since Adobe switched to a rental model for their software one of the most
popular questions I'm asked is what's a good alternative today I'm looking at
the exposure x5 photo manager to see if it's a suitable replacement for the
Lightroom library module but before a jump in to try to answer this question
there's an important point I want to emphasize everyone has different
requirements for their software what I might consider an essential feature you
might think is unimportant because of this I'm going to start by listing the
Lightroom features that are important to me these are the first importing of
images to the Lightroom catalog I don't want to have to wait four hours for
thumbnails to render I also want to perform batch renaming of images which I
tend to do as part of the import process after importing my images I want to be
able to browse them easily as well as manage their locations assigning
keywords to images is important to help me search for images in the future as
well as embedding them in submissions I make two photo libraries another feature
I used to search for images add the filtering options in Lightroom the most
important of these are the flags star ratings and color labels sometimes I
also find it useful to sort my images based on their metadata for example I
might want to find an image based on the lens I use or the camera I've used
I also sometimes use Lightroom's image stacking to group related image files
together and finally the collections in Lightroom are very important to my
system of organization as I said earlier you may have a different set of needs
but these are the most important to me now let's see if exposure x5 can meet my
requirements the first thing worth noticing is that exposure x5 doesn't use
a catalog system like Lightroom and many of the Lightroom alternatives instead
you can simply browse through the folder structure on your hard drive as you
browse exposure renders a thumbnail preview of any image or raw file it
finds the first time the previews render can take a little time but it's at least
as fast as the Lightroom import if not faster once the preview thumbnails have
rendered for a folder there quickly displayed when you visit the folder
again in the future this gives the software a good
responsive feel that says least it's good if not better than Lightroom but
where exposure x5 comes out well ahead of Lightroom for me it's that it doesn't
use a catalog to track the images because of this you're free to move and
rename files outside of exposure unlike with Lightroom with Lightroom once
you've added an image to the catalog you can only move or rename it using
Lightroom if you don't Lightroom loses track of the files and they become lost
whilst I know how to manage this I still lose files from time to time and I know
a lot of people who find it very frustrating with exposure you don't have
this issue it also means that if you edit and save an image using another
software package exposure automatically picks up the new files with Lightroom
you must select to synchronize the folders to add the new images now let's
look at file renaming this is something I do when I first import my images to
Lightroom I like to keep the original file neck but then prefix it with my
name the camera are used and the yeren month I shot the image whilst I don't
need to import my images to expose your x5 I still need to copy them from
memory cards to the hard disk storage I could do this manually but exposure x5
has a copy photos from card feature to help me this has some similar options to
Lightroom's import function including file renaming
checking the options I can see that it easily supports my naming convention and
has a lot of flexibility
I can also access the feature for images that are already on
my hard drive or I can select and rename individual images
let's now look at my key wording requirements this is one of Lightroom's
strengths but lightroom also has a loss of complexity that can make it difficult
to use in exposure x5 you can add keywords to images although the
functionality is more limited than in Lightroom that said it's probably more
than enough for most users if I select an image I can manage its keywords in
the metadata panel as well as adjusting of a metadata for example I can add my
copyright details to the image which I can then save as a preset I can then
apply my preset to other images or I can apply it to every image when I'm copying
them from my memory card exposure x5 feels very much like Lightroom in this
respect looking at the actual keywords I can apply new ones by entering them
directly to the keyword field as I type exposure displays possible matching
keywords allowing me to select them with the mouse
I can also speed up the process by using the keyword library feature here
there's a recent section which displays the keywords I've recently used if I
want to apply one of these to an image and just click the keyword to add I can
then see the assigned keywords as well as remove them by clicking them the all
option in the library allows me to view all the keywords but possibly more
useful is the sets option here I can create name groups of keywords that
might relate to each other in some way this makes it easy to select and apply
the keywords I want to use I find this much easier to use than the key wording
features in Lightroom even though I've been using them in Lightroom for years
let's look now at the options for filtering and sorting images one feature
I use quite a lot in Lightroom is to create image stacks this groups together
related images so that I can collapse the stack and only see the top image in
that stack this makes browsing through sets of images much easier unfortunately
exposure x5 doesn't currently have a comparable feature
it does though support the other image tagging options I use which are Flags
star ratings and Colour labels using the icons along the bottom of the
interface I can then filter the thumbnails grid to only display the
images matching my criteria
I can also filter the images based on my keywords using the keyword library
another feature of Lightroom that I use from time to time is to change the sort
order of the images again exposure has similar features to Lightroom which
makes it very easy to find the files I need
the final feature I want to look at our collections light Lightroom exposure x5
supports both collections and smart collections a collection is just a way
to group together images you think are related but which might not be in the
same location on your hard drive here you can see I've already created a
landscape gallery collection from some of my favorite landscape shots I can
easily add new collections for example a coastal gallery and then I can move some
of my images to that collection
I'll then remove those images from my landscape gallery so that the only
existing one
if I want to add an image to a collect from any of my folders I can right-click
the image and select the collection to add it to
then there's the smart collections these dynamically select all the images that
match one of the criteria I defined once you created a smart collection is
populated automatically with any image that matches your criteria as a
Lightroom user this all feels very familiar to me
overall exposure x5 certainly meets most of my criteria and
I think it's a viable alternative to Lightroom it isn't perfect but it's
usable and its responsive if you're looking for a Lightroom alternative to
use for managing your images this is certainly one of the best and well worth
evaluating I've also produced a written comparison on my website and I'll
include the link to the video information below if you have a
different alternative to Lightroom please let me know in the comments below
as I'd like to do more of these comparisons in the future also don't
forget to share this video with anyone who might be looking for an alternative
to Lightroom I hope you've enjoyed this review I'm Robin Whalley
you've been watching lenscraft I'll see you soon for another video