I just want to suggest that I have used Fast Raw Viewer for many years as well as other software from the creators and say I agree with the other contributors as to the usefulness and value of these products.
That’s exactly what I do.
I still use LR as a DAM front end to PS
Apart from the slightly irritating Nag screen, LR works fine as a frontend to PS.
I just export a JPEG back to LR and stack it on top
That is what I did as well ( LR to and from PS, using PS only when I needed to get the result that I could not – easily – get in PS) until the rental scheme from Adobe. I know use PL as PS (sans plugins as PL does not have plugins that integrate into the internal pipeline, unlike PS), but still am experimenting for a LR replacement. I have FastRawViewer – it is a good fast raw viewer – but from my uses it does not seem to be a LR replacement.
I’ve just browsed through the dam section of digiKam’s user guide and found it to be easy to understand … and it made me think of trying dikiKam as an asset manager. If all the things work as well as they are written, we’d have a winner.
digiKam does not yet work natively on Apple Silicon Macs. If it did, I already would have looked into it.