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Fast Raw Previewer for culling

Ferguson Ferguson

Is from: Fort Myers, US
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Ferguson Team Member Fellow Ribbon awarded for the generous sharing of his high level expertise in the spirit of ... Nikonian since 19th Aug 2004
Tue 19-Jan-16 02:06 PM | edited Tue 19-Jan-16 02:50 PM by Ferguson
This came up in another thread, but perhaps deserves more input.

I love Lightroom, but it is horribly slow for initial ingestion and previews if you are culling. I typically delete 90-95% of my shots, keeping only a few. I find it much faster to do that culling outside of lightroom and only import what I will keep.

I have been using Nikon ViewNX2, but it was replaced with ViewNX-I, which at least for me is a buggy mess. Want to pull the plug on Nikon software.

My primary goal is speed of review -- moving from one full screen preview to the next very quickly, moving back and forth through short bursts to pick the best position/focus/etc.

Here's what I have looked at so far and what I've found:

Photo Mechanic - nearly perfect, previews switch instantly, as fast or faster than Nikon ViewNX*. Tons of features and tools. Expensive ($150). Some reports of license issues (versions that quick working and can't get help timely) but by and large most users seem to love it.

Fast Picture Viewer (I tried their Alpha 2.0). As fast as photo mechanic, though I hate their interface, if it has options I couldn't even find them in the menu, no filmstrip or thumbnails I could find. But very, very fast. Cheaper ($50).

FastStone Image Viewer - very, very nice interface. Free. Lots of features. Free. But it's slow. About half a second between D4 images on my system (showing preview only). That's just too slow. It sounds fast, but when you are paging back and forth or flipping through long series of boring shots it is just too slow. (Postscript edit: I noticed this is 32 bits only, no 64 bit version).

Bridge - way too slow. Nicely multi-threaded, but it insists on showing a rendered photo not the embedded preview only, making it always showing a changing, morphing screen as you page through.

Fast Raw Viewer - slow. Quite slow. Only looks fast compared to Lightroom or Bridge.

IrFanFiew - I've used it for many years, very fast, very easy; free. Can't tag images as best I can tell, so not eligible.

Am I missing any? Am I missing anything on the comments?

At present I think it comes down to Photo Mechanic. But I keep hoping for a nice fast, free/cheap replacement.

Oh... on a related note -- what happens to these (for example Photo Mechanic) when a new camera comes out. Do they keep working because they use the preview? Or do they need an update?


Linwood

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