I use Acdsee Ultimate for organizing my photos, and it works well. Very fast and no need to catalogue (uses Windows file system). I simply create a shortcut to DXO from the file manager and can seamlessly edit an image I select in Acdsee in DXO, or another RAW processor of your choice. The bonus is that Acdsee Ultimate also has a pretty good raw processor and also uses layers when editing, so you have other tools to use as well as DXO. It’s great to have the choice, as sometimes I use DXO, sometimes the Acdsee raw processor, and even the free Nikon Capture NX-D, all from the Acdsee file manager. It’s actually a very powerful collection of tools.
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Lr Classic can also be thought of as a free DAM – once the 7-day trial or your subscription ends, you still have access to the Library module and most of its functionalities.
Which functions besides searching? Would I still be able to import new photos into the library, tag them and add keywords and IPTC info? Or would the library become “read only?”
Been trying ACDsee and really like its speed but haven’t been able to find good options to sort & export files in folders. In lightroom I import everything in Raw\year\month and export jpgs in exports\year\month but I cannot find anything equivalent in ACDsee. Can you confirm if this is feasible? (company tells me yes but dialogs have no year/month options) It’s a shame, price for that one is great and the tagging looks really snappy.
Yes, you will. And to export. The “quick develop” panel in Library will still work, too.
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When using Quick Develop in Lr Library, don’t forget about holding down the Alt key to get additional two settings for Saturation and Sharpness. And you can even use the presets you made earlier when running the trial. Additionally you get access to the “Enhance Details” option – I wish DxO gave us something similar to improve PhotoLab’s demosaicing. So you get quite a lot in terms of quickly developing your raw files as well as almost all of image management stuff (face tagging included).
Lr Classic after-trial limitations that I’ve noticed : can’t use Edit In… (but can use Export with the command to open the exported files), can’t sync settings between images (only metadata) but can batch apply same preset, can’t use Photo Merge (without Ps), can’t use Develop and Map (everything greyed out – but you can use e.g. Jeffrey Friedl’s Geoencoding Lr plug-in, etc.), can’t soft-proof, can’t see B4/after unless via Virtual Copy, can’t update to current Process Version if raw file was previously edited with PV2012.
Thanks, you guys may have just stopped my search for a better DAM. I don’t need the quick develop options if I’m using other developing software, but the ability to catalog raw files - not just jpgs, I need to catalog everything, raw, jpg, video - and apply metadata, which would then be embedded into jpgs exported from DxO, is what I seek if I want to dump Adobe. I just need now to see how syncing processing across multiple raw files in DxO works. That’s been another boon of Lightroom, doing basic developing across multiple images of an event.
I just did a little experimentation with ACDSee import and export and it appears you can do the following:
- Import: File > import
- If you check “Place in:” and select “Nested subfolder - by today’s date” it will create a folder with the year, then a subfolder with the month, then another subfolder with the date. That appears to be close to what you are looking for.
- If you don’t check “Place in:” you can simply create a folder with any name you want and browse to that folder when importing.
I personally use the first option.
- Export: File > export
- With Export it appears all you can really do in this case is create the folder, then browse to it by checking “Specific folder”. However I would think it would be easier to create the folder then copy your files there rather than using the Export function.
My understanding is that Lightroom creates a catalog with a copy of your photos. So you have multiple copies of your photos. I personally don’t like that, and much prefer the way ACDSee does it, which is simply using the Windows file system. You can create folders anywhere you want and simply organize that way. Personally what I do is keep the raw files in the folder it was imported into, then if I process them, I will move them to a folder called “originals”. Works ok, but I am sure others have better systems out there for organizing your photos.
I hope this helps.
I stopped using Lightroom when I moved my processing to Photolab, but I can say absolutely and unequivocally that Lightroom does not create copies of your images in the catalog. The catalog only contains pointers to the location of you physical images. When you import images you have three choices. You can copy them from the source to a new location of your choice. This is useful when the source is an SD card. Second, you can move the images from one location to another location of your choice. And finally, you can leave the images wherever they are currently located when you import them.
