Alternatives to PhotoMechanic

I'm looking for suggestions for software programs that would allow me to cull and rate photos before I import them into Lightroom CC classic. I installed photo mechanic but it told me my free trial had expired, although I do not remember ever installing it, and if I did, I certainly never used it! I'm not paying $150 to find out if Photo Mechanic would work for me. So I'd like to hear what your "front end" culling software maybe if you use Lightroom, or what your process is, in general, to walk thru several hundred if not a couple thousand images before going to post-processing.

FastRawViewer

Faststone Image Viewer

rrblint wrote in post #18738127
Faststone Image Viewer

The Capture & resized programs look pretty interesting, too.
Thanks for sharing.

rrblint wrote in post #18738127
Faststone Image Viewer

+1!

It’s worth the $150. All of these others are just cheap imitations. PM works good for photographers and simple.

It is difficult to beat free, if all you want is culling.

However, I am not quite sure why the OP don't just use Lightroom for DAM and culling? With many pictures I cull them by going through them in several passes - filtering everything out from the last pass. First pass: kick out everything off the charts (not in focus or otherwise flawed). Second pass: give one star for anything that is worth having a second look. Third pass: give two stars for keepers and three stars for clear winners. Higher stars are reserved for after processing. By doing this, I can focus on one thing only and are much faster and more consistent then making all the decision for every single picture.

What camera system do you use?

Have you tried Embedded & Sidecar for LR imports? Adobe's answer to avoiding the need for 3rd party culling software.

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #18738147
The Capture & resized programs look pretty interesting, too.
Thanks for sharing.

Purchased "Capture" and use it quite often, along with the image viewer.

Also use Fast Raw Viewer and it maybe a tad faster than faststone ... lots of features.

Link for capture?

NoLight wrote in post #18738626
Link for capture?

It's in the link I supplied. Just scroll down on the download page.

The big advantage of FS Capture is the painless save. I take many captured 'notes' when I browse the net and Capture saves each image into a common dedicated folder automatically, with time and date as filename. It's instantaneous and I don't get bothered inventing filenames. Everything is stacked sequentially by time, which is my favorite cataloguing tag anyway.

To browse those notes, compare their contents and print them out in condensed form, I use FS Image Viewer, of course. (select multiple images, then Alt-P = Design and print). Quick and effective.

drmaxx wrote in post #18738204
It is difficult to beat free, if all you want is culling.

However, I am not quite sure why the OP don't just use Lightroom for DAM and culling? With many pictures I cull them by going through them in several passes - filtering everything out from the last pass. First pass: kick out everything off the charts (not in focus or otherwise flawed). Second pass: give one star for anything that is worth having a second look. Third pass: give two stars for keepers and three stars for clear winners. Higher stars are reserved for after processing. By doing this, I can focus on one thing only and are much faster and more consistent then making all the decision for every single picture.

I was wondering the same thing, it's one of the strong points of LR.

Since the OP has not responded to which camera system my first cull is using Canon's DPP in quick check - full screen mode. DPP's downsizing algorithm for 'fit to screen' display is very good - contrasty which creates the illusion of sharpness. It is fast and I just X unwanted/unusable files and delete them. Then I import to LR.