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Author Topic: Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?  (Read 6213 times)

FataMorgana

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Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?
« on: July 26, 2017, 04:06:02 pm »

Hello.
Using a number of 35mm FF digital different bodies, D800, a7r, M240, rendering their respective RAW files out as DNG's, I was considering an alternative post processing software to Lr.

Reasons: maybe give the files a different look, perhaps?
Extract extra information?
Learn another work flow?
Give me a fresh perspective on my work, both current and old RAW files too?

Has anyone any experience of this?

I have had no end of issues within cataloging in Lr since day-dot, which has lead me to set up a catalogue each shoot - don't go there  - so leaving catalogues behind doesn't concern me.

What should I be looking at please as to alternative software, I was recommended the Phase 1 and PhotoMechanic?

Thanks.
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Hening Bettermann

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Re: Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?
« Reply #1 on: July 26, 2017, 06:34:20 pm »

I use RawTherapee (free!) as a raw converter, in particular because of a great automatic correction for lateral chromatic aberration, and an equally great tool for manual removal of longitudinal CA (purple fringing). For editing, I use PhotoLine (60 €) which has an incredible scope of things it can do. 

Pictus

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Re: Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2017, 06:25:44 pm »

Try Luminar https://macphun.com/luminar
There is a beta for Windows https://macphun.com/beta
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scyth

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Re: Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?
« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2017, 07:18:43 pm »

Hello.
Using a number of 35mm FF digital different bodies, D800, a7r, M240, rendering their respective RAW files out as DNG's, I was considering an alternative post processing software to Lr.

Reasons: maybe give the files a different look, perhaps?
Extract extra information?
Learn another work flow?
Give me a fresh perspective on my work, both current and old RAW files too?

Has anyone any experience of this?

I have had no end of issues within cataloging in Lr since day-dot, which has lead me to set up a catalogue each shoot - don't go there  - so leaving catalogues behind doesn't concern me.

What should I be looking at please as to alternative software, I was recommended the Phase 1 and PhotoMechanic?

Thanks.

consider ACR (to stay with familiar raw conversion workflow from Adobe) and separate DAM ... both LR & C1 are primitive desktop level DAMs - try at least something like http://daminion.net
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Alan Smallbone

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Re: Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?
« Reply #4 on: July 28, 2017, 11:01:49 am »

Most software will have 30 day trials. A lot of it is how and what you like to do with editing. Not trying to be vague. Capture One does an excellent job, they have lots of tutorials and there is a good one on this site as well. I am liking OnOne Photo Raw more and more lately, they are still actively improving it, it still needs polishing but it is reasonable and has lots of features and is non destructive editing, even with layers, which is nice.

I have tried the beta of Luminar for Windows and found it pretty unexciting. Topaz Studios is out and is ok, it is cheap. There are also others. If you like the features in photoshop there is Affinity Photo, which does most things PS can do and some things different and maybe better but that is subjective.

It is nice to have choices. I would narrow it down to a couple and give them a try, look at the tutorials, see what fits with your workflow and what you like to do.

Alan
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Alan Smallbone
Orange County, CA

Paul2660

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Re: Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2017, 10:13:45 am »

No one voted for C1, I would strongly consider it, especially for the D800 files and A7r.  C1 has a very nice tool set, very similar to LR's. offers catalog and session workflow I use the sessions. 

C1 also gives the 30 day trial period and has excellent tethering support for both your D800 and Sony.

Paul Caldwell
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Paul Caldwell
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NAwlins_Contrarian

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Re: Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2017, 12:43:00 am »

Personally, I'm a big fan of DxO Optics Pro Elite (currently version 11.4.2, and previously versions 10, 9, and maybe 8). I also have Lightroom (version 6 and previously version 5) and Capture One Express for Sony (currently version 10 and previously 8 and 9), and I've tried Capture One Pro.* The DxO Elite version's Prime noise reduction is great (the Essential version does not have it). DxO seems to put out a ton more lens profiles than Phase One does for Capture One (although there are tons for ACR / Lightroom too). Subjectively I find DxO it easier to get the colors I want than with Lightroom or Capture One, although Capture One has color tools that seem nice.

But so much of this is subjective or at least personal: what sort of workflow you want to use / how much you want to process, how your mind conceptualizes the task at hand and how you want to accomplish it, what you like / think looks good, etc. I'd bet that all of the major raw converters are capable in the right user's hands of doing an excellent job on 95%, and maybe 99%, of photos. The only place where I think it fair to say that DxO objectively shines over ACR / Lightroom and Capture One is reducing noise while retaining detail at the extremes (I love what I can pull out of ISO 6400 and ISO 12800).

*And for the sake of completeness, I've also used many times each both Sony Image Data Converter and Konica Minolta DiMage Master Lite; and used a few times each Canon Digital Photo Professional, the UFRaw plugin for GIMP (based on DCRaw), Rawtherapee, and probably others.
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myotis

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Re: Changing from Lr? What do you recommend please?
« Reply #7 on: August 05, 2017, 07:07:06 am »

I use Phase One's Capture One and Photo Mechanic.

I personally prefer C1 over either LR (CC) or DXO 11, which I also have. I never use LR now, but I still occasionally run DXO from C1 to access DXO's Prime Noise Reduction.  I especially like the colour controls and the layer based local adjustments in C1, plus the overall image quality that C1 seems capable of.

I have used Photo Mechanic for years, primarily because LR was very very slow for file management and Photo Mechanic is very very fast, even slow computers. But, its really aimed at press photographers or similar, who need to rapidly turn round photographs at events and while its really useful to have around for organising images, captions etc, I'm not sure its "needed" by most people. I'm not sure there is much (anything) it can do that can't be done in LR or C1, its just a lot faster, and more convenient,  to do it in Photo Mechanic.

They are meant to be adding a Database to Photo Mechanic, but this has been ongoing for years and years, but they are hinting it might now be imminent.

C1 cataloging is OK, and improves with each point release, but I find the catalogues very slow to load, and have a catalogue for each year. Once loaded, however, I find they run well enough.  C1 also has the option of sessions which allows you to work on a project by basis with all your originals and derivatives managed by C1 and kept together in the same folder.

For a "global" catalogue, I use the low cost and very good Neofinder. I also use Phase One's Media Pro for this, which is blazingly fast and offers some integration with C1, but Phase One break the integration when they release a new version of C1, and take months (years?) to fix it.

Cheers,

Graham




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