PhilHurd

Just downloaded Exposure X3 trial. It only sends a TIFF to an external editor, takes around 5x longer to load a file into an external editor than Lightroom, not for me!

I do like Lightroom but I have no need of its processing functionality, I just need the library, which is great. I have Lightroom desktop/classic whatever its called and i have not "upgraded" to a subscription version, nor will I and that's my big beef. I also have an issue with Adobe littering my MAC with Creative Cloud files, which I don't need, it all seems a bit 'Big Brother' to me.

Its quite refreshing to find someone who thinks as I do and is objective about various software. There are too may 'moaner-groaners' on some forums that just want to criticise and are not willing to think what they want from an App. I agree with your view on Apple Photos, I've never really liked Photos and its organisation isn't really on a par with Lightroom. I too have suffered issues with Photos and you don't need to be on the Cloud for the software to corrupt your images (thank goodness for backups!) I've just been looking at Exposure X3, https://www.alienskin.com/exposure/ which looks very promising unfortunately it looks as if you can only send a TIFF to an external editor rather than the original RAW file!

Interesting. I have to say that I used Aperture for quite some time and only bought Lightroom when Apple withdrew support. I'm still not sure it was a wise decision but there we are!

I agree with most of what you say, though I have no need of the Cloud or Lightroom's processing functionality, apart from the occasional crop that is. MacPhun (SkyLum) would indeed have to build an excellent DAM to compete with Lightroom. I see a lot of posts on Social Media about DAMs and many users seem to use Apple Photos, which to me is a pretty dire bit of software. I like the ability to send my original RAW files (not TIFFs) to Luminar/Aurora HDR (and back), publish direct to Flickr and the like and drag & drop images into a hierarchical Collections structure. I also appreciate that Lightroom doesn't litter my hard drive with XMP files as lots of other library apps do. The only thing that used to bug me about Lightroom was not being able to make the Library Panes wider, that is until I discovered this man . . . . http://regex.info/blog/2007-03-13/395

I bought Affinity Photo partly because of it being a Photoshop replacement but also because they were originally talking of developing a DAM. However I find Affinity does not suit me and I prefer Luminar from MacPhun (now SkyLum). MacPhun had also promised a DAM in their previous version (and didn't deliver!). So I use Lightroom as a DAM (only) as I much prefer Luminar (and Aurora HDR) as my processing tools. Lightroom is an excellent DAM but not so good for image processing and though there are other Library/DAM apps in the market, they cannot match Lightroom in my opinion. My issue is the Adobe business model and I will not sign up to a subscription service, so if the current desktop version of Lightroom ceases to be supported, I will be left high and dry. MacPhun are now stating publicly that they will deliver a DAM for Luminar during 2018 and if it is nearly as good as Lightroom I will jump ship. If, in the meantime Affinity developed a DAM I would look at that as a serious alternative but I fear they are way behind the curve and that will loose them a lot of custom to MacPhun. Finally it is worth noting that although people bandy the acronym DAM about a lot, very few actually specify what they want from such a system. I have tried most of the digital asset management systems on the market and I have to say that none can match my requirements. Lightroom's library features (including the use of publish and export plugins) are excellent.

What would be really handy, until you bring out your own library/DAM module, would be able to 'pass 3 images (or possibly more) through to HDR Merge. I'm currently using Capture One and although I can pass 3 images through to Affinity for editing, I can't pass them into HDR Merge, unless I'm doing something stupid! Affinity HDR Merge requires that I open 3 files on the hard drive, which is a bit of a pain.