My test found the same but performance remains too sluggish for my liking. E.g. they add machine vision labeling and if I process more than one image at the time the application crashes. I also tried Lightroom with Anyvision plugin and it did 8.000 images in 1-hour without any hiccups. PSU also freezes all the time for 5 - 30 seconds while doing batch adjustments. Bad optimization if you ask me. And this is on a high-end PC with i7, 32GB RAM, SSDs and GTX 1080.
Now I have an old Imac - Late 2012 and no problems at all. It never crashes and works very well, no freezing etc…
Maybe you should get an old Mac:)))
This is actually caused by a setting in Lightroom.
Edit > Preferences > External Editing > Stack with original (unchecked for no stacking).
Worth mentioning that Photo Supreme also has stacks and versions, in case you were looking and didn’t find them…
Here’s a “new” alternative for DAM functions if you’re not happy with DxO’s.
I just went through the laborious registration and installation process. In my opinion it’s less user friendly than using Apple Finder to browse your images. Certainly not as useful as my own browser, which allows me to view all images in all subfolders of a chosen folder, sectioned by subfolder. If I choose show subfolders in Bridge, it wants to show me everything (folders, non-image files, etc). I shall continue development of my own browser.
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Just made an hardware update of my old iMac from 2014. At the same time I made a clean install (macOS Catalina) and got rid of MS Office and Adobe softwares… wow so clean, fast, and less « online talk » from MS (if you use Little Snitch you know what I mean).
Even if it is free, I will look for something new and fresh.
By the way I am sure Affinity is working on something secret (DAM) at the moment and it will take some more time until we can see it.
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I ended up moving my Lightroom collection to ACDSee Pro 2020 and do have to say I am quite pleased. Really like the speed for tagging and browsing. I setup DXO in my editors and I can in few clicks filter my selection, send it to dxo, export TIF in the same folder and then sort through them in ACDSee.
One thing that did stand out in my comparison of different tools, the face detection in ACDSee is actually quite accurate and really fast.
However ACDSee is not a flexible as lightroom and you need to adjust your workflow to use their filtering options (at least in the folder view).
Finally, one last note, it is worth talking to their customer reps, they can give you a better discount than the one online…
Erik.
There is so many tracking things Adobe hide in many folders on your computer, that’s crazy, easier to format your computer and install from scratch than going through library opening folders to find them 
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I do not get folders with this setting and You can filter by content type.
Personally this would be a nightmare as thousands and thousands of images can load. I prefer a well organized folder structure - that’s just me.
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They have already said it is something on their roadmap. They’ve also said their first priority is getting Affinity Publisher on iPad. I’m betting their DAM will be really good but I’d also bet it’s a long way off. Luminar’s might be good too, but a way off. DxO’s is showing real promise and might be closer than any of them to a fully functional option. Meanwhile, LR is still the best manager and Bridge is quite passable (I’d guess 80% of LR’s capability) and the only one mentioned that is FREE. All from my point of view, of course.
In the perfect world, I think I’d like Affinity’s DAM (based on their track record so far it’s bound to be superb) and PhotoLab working as a seamless plugin for that. For now, having just spent hundreds of dollars on DxO software, there’s simply no way I’m going to spend money on a stopgap DAM.
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Piping in with my 2c here. I have used many so called DAM programs. The 2nd last was Lr which I subscribed to after several CS purchases for the last 2+ years. I am NOT a critic of software as a service however, the profit that Adobe is making is obscene. 98% of the Lr users do not use 10% of the product, and you can argue that is value for money, you just don’t use it to its full capabilities, however I would argue that when it comes to my images I want to be in control. I don’t think anyone using Adobe products is ever really in control. - I have discovered iMatch which I think works as intended. iMatch is a DAM, and a damned good one at that. It permits me to dig into my EXIF data, and my IPTC and XMP files. As I import and review my family catalog spanning digital assets now dating back to the 1930s it is frankly disappointing how poor the key-wording in Lr has been. So many variations that have been lost over time.
