Photo editor

There are so many photo editing programs that it is tough to choose one that meets the following subjective requirements:

1. Ease of use.
2. Enough features for a serious amateur photographer.
3. Reasonably priced without subscription 

• Digital Photo Professional.  Difficult to use.  Primarily for RAW pictures.
• Fotor has poor support for a multi-monitor setup.
• Picasa was great, but it was killed by Google.
• Microsoft Photo is great, but it does not support batch editing or repeated editing pattern application.
• Picturecode Photoninja ($129)
• affinity Photo ($49).  Less user friendly than Luminar.  Similar to Photoshop.
• Luminar ($69)  Easier than affinity. Similar to Lightroom.  Luminar 3 has a problem of starting. Even though the problem can be fixed after a repair, it still starts very slowly and many functions can suddenly stop working.  It is a very shaky program probably based on poor software engineering.  This may have to do with the fact it was initially developed as a Mac program, then ported to Windows.
• GIMP (open source).  It may be powerful, but not user friendly.  I can be a tool in the box taken out occasionally to meet some special requirement of photo editing.
• FastStone Image Viewer It supports batch editing (select files > right-click > tools > batch convert > advanced options > select a tab (e.g. adjustments) at the top > design and preview > make changes > close > OK > Convert).

 

Conclusion:

FastStone for frequent photo editing.

Photoshop Elements for occasional intensive editing of a small number of photos.

One way of editing photos one by one with similar setting:

1. Open the photo.
2. Ctr+E to open Enhancing editor, edit the photo and check "Keep Settings"
3. Return.
4. Scroll to the next photo, press return 3 times to save the current one before going to the next one.
5. Ctr+E to open Enhancing editor. If the enhancement by using the existing settings looks good, go to step 3.

This allows viewing and editing a photo in less than 10 seconds.