Tomek T.
Short Review of Zoner Studio
I mainly photograph landscapes and street photo, so I expect both speed and intuitiveness from a photo editing program. Zoner Studio turned out to be one of the best, multifunctional editors I have ever used. It meets all my needs and offers features I was missing in other applications. Strengths - Intuitiveness and responsiveness – the program loads in just three seconds and is ready to work. Slider response is instant, and switching between modules takes only a fraction of a second. - Photo organization – Zoner recognizes keywords previously assigned in Lightroom, allows stacking photos, and offers fast searching. The map module and geotagging work quickly, enabling filtering by country or city. - Editing and export – editing photos is simple, and exporting to the Zonerama service makes sharing easy. Zonerama is a cloud-based photo gallery platform directly built into the program. Creating a gallery is as simple as copying photos into the designated folder within Zoner Photo Studio, and they are instantly available online. - AI Auto and presets – if you don’t know where to start editing, just press AI Auto. The results are excellent and sufficient for most photos. If you want to experiment, you can choose from over 200 presets. Remarkably, all presets together take only 760KB of disk space – that’s amazing. Applying presets is fast, and you can also create your own, even based on AI masks. These masks can select the subject, background, sky, or any object. And if you were annoyed in Adobe/LR by the halo on the horizon when the AI mask darkened the sky, don’t worry – Zoner offers smooth control over mask range and transitions. - Integration and convenience – Zoner behaves as if it were integrated with Windows, supports Loupedeck, and allows opening any module in separate tabs. - Price and support – the subscription cost is incredibly affordable, and technical support is at a high level. Comparison with Adobe For 15 years I used Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Lightroom Classic is more expensive and slower, while Photoshop is more complicated. Zoner Studio combines the functionality of both programs, offering a user-friendly interface and speed that surprised me. It is a real alternative to LR/PS, and for me – a long-time Adobe user – a shock to find something faster and more convenient. User experience Zoner allows browsing photos even without connecting a RAW disk, and the Develop module has its own browser. Transferring edits between computers is as simple as copying one small configuration file. Testing HDR on large files, I achieved results better than in Lightroom without tedious slider adjustments. This shows how thoughtful and refined the program is. Summary Zoner Studio is an absolutely brilliant tool – intuitive, fast, responsive, and well-designed. For a landscape and street photographer like me, it has become the natural choice and a reasonable replacement for Lightroom and Photoshop. The only downside is the subscription model, but at this price and with these capabilities, the program is worth every dollar. It’s no surprise it won the TIPA award for best photo software – I only regret not discovering it earlier.




