IMatch fully supports open standards (thousands of metadata tags) including including keywords and XMP tags so you’re never locked into a company’s proprietary approach.
IMatch adapts to your particular workflow. It works with a variety of RAW processor programs including PhotoLab, Lightroom, etc. There’s much more information about the program on the IMatch website. IMatch is a digital asset management program, not a RAW processor (that’s why I use PhotoLab).
I’m using Mylio and couldn’t be happier. Excellent features for organizing my photos, including face recognition. And syncs to all my devices, both computers, tablets and phones, via the local network instead of storing images in the cloud. Finally, really responsive support.
I highly recommend Photo Supreme too. Been using it for 5 years with few problems after evaluating most other DAMs out there. Compliant with XML standards, under active development, helpful user forum, and free trial available: https://www.idimager.com/
Regarding other software mentioned, ACDSee and Zoner have cataloging functions but aren’t full DAMs. iMatch is reportedly good, but there was a huge gap between releasing version 3.6 (May 2007) and the next version (version 5, June 2014); there have been additional releases since, but I’d be cautious. digiKam seemed fairly functional on Linux, but wasn’t entirely stable on Windows - it may have improved since. Daminion is another name to know - someone I know uses it, but I don’t find as usable as Photo Supreme.
IMatch is under continuous development. See the online Release Notes for a history: https://www.photools.com/release-notes/
Great DXO Tutorial btw. Still need to try XnviewMP but not sure if its cataloging features are sufficient.
Photo Supreme did look really good. I noticed it had a placeholder for dxo integration. Do you know if they have sales sometimes? I also did really like ACDSee, but are there really more DAM features in Photo Supreme? Tried Digikam but wasn’t horribly successful importing the photos and it was way slower than the other tools plus the windows UI is not the sharpest.
Overall, I tried a lot of tools and they all seemed to have comparable features so far. Doesn’t seem to be much of a gap these days.
Will keep looking at sales for either Photo Supreme or ACDSee… They definitely felt snappier than the old LR. From another thread, I know I can fix my color issue by using TIFF instead of DNG files which will work for now.
[quote=“caderik, post:16, topic:8876”]
Photo Supreme did look really good. I noticed it had a placeholder for dxo integration.[/quote]
You can add buttons to open any image using any program.
Be aware that sales are mostly there to bring in new users (often just before new versions come out, so you have to pay to upgrade soon after). If cost is a major concern then look at upgrade costs & frequency and work out the cost over 5 or 6 years.
ACDSee have a sale on right now but I would recommend taking advantage of the full length of the free trial before buying (by which time the sale will have ended).
Photo Supreme is never on sale - at least I’ve never seen one.
Daminion Standalone used to be free-to-use until you reached 15,000 images - that may still be the case.
Yes. ACDSee is primarily a DxO competitor that can do basic cataloging (a path which DxO is now starting to follow). If you look at their website and videos the DAM features are only briefly mentioned, and I would imagine that most of their future development money will be spent on photo editing features, rather than on cataloging, as I hope will be the case in DxO.
IMHO there are only 3/4 ‘serious’ DAMs in the consumer-affordable market - iMatch, Photo Supreme and Daminion Standalone (+ digiKam on Linux), so I’d suggest focusing your efforts there. They do share many features, but - as in any software - the feature list only gets you to the staring point, along with your confidence in the company, support, cost, etc. After that it’s ease of use (for cataloging, retrieving and related tasks) that should guide your decision - particularly if you take lots of photos and you’re going to be spending a lot of time with the software. In all cases, make full use of the trial period before purchasing.
Adobe Bridge CC. Free for everybody, just need to have or create Adobe ID. You set DxO software as default. Transfers star ratings if you leave folder in Bridge before you open folder in DxO. Currently free, perpetual and updated, Adobe willing.
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.
XnViewMP is able to import your Lr or C1 keywords libraries (it respects hierarchy as well), plays well with star-rating, gps info and colour labels. It also supports boolean operators. That might be enough for some people.
darktable is probably the closest thing to Lr and ACDSee Ultimate. Its DAM (lighttable) module is pretty competent.
Absolutely !
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.
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.
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:
I personally use the first option.
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
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.