@mathew wrote:
Aperture does photography, but not really image editing. For example, it won't do perspective correction or let me slice objects out of a background and reassemble them in a collage. (Or at least, not without plugins that cost more than Acorn or Pixelmator.)
Acorn and Pixelmator are closer to each other, but have different strengths and weaknesses. Acorn lacks the magic extractor and magic healing brush of Pixelmator, Pixelmator lacks the lossless adjustments of Acorn.
Apparently Adobe is reassuring customers that Lightroom will remain licensed normally, but given that they've ignored their customers in pushing 'Creative Cloud' for everything else, I see no reason to trust them at this point.