I am new to the concept of non-destructive editing. I looked at several competing products before purchasing PhotoDirector 2011 at a great price a few weeks ago. So, now I'm running the trial version of PhD3 awaiting instructions on making my upgrade.

PhD3 does a great job of developing ORF RAW files from my Olympus E-620 camera.

I am impressed with the adjustment and edit tools in the application. Based on limited testing, I am really impressed with Background Removal. I do a lot of photo object work, and this tool appears to be on a par with the expensive external cutout plugins available from third parties.

I do have a couple of questions.

1. PhD3 appears to have no way to associate an external editor that can be called from the program. Is that correct? Thus to do additional work on a file in an external editor, I should finish all processing necessary in PhD3, then export to a file for my photo editor?

2. The User Preference options in PhD3 seem extremely limited. There's no choice on changing the quality option on a JPG export, for example. Based on what I have seen other programs doing, I'm guessing the JPG export quality for PhD3 is 95%. Thus, an image being prepared for the web would have to be processed outside PhD3 to get it to web efficiency?

3. I see no indication of a need for periodic compaction of PhD3's database. Does this mean that the application's performance will not suffer as more folders are added?

Bob

PhotoDirector 5; Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit; 3.40 gigahertz Intel Core i7-3770; 16 GB RAM; AMD Radeon HD 7770; Olympus E-M1 & E-M5