I've been getting into photography lately too and running into the same question. There's no way I'm getting an adobe subscription. But I'm not sure what tools do I want to pick up instead. Apple Photos has gotten me pretty far, but I'm hitting the limits of what it can do. And my photo library is getting pretty big now - big enough that I want some software to manage where my photos live as well.

Firstly it's a matter of reliably storing image files. I just make a new folder in the file system — each-time I transfer image files from camera to computer — named as the transfer-date YYYYMMDD. I wrote a 10-line script to give those image files unique-sequence-names YYYYMMDD-00N.ext.

So when I mistakenly copy into the wrong folder, it's obvious which image files don't belong. So I don't need to delay while I think of the best descriptive folder name. So I don't need to sort yesterdays photos into a different folder than todays photos.

Secondly it's a matter of deleting image files. I take a look with some viewer app and use the file system to delete whatever doesn't seem worth any more attention.

Thirdly whatever trial photo software is available is probably good enough to start learning.

Pixelmator pro is nice on the Mac, and it's a one time purchase, not even expensive. And CameraBag was not bad last time I tried it, also a one time purchase.