[mee]

MacPhun/Skylum seems like a young company. Young as in.. age of the employees. They seem more like a tech startup hoping to be the next big thing.. than a company seemingly dedicated to supporting customers with a long term business model. That is one thing Adobe has going for them.. I think they'll be around a lot longer than a lot of these startups. The issue is, will the software you've grown accustomed to be the same? It looks like Adobe is gunning hard for the cloud and rental services.

DxO feels more like a longer term, serious company comparatively (to MacPhun). And they seem to be attempting to solidify that in buying the Nik Suite (which were the defacto plugin suite years ago). But PhotoLab still feels unpolished to me.. and a little buggy.. I think it could become something really nice in the future.

But we are at an early stage for a lot of these Adobe competitors.. they will take time to mature.

[emalvick]

The DAM functions are TO ME the most important part of Lightroom. Anything that replaces Lightroom will need to have at least that functionality. The develop parts are to me secondary and anything Lightroom cannot do can be done with plugins or other software.

There are many options for RAW developing and most (all?) have fans and features that some prefer. But there are not many options for DAM.

I do not mind the cost of Lightroom, even the CC version. To me it is a business expense. But when I have as much time and effort invested in a program like Lightroom and they seem to be focusing on a completely different customer I am starting to get worried. I do not want to change, but at this point if a good alternative presented itself I would switch.

---------- Post added 11-08-17 at 02:21 PM ----------


Curious what you mean by this. Are you opposed to DAM in general or just Lightroom's implementation? Truly curious, as asset management is extremely important to me and if there is a better method would be interested in hearing about it. Currently have over 100k images in Lightroom and I need the ability to find images quickly by keyword search for clients when they need them.

If DAM is important to you, then I would urge you to explore other software that are dedicated DAM (if you haven't). LR is fine, but I am of the opinion of the poster you were quoting, too. My biggest complaint of LR was its reliance on its own DAM. That doesn't mean LR can't work for people, but my experience is that it is very minimal in the features a DAM might have.

DAM is quite important to me, so much so that it was the first thing I did when I got my first digital camera back in 2002 and a scanner to bring in older photos. At that time, there were truly few DAM options. You spent either $500 for one or lived with some limited Open Source type software. At some point I happened upon IMatch (Photools is the company), which replaced a few other software. I'm not sure it is the best DAM, but at its price point it has been miles ahead of anything else. A few years ago, I thought it was dead and started looking into other software, and even tried seeing if I could really embrace LR, but I couldn't. LR for DAM is just too limited for me.

There are many features that I like in a DAM:

(1) version control. With IMatch, it will detect any file that is derived from a source as a version and synchronize exactly the information you want (XMP, EXIF, IPTC, GPS, etc). For instance, when I export files from any software with a file name like NAME-w (where -w is added to the original name), IMatch will only synchronize EXIF data (i.e. a web version).

(2) Keywording. LR has this feature. IMatch will read keywords from the XMP record, including those from a LR catalog, and let you arrange the hierarchy easily keeping the metadata in the files intact.

(3) Categorizing. This is kind of like the Smart Collection features in LR, but a good DAM will give you a lot more options with regard to that.

(4) Renamer. LR's renamer is limited while the one in IMatch is only limited by the imagination (and perhaps EXIFTool if you are using metadata).

(5) database. IMatch is heavily based on metadata, but one nice feature it has is the ability to flexibly create fields of data that stay with your database. Do you want to track sales of an image? Do you want to track where you've uploaded an image? customers? software used? etc. You can do that.

(6) automation. I like it when a DAM can automate a lot of the above. Versions can be auto-detected and the appropriate data set up; keywords can be setup so that the metadata only includes specific levels you want (remaining levels would be in the database); metadata is automatically written when changed

(7) *** transparent and robust. The software stores as much of its information in the XMP records for your images. If I ever quit my DAM software, all the data is there with the images. The catalog is just a backup of the information. LR has this too; it just doesn't have as much information.

and more... geotagging, scripting, timelines, complex filters, color-coding by metadata, category, keyword, etc.

Finally, there are many options out there. It's been a while since I've looked but beside IMatch, which I use, there are programs like ACDSee, Photo Supreme (idimager), Photomechanic, etc.

And, the idea of subscribing to a DAM seems a little dangerous?

Anyway I like having a dedicated DAM as it has made it easy to try various developers, bitmap editors, etc. I could jump out of LR quickly, no regrets. I jumped in quickly, too with no regrets. And, I feel comfortable that if and when I need to change DAM software, I can do it with little effort to recatalog everything.

[K57XR]

Macphun did change their name to something else to reflect their new entry into Windows. But they are getting hammered by Win users over on dpreview for poor support and bugs in the just released version.

I test drove the windows version when it came out last week. I used it on an Core i7 laptop, 16Gig mem, 500GB Samsung SSD. First thing I noticed is it's slow! Windows task manager / performance shows CPU pegs at 100% by simply opening one NEF file from a D500. Once the file is open CPU usage drops. But while developing, adjusting (any) slider by a tick or two pegs the CPU again to 100% and takes about 6 seconds for the image to take the adjustment - and you can hear the CPU fan at full bore. They released an update a day later which improved the speed quite a bit but it's still sluggish. I like what Luminar offers as far as features go but in my opinion based on recent experience, I don't think Luminar 2018 (Windows) is ripe for mainstream. I can't speak for the Mac version, though.

[jatrax]

If DAM is important to you, then I would urge you to explore other software that are dedicated DAM (if you haven't). LR is fine, but I am of the opinion of the poster you were quoting, too. My biggest complaint of LR was its reliance on its own DAM.

Thank you for the very informational post! I am currently OK with Lightroom, it's DAM functions include much of the things on your list though sometimes getting there is a little convoluted or requires a plugin. It doesn't do versions but I would not use that anyway, it doesn't do levels on keyword export but again I would not likely use that for my application. Unlike some I have absolutely no desire to try other processing software so having everything in one program, even if not quite the way I want is important. But it is always good to have options!

And with Adobe seemingly focusing all efforts on a direction I have no interest in at some point I am sure I will have to change to something else. For now I am going stay with Lightroom and watch progress from the side lines.

[MikeStnly]

I have been using Luminar 2018 for a few weeks now. Previously I used Luminar 2017, but the new version is much better. This week I downloaded free trials on ON1, DxO, Topaz etc. but found none of them to be as easy and intuitive to use as Luminar. They have nailed the user interface. Luminar has a great new RAW Develop workspace with a few RAW Presets as well and training videos on how to use it.

I have contacted support by email a few times and have received answers the same day.

One thing I don't like in Luminar is the print function, it is very simple. I have kept Lightroom 6 installed on my system just for the little bit of flexibility in printing - fine art templates and so on. But none of the other apps seemed to have fancy print functions either.

Also, Luminar only has manual lens correction, no profiles like Lightroom and DxO. You can fix distortion, vignetting, chromatics....

They have a 30 day fully functional trial download available.

Mike