Besides containing pointers to the location of the image files, the catalog also contains the editing instructions you’ve performed which are overlaid on the fly to your images when you are editing them. But, and I stress again, the catalog does not contain a copy of your images.
This misunderstanding has led people to unfortunately delete the one and only copy of their images because they assumed that Lightroom somehow was storing them internally. If it actually did that the LR catalog for many of us would have to be several hundred gigabytes to a terabyte or more in size. That would be one hell of a catalog file.
Mark
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Thank you for clarifying that Mark. I haven’t used Lightroom much but for some reason thought that was the case. I certainly don’t want to spread misinformation on this site 
Not a problem. Most people posting here won’t be confused by what you suggested.
Msrk
Well I was wrong on that one - Photo Supreme 5 has just launched with a 15% discount until the end of this month: https://www.idimager.com/
However since you’re making a decision for the long term I’d still suggest making good use of the free 1 month trial to be sure it meets you needs, even if that means missing the discount.
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I can also recommend Photo Supreme. Works very well with DPL
I simply copy the files from my SD card directly to the HD folder I want them to live in, then import that folder into Lightroom. I feel it’s actually faster and safer than having LR (or any other s/w) do the import, moving of files AND cataloging all at once.
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I’ll check this out, thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks Mike, I tried the version 4 and trying now version 5. Have to say, not too keen on the user interface and for a major version, there are not a lot of new features. Going to stick with LR for a while, I resolved my issues with TIFF files in LR and it is good enough for now.
Also just got the update for Zoner Photo, really impressed with the new autumn features. There is now a really good export dialog, and it has few more features than ACDSee. Will give it a good chance.
Erik.
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If you have a ‘legacy’ version of PS (or LR, I guess) once you install the current Bridge, there is no uninstalling it without having to re-establish your license w Adobe, which IMO is a PITA. I had an unfortunate experience with this (and PS CS6) a year or two ago. Maybe Adobe has fixed it since then but those of us with ‘legacy’ licenses are not at the top of their fix-it list.
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What did you do to fix it?
I also don’t like the interface of Photo Supreme. IMatch is slightly better (but Windows only) so I am wating to see what IMatch 2020 brings which should release soon as well.
Do you auto-create stacks when you export from DXO to Lightroom (e.g. TIFF stacked to RAW file). I wonder how this works if a RAW file is already in a stack (based on capture time). I believe this is a setting in Lightroom but not sure if DXO respects that.
So, I am now doing TIFF exports from DXO to LR and I don’t have any more color issues in LR. LR interface for tagging is still quite good and I haven’t found anything as handy as the JF collection publisher for automatically organizing the folders and exports.
Another thing I learned is that to accommodate all the different tools, it really helps to have completely separate folders for final JPGs and RAW pictures. I used to have my RAW pictures as a subfolder but some other tools did not like it and now my OneDrive is also perfectly happy because it did not stack correctly the duplicates before.
I haven’t played too much with the stacks, I believe I have mostly been unstacking them
I have a hard time committing to IMatch because the upgrades are so expensive but will be interesting to see next version for sure.
Erik.
Hi,
I use ACDSee Pro. Super fast for selecting / culling / deleting / sorting photos. I never do anything else in ACDSee: it’s just a super fast tool for selecting which photos I will be sending to DXO / Photoshop…
I’ve been using iMatch for a couple of months now and i find very powerful, flexible, FAST, not very intuitive but you can personalize nearly anything, write you own scripts, and the search engine is fantastic. Beside this the support of the community is graet very responsive and fast, Mario (the Developer) is always there. Its architecture is very open, if you later on want to migrate to something different all you work is stored in the file’s metadata, in the XMP sidecars and in its database you can carry it around for your lifetime… Worth a and but it worth even the money it costs (120€).