I've been using ACDSee since the mid 1990's. It is very likely the best, and most powerful photo catalog software made, and it should be, considering it's been around a LONG time, 10 years longer than LR.

I've been using my current version since 2016 and have no reason to upgrade, it does more than one could want. I have over 40,000 photos cataloged with hundreds of Keywords. It has super search capabilities and over the past 25 years or so they have worked out how it needs to be done, so it fits most anyone's needs.

It also has decent editing ability including LAYERS, which is required component of any editor imo. The sale price is good, it is always on sale I think. Make sure you never pay the list price, I think that's a gimmick for the real price on sale. (Sears got busted for that once)

You can buy ACDSee AND Affinity Photo today for a lot less than a one year subscription to PS/LR. They are a hard act to beat. Affinity has free upgrades, and ACDSee doesn't need any, it already does more than you could possibly need in a photo file manager.

I think ACDSee and Affinity compare well to LR and PS, until you get to rent vs purchase. $120/year is not bad if you earn a living at it, but for a hobbyist, even a serious one, ACDsee/Affinity is where it's at.

Have you ever considered using the Organizer in Photoshop Elements 2021? The Organizer can essentially do everything that the Library module that Lightroom Classic. But the learning curve is not nearly as steep, and the user interface is much more friendly.

I have used PSE's Organizer since it's beginning 20 years ago. Today it remains my DAM program for about 60K photos, videos, and audio files.

FWIW

https://don26812.wordpress.com/2020/12/13/just-finished-a-brand-new-ebook/

If you are looking for an independent asset manager, Digikam is a pretty powerful tool that is designed to handle very large catalogs. It is highly customizable with regards to importing, tagging, , rating and creating different groups for individual needs.

My setup is one group for all RAW imports with a sidecar XMP file written so I can import into Darktable with all tags and such, then a second group that searches for all exported (usually jpg) files that come out of my post processing.

I am not sure of how well it runs on MacOS, but the devs seem to keep all platforms up-to-date.

https://www.digikam.org/

If you are looking for an independent asset manager, Digikam is a pretty powerful tool that is designed to handle very large catalogs. It is highly customizable with regards to importing, tagging, , rating and creating different groups for individual needs.

My setup is one group for all RAW imports with a sidecar XMP file written so I can import into Darktable with all tags and such, then a second group that searches for all exported (usually jpg) files that come out of my post processing.

I am not sure of how well it runs on MacOS, but the devs seem to keep all platforms up-to-date.

https://www.digikam.org/

I've been using ACDSee since the mid 1990's. It is very likely the best, and most powerful photo catalog software made, and it should be, considering it's been around a LONG time, 10 years longer than LR.

I've been using my current version since 2016 and have no reason to upgrade, it does more than one could want. I have over 40,000 photos cataloged with hundreds of Keywords. It has super search capabilities and over the past 25 years or so they have worked out how it needs to be done, so it fits most anyone's needs.

It also has decent editing ability including LAYERS, which is required component of any editor imo. The sale price is good, it is always on sale I think. Make sure you never pay the list price, I think that's a gimmick for the real price on sale. (Sears got busted for that once)

You can buy ACDSee AND Affinity Photo today for a lot less than a one year subscription to PS/LR. They are a hard act to beat. Affinity has free upgrades, and ACDSee doesn't need any, it already does more than you could possibly need in a photo file manager.

I think ACDSee and Affinity compare well to LR and PS, until you get to rent vs purchase. $120/year is not bad if you earn a living at it, but for a hobbyist, even a serious one, ACDsee/Affinity is where it's at.