[kh1234567890]

Just to be different : SilkyPix Pro 5 for developing, Thumbs Plus 4 for cataloging, FastStone for a quick look. Raw Therapee occasionally for developing if I need the superior demosaicing, but the GUI is not intuitive enough for everyday use.

[Patajac]

Adobe Lightroom 4 x64 to import and do basic adjustments, cropping, leveling, exposure
Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 x64 for touch up work and color adjustments
Nik Sowtware (Dfine 2, Viveza 2, HDR Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro 3, Silver Efex Pro 2, Sharpener Pro 3) each for their specific purpose as needed

[Philoslothical]

Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop.
Does it all.

+1! I'm still using an old version, but it does everything I need. I don't "import" or catalog anything, or at least I don't use any application besides a file manager to do it.

Only thing I'd add to that is a couple of the Nik plugins for PS. They really are indispensable.

[L33tGreg]

Corel Aftershot Pro

[bdparker]

+1 Corel Aftershot Pro

[Marc Sabatella]

ACDSee Pro 5 for all management and processing.

[markie623]

DXO Optics Pro. If it has your camera and lens, it is great. It takes an extra step to throw it into Photoshop, but it's
well worth it. I did a comparison last year on about 20 raw images. DXO was better than Camera Raw in about 15.
4 were too close to call and in one ACR was better. YMMV.

[Lloydy]

Faststone - it's just so easy and intuitive. It's by far the best browser, and the RAW converter is easy and very good. And don't discount the other great free software - Photoscape. The more I use that the better it gets.

[NKK]

ACDSee Pro 5 for all management and processing.

Have you used Lightroom? How does the ACDSee Pro 5 works in regards to:

Sharpening, noisereduction and cataloging?

Can you say anything about how it compares to lightroom 3?

I see that it is only $99:

ACDSee Pro 5 - Photo Editing, Photo Management, Photo Editor, Digital Photography, RAW, Digital Asset Management, DAM

[Mark Castleman]

Started years ago with iPhoto, now I use Aperture. It does everything I need it to do.

[NKK]

Can you say anything about how it compares to lightroom 3?

I see that it is only $99:

ACDSee Pro 5 - Photo Editing, Photo Management, Photo Editor, Digital Photography, RAW, Digital Asset Management, DAM

Just downloaded the trial - will give it a chance in the weekend

[Marc Sabatella]

Have you used Lightroom? How does the ACDSee Pro 5 works in regards to:

Sharpening, noisereduction and cataloging?

Can you say anything about how it compares to lightroom 3?

I haven't done more than play around with LR, but I am reasonable familiar with it through discussions here and on the ACDSee forums. They are similar in overall scope, but with different strengths and weaknesses.

ACDSee's main advantage over LR is that it is a far better *file* management program. While it uses a catalog just as LR does, it does not require a separate "import" step in order to work images, nor do processed images need to be "exported" in order to be used outside the program. And just overall, it is very good at dealing with images *as files*, not just as entires in a database. This is probably the #1 reason people choose ACDSee over LR.

I know when I was first road-testing ACDSee against the initial LR, Picasa, and a few other options, setting up "sandboxes" and so forth for testing purposes, I found I kept turning to ACDSee to help me manage my test environment, because it was far better at this than any of the other programs. It was realizing that I enjoyed using ACDSee - even just to set up my tests - more than I enjoyed using any of the other programs I was testing against. it just instantly felt comfortable to me.

ACDSee's "star" processing feature is it's advanced lighting tool, which really is quite remarkable in the way it allows you to control the local contrast of your image. Kind of a single-image HDR facility that gives you more control over the mapping of your 14-bit (or whatever) RAW file to the 8-bit final JPEG - much more so than traditional Curves, for example. There are many who basically use ACDSee just for this feature alone.

Another advantage of ACDSee is that in addition to its non-destructive Develop mode (which works basically just like LR's), it also has a more traditional Edit mode to allow you to perform operations that are not easily performed non-destructively. So it's not quite as often that you need to leave ACDSee to do your editing.

ACDSee is also much more customizable than LR - including its keyboard shortcuts - and allows you to work with it in many different ways, as opposed to feeling "boxed in" to a particular workflow as LR might seem to do..

On the minus side, LR has quite a few more things it can do in its Develop mode than ACDSee can. In particular, cloning out dust spots requires switching to the old-fashioned / "destructive" Edit mode in ACDSee, and so do any operations on selections. This kind of negates the advantage of having this Edit mode - in LR, you would barely ever need it, but with ACDSee, you need to use it somewhat more often (depending on how of that sort of thing you tend to do). I think if circumstances ever forced me to switch to LR, this would be the thing that came closest to making up for everything I'd be giving up.

In Develop mode, LR gets to take advantage of Adobe's huge investment in ACR, and ACR has some very cool stuff that ACDSee lacks. In particular, most of us ACDSee users drool over LR's noise reduction features. I think also some of the possibilities for automatic profiles for different cameras or lenses that LR offers would be most welcome.

Organization-wise, LR also supports hierarchical keywords and a way to share these via IPTC with other programs that happen to use a similar scheme. ACDSee has only flat keywords that can be shared via IPTC. It does has "categories" that are hierarchical, but that hierarchy cannot be shared via IPTC. This really doesn't affect me at all, as I have no problems with a traditional flat keyword structure, but others find this the most annoying limitation of ACDSee, considering its historical strength has always been its organizational facilities.

Stacking and other version-control-related features are another area where ACDSee is lacking. LR is also better at supporting multiple database, and probably at supporting multi-user and/or multi-computer configurations - but I'm just guessing, based on the fact that ACDSee is extremely limited in this area, such that LR couldn't possibly be worse. Not important to me, but might be to some.

There are of course other differences too, but now we're getting into nitty gritty detail that I can't imagine being the determining factors for anyone. Overall, I would say that ACDSee is the stronger cataloging program, and LR the stronger processing program. Many people in fact use ACDSee for cataloging but LR for processing. But to me, that sacrifices one of the main selling points of *either* program, which is the integration between management and processing. So you kind of need to decide where you are comfortable compromising.

[NKK]

I haven't done more than play around with LR, but I am reasonable familiar with it through discussions here and on the ACDSee forums. They are similar in overall scope, but with different strengths and weaknesses...........

WOW - thank you very much Marc, that is one great comparison, really appreciated!

I will give it a go' in the weekend.

Thank you again

[Edgar_in_Indy]

Am I the only one that uses Adobe Bridge to browse my RAWs before opening them in ACR/Photoshop (CS5)? Should I be using Lightroom instead? I've never used Lightroom, and instead do all of my editing in ACR and Photoshop.

[WightWalker]

I use ACDSee Pro v5 to view images both in RAW & JPG.
Adobe Lightroom 4 x64 to import and do basic adjustments, cropping, leveling, exposure.
Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 x64 for touch up work and color adjustments before resizing down to screen size for PC Viewing & further resizing for publishing on my web site.