Photo editors

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.

Editors for Sony's ARW raw files

1. Sony's own Imaging Edge suite is not bad. It is relatively fast. The only down side is that it does not remember the settings. If you have a bunch of pictures requiring the same adjustments, you will have to do all the adjustments manually for each of them.
2. RawTherapee, an open source software, is too slow.