Software designed to organise large collections of photos using an internal database that speeds up searches and lets you create ‘virtual’ albums and smart albums without actually having to move images on your hard disk. Adobe Lightroom is a good example, using a database ‘catalog’ to organise search and display images. Cataloguing software is more complex and powerful than image ‘browsers’ like Adobe Bridge, which simply show you the contents of folders on your computer.
See Cataloguing software explained for more.
Capture One and Lightroom both offer image cataloguing tools with powerful organization and search capabilities, but they both rely on an import process. And, if you make changes outside your catalog, you’ll have to synchronize or re-link your image files. Capture One Sessions are different. They are like ‘live’ browsing. And they are not just for tethered shooting.
In this article I want to explain the difference between what I’ll call ‘image browsers’ and ‘image cataloguers’. Image cataloguing tools like Adobe Lightroom import your photos into a database and offer very sophisticated, very adaptable organizing and search options. But they bring their own limitations and complications. What’s the alternative?
Adobe Lightroom (2025) verdict: 4.1 stars Adobe Lightroom does something pretty amazing. It makes all your photos available to organize and edit anywhere, on any device. But this does come at a cost. One drawback is that you have to pay for Adobe’s Creative Cloud storage, which is now included in its subscription plans. Another is that this version of Lightroom is slicker and more streamlined than the original Lightroom Classic, but also sacrifices some organizational features.
Remember that while your folder filing systems will be the same for whatever software you use, albums and collections exist only within that specific application. You get more organisational capabilities but only by committing to a single software solution.
Verdict: 4.5 stars Lightroom Classic is the traditional, desktop-based version of Lightroom. Its editing tools are powerful and versatile, aided by new and steadily improving AI masking tools. Lightroom Classic continues to be the professional cataloguing and editing tool by which all others are judged, though it’s not always the best.
It’s not just all that editing work you’ve invested in Lightroom, but all the albums, keywording and image organization you’ve built up over the years too. Does that mean you’re stuck with paying a subscription for ever?
Verdict: 4.5 stars If you want a single, all-in-one, do-it-all photo organizer, editor and effects tool, look no further. ON1 Photo RAW 2024 is in a class of its own. Other programs might give you better cataloging tools, better raw processing or a wider range of effects, but never in one place like ON1 Photo RAW does.
The October 2023 Lightroom update brought an important change to the way Lightroom (that’s the ‘web’ version, not Lightroom Classic) handles your files. Now you can browse and even edit photos on your local drives without having to import them into Lightroom and its cloud storage.
That’s an interesting question. PhotoLab 6 offers better RAW processing and noise reduction than Lightroom and more extensive local adjustment tools, but with the improvements to the PhotoLibrary in PhotoLab 6, can it also do the same job as an image cataloguing tool?
Well, there’s quite a lot, as it happens, and it affects the way you store, access and organize your photos