With the last Adobe product going subscription only

Now that Lightroom has gone subscription only, no longer offering a stand alone, many people are looking for alternatives again. 

So far, I find AlienSkin Exposure 3, On1 Photo Raw, and Topaz Studio to be the strongest contenders.  Exposure 3 and On1 have a feature that Topaz doesn't at this time. The ability to have different versions, virtual copies, of the same image, with different edits, without filling your HDD with multiple image files.

On1 had more tools/Effects than AlienSkin, but AlienSkin works faster on older computers, or with machine with only 16gb of memory. 

All three have plugins that work with CS6 (there is a way to get them to work with CS5. Download trial version of Photoshop CC, install On1/Alienskin/Topaz, and then copy/paste the plugins from the CC plugin folder to CS5 plugin folder. If you get any error message about a specific DLL missing, copy it from the Photoshop CC directory into the CS5 directory. Nothing says you have to uninstall the CC trial version, so leave it there to install updates)

My personal favorite is On1 Photo Raw, followed very closely by AlienSkin Exposure 3. I do like editing my RAW photos with these two, and then in Photoshop, using the Topaz Studio/Labs plugs to add extras.

Another way to not be forced to rent Adobe CC

Or be forced to double up on HD space by converting everything to DNGs.

Alienskin Exposure X2

After installation, go to Edit/Preferences and select what photo editor you want to punt the Raw edited image to. (Used CS5 for this example) And you can select what format to export. PSD, TIFF or JPG.

It does non-destructive edits to your images, and has a wider library of available editing tools than Adobe Camera Raw.  Here's one image, that I adjusted clarity, brightness, whites,  and am applying a 'Bokeh' edit. 

Right click on image, and click on editor you configured X2 to use

Since I had done all my RAW edits in X2, I chose "Save Image" option in the bottom left corner, saved it as a JPG, then opened it in CS5 to continue.

 

 

EDIT: It seems with CS5 you have to EDIT IT and have preferences set to TIFF file. It will open up Adobe Camera Raw 6.7.1, then you have to select SAVE IMAGE on bottom left corner and save it as a high res JPG, as it's Photoshop itself that won't open the TIFF/PSD/JPG directly from X2. 

However if you're using CS6, this doesn't seem to be an issue.