Adobe Lightroom costs $120 a year, and I’m honestly tired of paying $10 every month for software that takes forever to load, crashes randomly, and locks you into the Adobe subscription forever. In this video I tested RapidRAW, a completely free, open-source RAW editor that does the exact same kind of non-destructive workflow, but feels way faster thanks to GPU acceleration. I walk you through where to download it (getrapidraw.com / GitHub), how to install it on Windows (yes, the “Windows protected your PC” popup—just hit More info → Run anyway), and what the app looks like once you launch it. Then I edit a real photo step-by-step so you can see the tools in action: basic adjustments (brightness/contrast/highlights/shadows/whites/blacks), curves, temperature/tint, presence and saturation, color grading, detail/sharpening, dehaze/clarity, and effects like glow, halation, light flares, vignette, and grain. I also test the AI masking (foreground/subject/sky plus radial/linear masks), show the auto-adjust and before/after toggle, and export settings like high quality PNG with estimated file size. One thing I have to admit: it crashed for me on Windows while editing, so I finished the edit on macOS—but for a free Lightroom alternative, RapidRAW is still surprisingly good.