Software Lightroom CC Slow and buggy.What alternative?

Location
London UK
Name
Andy
I have been using LR since day 1 and love it to bits. It's such a great tool for image retouching with loads of great tools. The last 2 updates have made my LR slow and buggy. I'm getting a bit fed up with it so thought about alternatives. As part of my Job I managed to get DXO 10 Pro and thought I would give it a go. More on that later...

I have been using M4/3 for about 8years with a short break a few years ago, and have loved the compactness of the system and good IQ. I have also had canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji and Sigmas so I know how M4/3 stacks up against it's competitors. For most of what I do M4/3 has been fine but I have always not been totally happy with the IQ.

As LR was giving me problems I scouted round the net to look for alternatives and the results were that LR was indeed not too great for Image quality or how it shows the image. The best 2 were DXO Pro and just beating DXO was Capture 1 Pro. As I had DXO I thought I would go through my images and see how DXO renders my M4/3 images and it does a better job I must say. LR does an OK job with APS-C but not a great job with M4/3. This maybe why I'm never totally happy with M4/3 image output so below is an image made from DXO on the left and LR on the right. Same olympus e-m1 RAW image with no processing at all. To me the DXO image is better, more clean, clear with brighter, punchy colours.

What do you guy's think?

DXO on left & LR on the Right.
View attachment 115395LR_DXOtest by Andrew West, on Flickr
 
Last edited:
As said, I have DXO 10 Pro and I think I will use it instead of LR for the initial Raw edit.

I also downloaded the trial of Capture One 9 which renders the files the best but it has a very weird way of importing and displaying the preview files. Plus it's nearly £200 eeek!

Here is a capture One 9 image the same as above.
View attachment 1153992048pixCap1Test by Andrew West, on Flickr
 
Couple of questions:

1) As the original raw file's always going to be flat & boring ready for you to spruce up, isn't it the case that you can get the image on the either side to look like the other with the appropriate edits?; and
2) Have you tried the same edits using PS? Yes, I know it uses the same engine as LR etc but still, have you tried it.

I'm happy to get CP1 if it makes the substantial difference from LR. The trouble is, as an existing LR/PS user, I'm always thinking I could get a new lens instead of CP1!
 
Couple of questions:

1) As the original raw file's always going to be flat & boring ready for you to spruce up, isn't it the case that you can get the image on the either side to look like the other with the appropriate edits?; and
2) Have you tried the same edits using PS? Yes, I know it uses the same engine as LR etc but still, have you tried it.

I'm happy to get CP1 if it makes the substantial difference from LR. The trouble is, as an existing LR/PS user, I'm always thinking I could get a new lens instead of CP1!

After some more fiddling I have found that CP1 and probably DXO do some of the work to the original raw file, or at least it seems that way. I think LR just gives you a 'real' RAW file rather than a pre edited version. Anyhoo the upshot is that the difference is minute so I'm going to keep on with LR. I have created a preset that gets me to a good starting point.

I will try just PS and see if that makes any difference.

EDIT:

I have tried PS ACR and the results are identical as LR so may aswell stick with LR :)

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Every time when I try something else, I end up concluding that is not worth switching. With some import presets you can indeed do a lot. Foliage is the area where LR is really behind others. For most PP work I like the speed of LR-processing. Only when I really want to get max quality, I use other software, depending on the look I want to create.

BTW: performance (especially in generating the small previews) has improved with the latest release of LR CC. It also helps to use the latest hardware, I guess.
 
That's weird. I noticed quite a good performance improvement. I'm running with about 60,000 images in the catalog. Could be a system/hardware configuration issue. Might be worth looking into.
I wouldn't know how! :D

Since comparing LR with CP1 and DXO i actually find LR renders quicker than the others so perhaps it used to be lightning quick but now is just quick? :D :D
 
I wouldn't know how! :D

Since comparing LR with CP1 and DXO i actually find LR renders quicker than the others so perhaps it used to be lightning quick but now is just quick? :D :D

I noticed some issues with the Open GL option being on, so turned that off. I'd check things like the cache size just to make sure you've enough memory and scratch area to work with.
 
I prefer DxO's rendering, but it's not a DAM and has zero (or near zero) local adjustment options. So I use both - DxO for most processing, Lightroom for managing and simple retouching and PS for full-on NIK suite editing (or just NIK plugins form LR for smaller adjustments). DxO is not a fast processor though.

Horses for courses. There are tutorials on how to integrate DxO (which is having a 5 percent off sale) into a LR workflow as an external RAW converter.
 
I had a DXO trial that I really liked, I thought it brought a lot more detail than LR but I like the catalogue in LR. I just got my iMac back after a graphics card/hard drive fail so I'm about to start loading stuff back on from my back up drive and trying to decide exactly what to add back! El Capitan messed up LR6 badly and I had to uninstall and go back to LR5 but I had my iMac configured back to Yosemite so could restart my LR6 again or use DXO. I never got on with Capture one.
 
I had a DXO trial that I really liked, I thought it brought a lot more detail than LR but I like the catalogue in LR. I just got my iMac back after a graphics card/hard drive fail so I'm about to start loading stuff back on from my back up drive and trying to decide exactly what to add back! El Capitan messed up LR6 badly and I had to uninstall and go back to LR5 but I had my iMac configured back to Yosemite so could restart my LR6 again or use DXO. I never got on with Capture one.

REally? You had problems with El Cap? I hate it for all kinds of reasons, but my LR6.3 works fine with it (albeit a tad slow on my 2010 base mini with 16GB... I need to get an SSD in there.) I simply updated to El Cap without a clean install (just couldnt be bothered) and its working fine.

I've never been attracted too much to DXO (I have 8 but never use it).. I guess I like the catalog of LR as well. I simply cannot abide the new Photos.app, I've been trying to like it for a month but its just nasty.

I'm pretty much using LR and On1 9 and 10, and Elements 13 (not for much, this) plus a shedload of plugins.
 
I had a DXO trial that I really liked, I thought it brought a lot more detail than LR but I like the catalogue in LR. I just got my iMac back after a graphics card/hard drive fail so I'm about to start loading stuff back on from my back up drive and trying to decide exactly what to add back! El Capitan messed up LR6 badly and I had to uninstall and go back to LR5 but I had my iMac configured back to Yosemite so could restart my LR6 again or use DXO. I never got on with Capture one.
I had a DXO trial that I really liked, I thought it brought a lot more detail than LR but I like the catalogue in LR. I just got my iMac back after a graphics card/hard drive fail so I'm about to start loading stuff back on from my back up drive and trying to decide exactly what to add back! El Capitan messed up LR6 badly and I had to uninstall and go back to LR5 but I had my iMac configured back to Yosemite so could restart my LR6 again or use DXO. I never got on with Capture one.[/QUOTE

Downloaded the DXO trial and had a play for an hour. Bought it. Took to it right away. Seems to automatically deliver nicer results than LR does.
At least for me anyway. Looks like I might not be spending so much time in front of my iMac fettling images ! Nice one Christina.
 
I had them reset my iMac with Yosemite when it was returned but unfortunately my daughter set it up to restore from the back up drive and it merrily restored El Capitan for me :( I know I could go backwards again but it seems too fiddly to do. In any case the earlier version of LR seems to work with it for now. The latest version just didn't work at all, didn't show the previews, wouldn't let me click on anything..... it was totally unusable. Looking at my storage space, I still only have 43 gb of storage left..... something's going to give at some point!
 
Back
Top