point for the edit. You can also select a radius around your Control Point, and U Point will examine the pixels, colors, and text in that area to make edits that maintain the image’s natural look. Other features of U Point include automatically adjusting the colors, adding shadows, fixing over or underexposed images, and much more.
With the release of the latest version of PhotoLab, DxO introduced DeepPRIME, a tool that works with RAW images. One of the significant improvements over the previous tools, known as PRIME, is that the processing time can be sped up by as much as 1.6x. In addition to photo editing, DxO PhotoLab is a great program for storing and organizing your photo collection. You can add meta tags, keywords, tag people, and store each album in a different folder. There is also a built-in search engine that can find images based on the ISO, date of upload, and aperture. There is a slight learning curve when it comes to some of the advanced tools, but DxO gives new users a free 30-day trial to help them get comfortable with PhotoLab before they have to commit to a subscription. Try Dxo PhotoLab Free for 30 Days!
3. Adobe Photoshop: Comprehensive Collection of Digital Editing Tools
If you’re looking for more powerful editing tools than Lightroom or DxO PhotoLab, then you can’t go wrong with Adobe Photoshop. It is the gold standard when it comes to digital editing. The only problem is that it has so many advanced features it can take a long time to master. It can overwhelm someone who is simply looking to make small edits or enhancements to a digital picture. Photoshop is a layer based editing program. This means that you can work on each element, whether it’s an image, text, shadowing, or color, without affecting the other elements on the page.
Photoshop recently released some AI neural filters that can apply automatic upgrades to pictures, such as adjusting face and body size, expressions, removing blemishes, and adjusting skin tones. Some of the other tools that Photoshop offers are dedicated to enhancing and adjusting images is a filter that can remove the blur from shaky photographs. It uses an intelligent algorithm that detects the direction of the shakes from the image and straightens and clears everything up. There is also a sky replacement tool, although it is not as advanced and easy to use as Lightroom or Luminar. There are some tools that allow you to adjust your new sky and add or remove clouds, including a sunset, or as in the example below, add color to make a beautiful sunset.
Photoshop has the same 14-day money-back guarantee as Lightroom. In fact, you can even bundle the two programs together, and if you’re not happy with them, cancel your subscription and get your refund. Try Adobe Photoshop free for 14 days!
Does Adobe Lightroom have a monthly subscription option?
Yes, Adobe Lightroom has two monthly options. The first is a monthly subscription that renews each month; this is the most expensive option. You can also purchase an annual subscription with monthly payments, which includes a discount. Both plans are covered by the 14-day money-back guarantee.
Is there a cancelation fee if I cancel my account after 14 days?
Due to the discount that you receive with the annual plan, if you cancel your plan, you will be charged a cancelation fee that covers 50% of your remaining balance. The prepaid annual plan and monthly option don’t have a cancelation fee, and there is no refund after 14 days. However, you will be able to access your account until the end of the billing period.
What happens when I cancel my Lightroom account?
When you cancel your Adobe Lightroom account within 14 days of purchasing a subscription, you are automatically eligible to receive a full refund. According to Adobe, it can take up to five business days to receive your refund. In my experience, it happens on the 3rd or 4th day. As long as you still have an active Adobe account, you will have access to some of the free apps that come with Creative Cloud plus 2GB of cloud-based storage. Should you cancel the account after 14 days, you will continue to have complete access to your account until the end of the billing period.
Why won’t Adobe give me a refund if I cancel Lightroom within 14 days?
There are two reasons that Adobe won’t issue a refund:
The Bottom Line
I really enjoyed using Adobe Lightroom. The photo editing features were very easy to use, and it integrated seamlessly with other Adobe Creative Cloud apps, which allows for endless creative potential. However, I understand that there are other digital editing programs with cheaper subscription options and different tools, so I was happy to see that Adobe Lightroom has an easy cancellation process, and getting a refund was easy. If you cancel your subscription and want to try a less expensive digital editor, check out Luminar and try it free for 7 days. It has advanced AI editing features that use templates to correct common errors and enhance the image colors. The edits are non-destructive and can be achieved by moving a slider to the right or left. In addition to the free trial, Luminar has a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can really test the software for yourself for an extended period of time. Try Luminar Free for 7 Days!
