# Poll for popular supplemental LR packages?



## dbooksta (Sep 25, 2014)

I know not everything can practically be done in LR, so I'm curious to learn what image processing software experienced LR users use in addition to LR.  But I don't even have a good idea of what the options are.

E.g., packages I've seen mentioned (PS not even worth mentioning since it seems almost universal):

GIMP
Hugin Panorama Stitcher
Portrait Professional
DxO Optics Pro
Zerene Stacker
Helicon (various packages)

Could a forum guru post such a poll?


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## chris02 (Sep 25, 2014)

The only ones I use are Nik suite, also tried DxO but gave up as there was nothing I could not don in LR.


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## MarkNicholas (Sep 26, 2014)

None. I use only LR. If I cant do it in LR then I don't do it !


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## Jimmsp (Sep 26, 2014)

If I stay within LR, I use a few of the Topaz plugins, generally DeNoise for noise reduction of very high ISO shots, and Detail for creative sharpening.
I will use others if I move a file to PS Elements for editing in layers.


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## sgs8r (Sep 26, 2014)

I recently started using Photo Mechanic and it has been the biggest breakthrough in my workflow since I started using Lightroom (back during the initial betas). I shoot a lot of sports where it is common to come back with 2k+ images from a single day. I love Lightroom, but plowing through that many images to do the initial ranking took forever ("Loading..."). With PM I can move back and forth through the images as fast as I can scroll the wheel on my mouse. This has dramatically sped things up, particularly when trying to choose the best among a group of similar images. I generally make two passes in PM---giving one star to good images, then a second pass adding another star to the best of those. Then I import into LR to do further processing. Highly recommended.

I have a number of other packages (NIK, Portrait Professional, NeatImage, as well as Photoshop), but (after PM) I do about 95% of my work in LR, 4.5% in PS, and only about 0.5% in everything else. Lightroom has gotten so good that if I need a lot of other tools, then the image usually wasn't that good to start with and hasn't made the cut for final processing.


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## Colophoto (Sep 27, 2014)

The majority of my photo work is successfully accomplished in non augmented LR (5.6).  I use Topaz Detail 2 for creative sharpening in most images that I print.  I have been a practitioner of HDR for some time, mostly using Photomatix Pro and more recently Merge to 32 bit HDR and LR/Enfuse.

Richard


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## phcorrigan (Oct 1, 2014)

I use the NIK collection, mostly Silver Efex Pro.


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## GDRoth (Oct 2, 2014)

I also use only LR 5.6 and NIKs Silver Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro................also use Dfine 2 for noise when necessary


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## dbooksta (Oct 6, 2014)

Good info; I wasn't even aware of half of these packages.

Tough to fit this into the 10-item max for polls.  I took those mentioned so far and created a poll with them as options.

For the collections wish we could expand to see which components are most useful....


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## phcorrigan (Oct 6, 2014)

phcorrigan said:


> I use the NIK collection, mostly Silver Efex Pro.


I should have mentioned that I also use Photoshop.


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## davidedric (Oct 6, 2014)

Mostly Nik (silver efex  and viveza).    In theory PSE but the better Lightroom gets, the less often I use PSE.


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## SMP (Oct 10, 2014)

I have Perfect Effects 8 as a plug in to Lr but other than that nothing. I am wondering whether to get PSE v13 when it becomes available on the Mac app store as I believe it will not have the organiser which I do not need when I have Lr.


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## JDGriff (Oct 11, 2014)

I'm using LR5.6 for most of my work, then PSE v12, the NIK Collection, and Perfect Photo Suite 8.


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## Denis de Gannes (Oct 11, 2014)

Lightroom is my main application for processing my raw files, I also use PS CS6, Qimage, C1 Express and Olympus Viewer 3.


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