Corel AfterShot Pro 3 review

AfterShot Pro 3 is a fantastic value option if you're looking to organize, manage, and lightly edit your images.

Corel AfterShot Pro 3 review
(Image: © Corel)

Top Ten Reviews Verdict

AfterShot Pro 3 is a great organizer and photo manager, with some solid editing tools built in. It's good value, and ideal for more casual users.

Pros

  • +

    Great organizing features

  • +

    Decent photo editor

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    Good watermarking options

Cons

  • -

    Lacks some editing features

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Corel AfterShot Pro 3 is a good tool for organizing and managing your images. While it has a built-in editor that apes many of the functions you find in the likes of Lightroom CC, the primary function here is processing, tagging, and sorting your photos to get them ready for sharing or storing. While its editor is fine, we wouldn't recommend using it as your go-to software for photo enhancement, unless you really don't want to get too involved in that process. As it stands, AfterShot Pro 3 does a good enough job of organizing and managing images to earn a place on our guide to the best photo organizing software packages.

AfterShot Pro 3: Organizing features

AfterShot Pro 3 lets you directly import photos from multiple sources, and is compatible with RAW files from most major cameras. Like most other programs, this software's non-destructive editing lets you experiment with edits without permanently altering your original image, and you can compare the modified version of your photo against the original with the click of a button.

AfterShot Pro automatically sorts your photos based on standard markers, such as name, date and tags, or you can manually sort your photos using advanced data like ISO, shutter speed and aperture. You can take your sorting one step further by employing flags, star ratings and color-coding to designate favorites and rejects, as well as grouping themed photos together. It's a powerful organizer, and is designed to sit alongside Corel PaintShop Pro 2021 - one of our best photo editing software options - to help you manage every aspect of the editing process.

You can also organize your photos by location. Unlike most photo management software, this program does not tag pictures on a map, and you have to manually fill in fields about image location in metadata tabs. It lacks face recognition sorting too, which is something CyberLink PhotoDirector 365 excels at. 

AfterShot Pro 3 has sets of pre-made keywords – including topics, genres and subjects – you can use for tagging, which does save time when processing a large number of images. To test, we used a variety of tags that include genres like portraits and underwater, as well as tags that mark project status – for example, retouched, in progress, archived or finished. The software even branches off into subcategories to further organize your images. You can apply the same tags to batches of images too, if they all fall within the same category, further saving you time.

If you like to share your photos with others in a variety of ways, this might not be the program for you. This photo manager software lacks sharing capabilities. I couldn't directly connect , as it lacks some of the direct to social sharing functions that some rivals have. It's strong for watermarks, however, and comes with a variety of features for adding and customizing watermarks, if you're planning to publish and copyright protect your work.

Batch processing is easy with AfterShot Pro 3, and you can apply the same edit or process to a large number of images, before exporting them in batches too. This cuts down time when it comes to pictures shot in the same conditions, with similar camera settings.

Corel AfterShot Pro 3 review

(Image credit: Corel)

Corel AfterShot Pro 3: Editing features

AfterShot Pro has several standard editing tools to help you enhance your images before processing them. You can use cosmetic tools to touch up pictures, and things like the clone and heal tool to remove unwanted objects. The results you get are clear, sharp, and simple to obtain. The color and tone editing tools let you adjust color balance, white balance, exposure, contrast and clarity, and they're also very simple to use. Overall, you can really boost the quality of your photos with AfterShot Pro 3, and it's fine if that's all you want to do. If you want to dig deeper and actually create designs and full illustration projects, you should also invest in PaintShop 2021, as a companion app. You can shift seamlessly between the two apps.

Corel offers several different support options. Tutorials and FAQs are on its website, as well as contact information for technical support’s phone and email address. The website also has a live chat option if you want faster responses. We've noted that some users have experienced crash and freeze issues with AfterShot 3, but they are rare exceptions. Some other users have complained that AfterShot 3 isn't a photo editor and, yes, we'd recommend that you use PaintShop or Adobe PhotoShop CC as fully-fledged editors, if this is what you need.

Should you buy Corel AfterShot 3?

If you're looking for a powerful, easy to use, and cheap photo organizer... yes, AfterShot Pro 3 is highly recommended. It isn't quite as powerful and well supported as Lightroom, but it does most of the same things, and does them extremely well. It's fully featured, has a range of excellent manager options, and you can usually pick it up for less than $50 for a lifetime license. It's tough to beat that kind of value.

Rebecca Spear

Rebecca is a writer who has covered everything from photo books to graphic design and small kitchen appliances for Top Ten Reviews. Now a gaming writer for Future Labs, she's also contributed to big publications like TechRadar, Windows Central, Android Central, Reuters Legal Solutions Blog, iMore, and more. She no longer works for TTR.