Macphun Showcases Their Digital Asset Manager in Response to Adobe

[Canon Rumors]

There seems to be a lot of mixed feelings about Adobe Lightroom CC Cloud and Adobe Lightroom Classic CC, as well as the long standing and polarizing subscription based model for most of Adobe’s software.

We’re not here to give our opinion on all of this, we’re going to see how things play out with Macphun’s future software.

Macphun had this to say:

After the recent Adobe news about Lightroom updates, we received a lot of questions about our plans for creating a photo manager, so we’d like to shed some light on this.

At the moment we’re working on the digital asset manager (“DAM”) which will work with both hard drives and cloud storage platforms. It’s going to be the perfect tool for organizing and managing images. Users will be able to run our DAM alongside their LR library and choose which one fits them best.

The new DAM will be added to Luminar in 2018, and will be a free update to everyone who owns Luminar 2018 after it is release. We’ll be sharing more details soon, so keep an eye out for them!

Macphun is asking: What do you plan on doing after the Adobe announcement?

[Famateur]

As an amateur that, in the last five years has spent a total of about $150 on two versions of Lightroom, I'm disappointed that Adobe has decided to discontinue perpetual license for future versions. The upside of that is I can probably get by for the next few years on Lightroom 6 as it currently supports the camera(s) I'm saving up for.

In the meantime, I'll be cheering on MacPhun, Affinity and others to produce some worthy competition to Lightroom. When one comes along (with a perpetual license) that can replace the workflow and results I achieve with Lightroom, I'll switch (unless Adobe brings back the perpetual license). If they can do it along with the ability to import my Lightroom catalog (or at least XMP sidecars) with edits intact, I'll be doing the happy dance!

[snappy604]

I finally got a good grasp of lightroom and they pull that subscription crud. Definitely looking at alternatives... but so far haven't seen a clear leader with similar functions. Probably continue with LR6 until my camera isn't supported anymore.

Couldn't care less about the tagging/database.. I constantly wipe it.. but the rest of the features, damn useful.

[LesC]

I currently subscribe to Adobe's photography plan but once Macphun's Luminar is available for PC & has a DAM, I'll give it a try.

If as many suspect Adobe plans to discontinue LR Classic to focus on phone-snappers, I like many others will have to look elsewhere.

[dak723]

Never used Lightroom.  Use a combination of Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements w/ Nik Collection, and Macphun's Beta version of Luminar.  As an enthusiast (and not a working pro) would never go with a subscription product.

[pwp]

Whatever happened to CameraBits (of PhotoMechanic fame) long awaited DAM software? I can only assume the project has been quietly shelved.

Pity, I would have assumed that CameraBits would have done this really well. Oh well...

-pw

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I see nothing they offer that even remotely competes with the new lightroom cc.  Being able to edit raw images on various platforms is a potentially useful feature.

I may only add new photos to the cloud version while away from my main computer, and remove them after they transfer to my NAS later, but it is another option that seems fairly easy to do.  I do need to figure out a work flow that can do this, perhaps a 3rd party will automate the task.

[-pekr-]

Luminar might be more popular, but right now, the biggest competition to LR, is the on1 Photo RAW. Exposure X3 is a nice app too, having DAM for quite some time. I would never use a product without a Browse. My bet is, that Topaz Studio will add one too :-)

[LDS]

Never used Lightroom.  Use a combination of Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements w/ Nik Collection, and Macphun's Beta version of Luminar.  As an enthusiast (and not a working pro) would never go with a subscription product.

The idea behind LR was exactly to avoid the need of using multiple applications for each task, the design was around an end-to-end, workflow-based solution from importing photos, cataloguing them, processing and output (web or prints).

[BasXcanon]

Has anyone here experience with editing 5Dm4 raw files on the Galaxy Note 8 in the new lightroom?

[luissales]

I have the Photographer Subscription with Adobe, using Lightroom and Photoshop. I honestly don't see myself using anything else in the near future. The "new" Lightroom is just another option for those that find it useful. I'll stick to the "classical" Lightroom. If Macphun is bringing a new DAM, that's great! More choices for people and more competition which means software will keep improving. I see it as a win-win for everyone.

[JonAustin]

Luminar might be more popular, but right now, the biggest competition to LR, is the on1 Photo RAW. Exposure X3 is a nice app too, having DAM for quite some time. I would never use a product without a Browse. My bet is, that Topaz Studio will add one too :-)

I'm still on Lr 5.7, but have been using ON1's tools for a while now, and would seriously consider switching over if / when my current version of Lr no longer meets my needs.

I'm also keeping my eye on Macphun Luminar (although their feedback link for the current beta is perpetually broken) and Affinity Photo.

[JonAustin]

The idea behind LR was exactly to avoid the need of using multiple applications for each task, the design was around an end-to-end, workflow-based solution from importing photos, cataloguing them, processing and output (web or prints).

And yet, Lr doesn't avoid that need for multiple apps for many users. Hence, the myriad plug-ins available for it. Sure, those plug-ins are called from within the Lr interface, but (at least) some of them require that a second copy of the image be created for the plug-in to work on, rather than writing those changes into the Lr database.

[JonAustin]

The Macphun survey needs a fourth response category: "I'm sticking with a pre-subscription version of Lightroom." Unless by "Classic" in the first response, they mean the perpetual license version of v6. Chalk one more bit of confusion up to the Adobe nomenclature.

[Hornet]

I also resent being forced into a subscription model, which is costing me much more over time. The problem is that none of the other options provide a single package that matches LR's features. Yet! This is a great opening for Macphun and others to up their games and poach a lot of unhappy Adobe customers.