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Having stepped away from photography for pretty much the last 18 months I'm now recharged and getting reengaged. There has been a bit of an evolution in cameras and editing software so I've decided to review all aspects.  I've already made a few broad brush decisions like I'll stay with Canon gear but I did pick up an R6 and at least for the near future I'll use my EF lenses rather than buy the newer RF versions.  I've also elected to continue with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop but I'm open to suggestions.  I had been using a two step initial review and culling process although I'm not sure why anymore.  I historically had initially reviewed the images in DPP and made the first culling and then moved onto Bridge where I would review and cull additional images and then select those I was going to process and move through ACR to Photoshop.  Now for those of you that have used DPP you'll probably have run into stability and pace of processing issues which is why I'm thinking of eliminating it from the workflow.  So the first question for Photoshop users is do you simply rely on Bridge as your Browser for review and culling or do you use something else like Breeze Browser?  Second question is re DXO ... do you like it, effectiveness, ease of use etc.    Thanks in advance.

Hi Malcom,
I use Photo Mechanic Plus to cull my photos. It is a powerful program. I do my keywording, rating, rename of my photos before I go to Photoshop or Lightroom. After editing, PS or LR will send them back to PM+. I like the keywording better than Lightroom. You can organize your photos into collections. Their customer service is really good. They get back to you in a fairly short time. They do this via their support forum. Check it out.

I got fed up with Adobe last year and stopped using LR and Photoshop. I now use Photo Mechanic for initial culling renaming etc and Capture One for most of my processing. 

Hi,

I use ON1 Photo RAW and Photoshop Elements14, along with Topaz DeNoise AI.

Have Fun,
Jeff

Capture one is a really good Raw converter, much cleaner and better colors than Adobe if you compare...
My computer developed a bug and Photoshop stopped working and Adobe cannot fix it so I got Affinity Photo for $24 which does a lot of nice stuff, has Denoise about like Topaz, is Photoshop light for a ridiculous price.
I use other software for stacking which is much better than Adobe..
There is a lot of options, there is a lot of great software out there once you get off the Adobe train. I was forced to, it takes some work but the end result is a better understanding of software in general.

I have been a long time user of Photo Mechanic to quickly enter keywords, star and colour tags and to cull.  It automatically selects the next image which is a huge time saver, colour tags can be changed to reflect the RAW editor.  Just check some of the tutorial videos to get an idea of its power.
I then use Capture One Pro for my editing and then Affinity Photo if I need to combine images etc.

Dan Kearl wrote:Capture one is a really good Raw converter, much cleaner and better colors than Adobe if you compare...
My computer developed a bug and Photoshop stopped working and Adobe cannot fix it so I got Affinity Photo for $24 which does a lot of nice stuff, has Denoise about like Topaz, is Photoshop light for a ridiculous price.
I use other software for stacking which is much better than Adobe..
There is a lot of options, there is a lot of great software out there once you get off the Adobe train. I was forced to, it takes some work but the end result is a better understanding of software in general.

Absolutely agree to get off the Adobe train. I use the same work flow as Dan above and love it.

To the OP's question, Photo Mechanic is my gold standard, it is excellent.

I used to use Photo Mechanic to ingest, and a first cull, then into Capture One for the final edit and cataloguing. I use the catalogue feature of Capture One instead of Sessions, and I found the duplication of PM and C1 to slow down my workflow(ingest with PM, then import with C1). In the end, I decided to use Capture One for everything. I use PM when I upload images using FTP, but that's if primary usage now. If I do a shoot with a low percentage of keepers, then I'd use PM.

Yup, I use C1 also - especially good to compare many similar images to see which one is sharpest.

Check out FastRawViewer. Does most everything Photo Mechanic does but at a fraction of the price. I've been very happy with it.

Peter Post

P.W.Post wrote:Check out FastRawViewer. Does most everything Photo Mechanic does but at a fraction of the price. I've been very happy with it.

Peter Post

I also use FastRawViewer as it is extremely fast at displaying images also cheap.  I don't use it for RAW converting, use C-1 but if I need to find an image in a hurry it is the fastest to display images on your hd. 

A massive advantage to C1 goes along with EJ's comment. In C1 you can line up rows and rows of images, magnify to 100% on the eye of a bird and tell in an instant, the sharpest one. Delete the others and move on. It is one of the main reasons I use it. I know of no other program that allows so many images to be displayed magnified, most give you a candidate image and then a comparison image. Plus C1 raw conversions are excellent.

Thank you to everyone that commented and made recommendations. I'll be spending the next little while having a look at Photo Mechanic, Capture 1 and FastRawViewer and I've heard some good things about DXO so that's on the list as well. Thanks again.