If you want a DAM, you want one that has a universal Thesaurus so you can control your vocabulary interactively. The other program I used was PhotoMechanic, which is NOT a DAM at all. They are making one, but I have not participated in its development because it is unclear to me they should do it. Their niche is importation and culling. Do that there, then use a real DAM.
Real DAMs do not include DxO, sorry, it’s a fact. NOT Luminar for damn sure. OnOne and ACDSee appear to me to be variations on a theme, and create too much confusion in the background and are poor DAMs because they have no real controlled vocabulary.
iMatch is damned hard to learn, sorry, it’s true, but nothing good comes easily. If you think you know what a DAM is, then you owe it to yourself to try this program and see for yourself what it can do.
I use DxO PL and I use Affinity Photo for that which they were intended. They are superior products. I use PM to upload my cards, and do some XMP tagging on import, which it is the BEST at. You can not find, will not find, one program that does all these things at a very high level. You can’t cut wood with a drill, nor hammer nails with a wrench. You can try, but it makes more sense to me to understand your goal and find the tools to achieve that.
Happy New Year !!!
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The problem with imatch… not really a problem but its Windows OS only no Mac OS friendly, until then I’ll stick to my own with PM and Finder as it still better than “image browser” of software now a day.
The issue with Lr is when you stop paying that fee, your Lr catalog is not accessible.
*side note, there is also PhaseOne Media Pro SE as DAM but not sure if they still have it.
And not sure if it was mentioned but photo supreme
What gets me about the “Photography Plan” from Adobe is that it includes Photoshop. I know I’m not everyone, but I have NEVER used Photoshop to “process a photo” for publication. As you said further on in your post, using the right tool for the job is important. If they can supply LR and PS — which has 10x the functionality of LR — for $10 per month, then why could they not offer LR on its own for less? Heck, even $5 a month would be less painful. I’d also like there to be an option for “month to month” renting and not having to commit for an entire year. It’s a fact that I quit paying for LR when my year was up and I didn’t want to commit another year. They could have had more money from me had I been able to go month by month.
I don’t understand your view here. I would personally rate LR as the best tool for keywording, bar none. The ability to not only have finely controlled hierarchies of keywords but to be able to add to the hierarchy on the fly using only the keyboard while tagging photos is something I have not been able to get close to with any other product. The ability to then simply write them back to the file while still holding an internal database for auto-complete is the complete solution for me – the speed of the database for editing and the portability of file-internal results. The closest so far to this ideal is in fact PhotoLab 3. If it would write the keywords to the files it would be 90% of what LR is. The main difference then would be in the ability to manage the keyword hierarchy in its own right, plus the different modes of viewing tags (entered, implied, etc).
Unless I missed something recently, the LR catalog can still be used after you stop paying for your subscription. Only the Develop and Map modules are disabled as well as the synchronization with Lightroom Mobile. By the way, you can also still use Bridge which is free.
I walked away at Lr6 and never went back. Why does people complains they need to subscribe an extra month so they can transfer their images out of Lr catalog?
Hi,
Nobody has to transfer images out of the LR catalog because they have never been there. What should be done before the development module is disabled is to export the images that have been corrected/edited in LR because otherwise all these modifications will be lost.
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You should really try a ‘real’ DAM (IMatch being one example) before says LR is “the best”. LR does take advantage of a thesaurus and can certainly handle hierarchical keywords, but it’s somewhat lacking in other ways.
iMatch must be quite something because I found LR incredibly fast to use for DAM actions, particularly keywords as I have described. Alas, iMatch is Windows only so not even on my radar.
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While I can see the value in retaining the exported, finished products there is simply no way I will throw away the originals. When I migrated out of Aperture back to Lightroom, I ended up with duplicate copies of all the photos I had modified – one original RAW and one processed TIFF. When I quit Lightroom, I didn’t bother rendering out all the processed photos. Most exist in some form online anyway, but I often go back to old photos and reprocess, at which point I want the original data to work with. Case in point was moving to PhotoLab where I am able to get far superior sharpness from the original RAW than any other product. If I was working only with processed TIFF files, I’d not have nearly the same leeway.
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