XnV vs. Lightroom

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Geos
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XnV vs. Lightroom

Post by Geos »

I want to go totally Adobe-free. I've removed PS but still hanging on to Lightroom because of its robust print handling and cataloguing features. In particular I will be doing a lot of B&W printing. Can someone compare XnV and LR on those features? Thanks.
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m.Th.
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Re: XnV vs. Lightroom

Post by m.Th. »

Hmmm....
Well, I can say something on the theme:

1. Print handling - well, it depends. Both have a plethora of options which IMHO are seldom needed. XnView MP starts with a small window (it should be maximized IMHO) but it provides a much more cleaner interface if you want to print metadata / captions etc. Lr is a behemoth in this regard.

2. Cataloging - XnView MP is much, much better here. Much more features - only some of them are present in Lr - and the ones which are present are better implemented. For example you can add shortcuts to keywords/tags (which is a big timesaver), you have a better keyword search, your sets can have more than 9 items, you have much better catalog management, generally speaking. Besides this, a killer for Lr is its speed (or lack of it thereof) - XnView is much faster, much more scalable. Perhaps you should know that in XnView MP you cannot have instant filters on EXIF fields (we never needed them) and, on the bright side, you do not need to import files. Import is done on-the-fly.

There are, of course, things to be improved in XnView MP (hint, hint Pierre :) ) but these are outside of this discussion.

Tl;dr: If you need powerful cataloging and 'normal' printing you can safely go with XnView MP. Lr is for small (and I mean SMALL) cataloging and non-destructive (Raw) editing.

A general note: XnView MP handles much better/faster large(r) batches for screen, convert & printer.

just my2c & HTH :)
m. Th.

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m.Th.
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Re: XnV vs. Lightroom

Post by m.Th. »

Also there are these ones: (!)

https://petapixel.com/2017/12/19/adobe- ... lightroom/

https://www.dpreview.com/news/552593827 ... -lightroom

Obligatory read the comments and have a Merry Christmas! :D
m. Th.

- Dark Themed XnViewMP 1.6 64bit on Win11 x64 -
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