Photo people - lightroom alternatives?

I used to use lightroom all the time and loved it.  It was Lightroom 5, as in pre-cloud subscription and it served me well for ~10 years.  When I upgraded last year to a Sony camera, lightroom doesn't support its RAW files.  To upgrade I have to go to the Lightroom CC, which is $10 a month.  I am not a heavy user, so this fee is absurd to me.

I am not a heavy user, but also not a super advanced user, Darktable is total overkill.  I've been messing with it, but I am a bit overwhelmed.

Any recommendations for an alternative?  I usually need to tweak saturation, clarity, highlights, shadows, crop & rotate, etc.  I dont need fancy plugins or AI features (to my knowledge anyway).  I'm a casual user, but over the years being "ok" a photography with an SLR + editor has enabled me to get some really fantastic photos from vacations and I would like to continue to do that.

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/challenge-priced-alternative-to-lightroom/197903/page1/

I only got one post last time I asked.  I've been playing with Darktable though, and its pretty solid.

So let me clarfiy as our posts have different price targets. 

I'm fine with pay $100 for software. 

I am not fine with paying $120 yearly.

Adobe has a converter for proprietary RAW formats; it's free:

https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/adobe-dng-converter.html

I have not used the resulting DNG format. My recollection, FWIW, is, it's lossless. If you want more info from actual users, you could check out a forum such as Lightroom Queen Forums.

ProDarwin said:

So let me clarfiy as our posts have different price targets. 

I'm fine with pay $100 for software. 

I am not fine with paying $120 yearly.

Unfortunately, since Apple stopped shipping Aperture, it seems that nobody else cares about this market.

Is $120/year just for Lightroom?  That's what I'm paying, but I'm getting both LR and Photoshop out of it.  Dunno if that was a special deal, or grandfathered, or what.

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

yes, the lowest I have found for lightroom is $10/month.

RawTherapee and Darktable are both worth looking at.  Both are Open Source.  I've used RawTherapee and it's decent though not without a learning curve.

I'm still using Lightroom 6, non-CC, and don't really want to leave it for CC or something else.  Really dumb situation; there's a photo negative converting plugin for Lr that I really like plus the photo catalog management that Lr provides that makes me not want to go to something else.

I'm wondering if the best option here is to just dedicate some time to getting better at darktable.  I've used it a bit so far but the image management is confusing as hell to me.  I'm sure it's really powerful, but I don't need it.  I wish there was a "lite" mode.  As with the other open source softwares I have used, often the user interface is just not as intuitive as the main commercial competitor.

I will check out the raw converted posted above, but I am not excited about an extra step in the process- mainly because it's a hurdle that I think will make me less likely to actually sit down and edit.

Seems like another possible option if I end up paying for anything is DXO photolab.  There is at least a free trial.

ProDarwin said:

As with the other open source softwares I have used, often the user interface is just not as intuitive as the main commercial competitor.

Heh, IMHO the lightroom user interface is pretty terrible.  I really liked Aperture, I wish Apple still made it.