Adobe editing software the most used in the world for a reason.

no - all raw converters are parametric... when you buy Adobe's tools ( or any other closed source tools ) you are locking yourself in the situation where you labor is not fully yours... you can't take your parametric edits ( not the output, but adjustments) elsewhere ... funny how Adobe & Co want camera manufacturers to fully document info in raw files and yet they don't want to fully documents their own parametric edits so you can take your work elsewhere.

It's also retaining access to the edits you made previously and being able to apply them to the raw data and create an output, which is not the picture you took but an edited version of it.

Yeah, it is.

No, it also exists so I can create an output.

I don't just have recipes in my kitchen so I can play with recipes. I might also want to cook the dish and serve it.

Why are people still arguing about this? Its not going to change. Adjust and move on.

What "adjustment" do you suggest?

13 programs at one point (early in the game) to get all the combinations of basic editing, noise reduction etc, a dozen 3rd party plugins. And looking back at my old files, I have like a multiple versions of a single image, all with file names that indicate some processing done to each jpg, none of which I can remember any more. A nightmare to manage for someone who wants everything neat and tidy and with one copy of each file. I know some of those edits had something to do with Velvia and some to do with Fred Miranda, but who knows what they are after the passage of so much time :-) Switching to LR cleared away all that clutter.

I'd be a subscribing LR user now if it wasn't for the "holding my edit stacks to ransom" policy.

But not a feasible option for me because it just gets right back on the "Hold my edits hostage unless I pay them forever" dilemma. The last thing I want to do is up the stakes by adding more edit stacks to the pile.

The picture I took is a raw file. It does not exist as an image until it has had a set of history stack edits applied to it. If I stop subscribing I'm left with a plain raw file and a fixed stack of edits that can only be used to output a jpg (etc). In effect, I'm left with an edited jpg, not an editable raw file stack. That stack is no longer usable to me because I can't change it. I may as well as produced my output in Paint for all the difference it makes. Stopping your subs is functionally equivalent to having all your files converted to jpgs/tifs and losing all ability to tweak them as a raw edit.

Clearly you place no value on the time and work you put into making an edit stack you can continue to tinker with and are happy to forget your edits once you reach some kind of outputtable state. I do and that is why I can't sign up to a subs model that freezes editing for pre-existing files. Change it to a model whereby the import module gets locked instead of the edit model and I'd happily sign up. LR remains a fine product.

Adobe won't change their model, but the pros and cons of whether to sign up to a subscription service are something to consider before you dive in (if you are not currently a subscriber. If you are, it's too late for you and I'm sorry).

I don't understand why you keep saying this when it isn't true. They don't hold your edits hostage, they just don't let you make new ones.

I hate the subscription model and don't subscribe, but for reasons that are actually factual, those being that they force me to pay for upgrades whether I want them or not and they force me to pay for Photoshop when I don't use it.

I have lots of images that I haven't changed in years. I just make a print whenever anyone wants one. I consider those stacks usable.

Whatever...they want you to pay for the ability to edit files (LR is, at its heart, an image editor - Adobe Camera Raw or ACR. While you are paying, you can edit. When you stop paying, you can't edit anymore, but you can do most everything else aside from applying geo data (I think they stop that one because they have to pay for your use of map data).

It's sensitivity, duh, expressed in µV per electron ...

It is never late. When Nikon stopped supporting Capture NX2, I moved to the Lr. I still have all my RAW, procced in CNX files archived on my external hard drive and converted them to TIFF to use in LR. Sometimes I want to revisit my edits (from CNX) and I do it in LR from scratch. Even if I revisit my edits with LR, I start from scratch.

Are you disputing my choice of words or the concept? It feels like disputing a lawyer where your opponent is constantly arguing against something else other than the actual issue.

For me, the crucial element in raw file editing is that the edits are never fixed. You can continue to tweak them forever without damaging your raw files. Big difference to raster editing where you have to keep creating duplicate files to do edits while retaining your original out of camera file.

Let me illustrate with a real world example:

After the recent purchase of a P900 printer, I came to understand that when printing A2 sized prints, sharpening needs to be different than when printing A4 prints. I have 20,000 raw file edits with excessive and unusable sharpening for larger prints. If I had only raster images, I'd be screwed. Fortunately, they are raw files and I have a perpetual licence for LR and I can go in and back off the sharpening for larger prints.

Under the subs model, my files would all have been converted to what ever the latest LR version is, and if I later unsubscribed, I would not be able to go back and adjust the sharpening as I can now. Therefore, unless I agree to pay Adobe forever, I'm stuck with a back catalogue of raw edits I can't change. Even one tiny bit. Despite the fact I paid a perpetual licence fee for that right.

I consider the knowledge of the existence of "minor" little issues like that as "holding my edits to ransom" and the subscription a kind of protection racket. I paid Adobe for the right to edit my images perpetually in the past. That right should exist in perpetuity. I can only retain complete control over those past edits by not subscribing.

Adobe could change the rules so the import module get locked if you stop subscribing. That would ensure you are:

a) blocked from editing images created after you stop subscribing

b) Still able to continue the edits you already paid for when you bought the product and made those original edits.

There are other subs models. They could let the software continue to work perfectly you after you stop subscribing except for any features added after you stopped subscribing. There are any number of subs model function restrictions possible (similar to how shareware works) that don't remove your control over your past work. But no, they decide to apply the most draconian version of the deal possible - one in which all the advantages lie with them. Not playing ball.

Well said!

Although RawTherapee does have separately saveable (i.e. re-usable) and editable sidecar files (PP3, type 'text') I don't know if they can be taken elsewhere.

First, the "duh" is not helpful.

Second, if you're talking at the input to or the output from the source follower, and that is your definition of sensitivity (it wouldn't be mine), then it does change in most modern sensors that I've measured.

I never do output sharpening on an image until I'm ready to print, and then I don't keep the file that's undergone output sharpening.

I don't think it needs artificial restrictions on XMP portability for there to be a problem. A command stored in an XMP might do something in another program, but unless it does exactly the same thing, your edits will be scrambled. darktable can read LR XMP data, but it only gets you a half edit file, they are simply not compatible.