Bill, I've shared some of my workflow before. I take the "starving artist" approach and only use freeware. I am just a hobbyist after all, not selling anything really. I shoot Raw+JPEG mode and save Raw to card 1 and JPG to card 2. This method can work with JPEG only workflow also.
I import and organize images with
NX Studio, and mostly only use that software to do that. If I need to make a very quick edit of some JPG, I might use NX Studio for that.
Here I switch to
RawTherapee (open-source multi-platform) and I see I am 1 version behind after last weekend. This is where the heavy work will be done. I have several profiles saved from past work to shorten up my common adjustments. RawTherapee does not support multi-layers or a transparent color, so instead of exporting directly to finished JPG, I export to an external graphics editor for adding a watermark.
GIMP is my graphics editor. Open-source, free, and been around for decades now. It cannot handle Raw files, but can work with most formats. The configuration window of RawTherapee has a place to define your choice of graphics editor and it gracefully handles exporting to GIMP. It will start GIMP in the background and export the files you want as TIFF, then loads them into individual GIMP tabs. If I have any image I want to do layered editing with, it must be done here. That includes adding a watermark. To make that easy, I create a new watermark beginning each year (start from the previous file) and save it for pasting as a layer on any image I work on. I have my watermark saved with a transparent background, and at a specific size so I won't need to resize. My profiles in RawTherapee will do a resize operation so I always am working with a specific size image in GIMP. I can then adjust the overall transparency of the watermark layer and flatten the image prior to exporting it as a JPG. If it is something I think I will revisit again, I save a copy in the native GIMP format so layers and transparency is maintained.
That may look complex to somebody using Lightroom. But I pay no subscription. It's pretty straight-forward even though I do not have an automated method of applying the watermark.
EDIT: my PC is vintage 2011 AMD 6-core CPU with only a 23" 1080 vetical resolution display. I've updated the RAM to 16GB and the storage is SSD now. It did not struggle even when I was using 8GB RAM. It has been upgraded from Win7 to Win10 and now Win11 even though it fails the hardware test for Win11 (no secure-boot chip).
