How to export a catalog of products and categories from PrestaShop?

Question

Prestashop

I googled long and hard, the only solutions I found were manual export via SQL queries or using one of two paid (noticeably) desktop programs (one of which I tried in trial mode and was horrified by hellish buggy, it’s almost impossible to use, not to mention to pay that kind of money for it). If there are no other options, I will do it manually, of course, but still I can’t believe my eyes: is it really for such a popular and developed platform so far (here it should be noted that most discussions of the issue on the Web are dated at least not this year) there is no more or less standard/practical way to export pure data (for a directory, and not the entire database with all the giblets like any settings)?