Cyberlink PhotoDirector 3 review

It’s in the common ground that Lightroom edges ahead. PhotoDirector coped reasonably well with our library of 39,000 photos, but it often stopped responding for a couple of seconds as we moved around the software, and there were a few crashes during our tests. Photos are ordered by date, can be browsed by containing folder or tags and grouped into albums. Smart Collections group photos according to file type, EXIF data (such as focal length or ISO speed), file name and rating, or any combination. It’s a sophisticated system, but we’d like a quicker way to filter by these criteria. Defining a Smart Collection just to see all the photos rated three or more stars in a particular folder is far too laborious.

The biggest difference is that PhotoDirector’s raw-processing tools aren’t up to Lightroom’s standards, despite their operational similarity. Lightroom delivered more sophisticated noise reduction and smoother highlight recovery, and it corrected for lens distortions and chromatic aberrations in raw files automatically – something PhotoDirector can’t do. PhotoDirector’s ability to apply corrective treatments to limited areas of the image is more versatile than Lightroom’s, with more ways to define the selection and a wider set of processes available, but it’s not enough to redress the balance.

Noise reduction for raw files is pretty good but it doesn’t preserve details as well as Lightroom

It’s for these reasons that we’re hesitant to recommend PhotoDirector. The creative tools in its Edit tab give it a genuine advantage and – with a couple of exceptions – integrate well into the workflow. However, its basic corrective edits aren’t up there with the competition yet, and seeing as you’ll be applying these edits to thousands of photos, it’s important to get them right from the start. Even so, if digital makeovers and photo montages are on the agenda and you don’t want to fork out for both Lightroom and Photoshop Elements, PhotoDirector is a worthy alternative.