I know I looked at this a couple of times in the past few years, but I forget why I decided to stick with LR over C1
I remember when you were looking at this a few months back (pre-Lightroom adoption?) and felt DAM capability was a high priority.
I’m still at t’other end of the spectrum to you, i.e. using DxO (and its lack of DAM!) – infrequent-but-expensive updates and occasionally wondering whether a subscription model wouldn’t make more sense – much as I dislike the principle of it.
I tried CP1 but never really got to grips with it. I blame me, not the software for that – though it does make me think that one can never really have the time to test alternatives to the point of equal familiarity with one’s current program. Reminds me how, back in the day, I hated the apparently clunky Quark Xpress rather than seemingly intuitive Pagemaker which I’d grown up with from its first iteration (remember the Floppy Disc Shuffle anyone?!).
After being forced to use Xpress due to clients’/printers’ requirements, months later I couldn’t believe how I’d been prepared to prefer Pagemaker’s ease-of-use to the easy precision of Xpress.
In practice I’m happy with DxO’s processing; more than any other features (which frankly seem to me much-of-a-muchness between DxO and other programs) it’s the lens/body based geometry/vignetting corrections I’d be loathe to forego (so satisfying to repeatedly click the ‘compare’ button to see their effect!). I use the µ4/3 system and I vaguely recall that its, and smaller sensor systems, rely more on software correction than corrections in-lens (so to speak) but I’d trust DxO’s testing of lens/body combinations more than my ability to ‘eyeball it’ by sliding sliders to and fro!
Additionally, I really like the ease and effectiveness of DxO’s
manual corrections for pincushion/barrel/perspective.
Though I know many like it, I’m less interested in DxO’s HQ/Prime de-noising/sharpening and prefer (recently updated) NeatImage. I’ve always liked the system of printing its standard test chart on your own printer, photographing it at various ISOs which are then fed back into the program, thus creating your own profile incorporating any peculiarities of you own sensor/lens/etc. I use both standalone and plug-in version for PShop.
My Photoshop is CS5.1 (gasp!) still running happily on El Cap 10.11.6. I’ve got Sierra Beta running on an external HD which initially appeared to finally end the functionality of my PShop – until I set it to 32bit and it’s now functional again (huh?!).
Nonetheless, it encouraged me to get Affinity Photo: since I only really use PShop as a host for NeatImage + a few final exposure tweaks/resizing, I figured Affinity would provide that function in future.
Similarly, I bought Affinity Designer for when my Illustrator CS3 refuses to work with a future OS.
I’m impressed with Affinity’s attitude (esp. regarding non-sub model) and attentiveness on their forums. So… I’m hoping that when Affinity produce their DAM, by then I’ll be used to their ecosystem.
So… short version: [Affinity DAM] > DxO > Aff Photo+NeatImage (+ any other plug-ins)
as a final p.s… I'd even looked at Hasselblad's free Phocus – as usual needs an email registration (
http://www.hasselblad.com/support/manuals/software-current). It uses Mac OS RAW conversion/built-in support for other brands and, sadly, (from the manual) "In practice this means you should expect the following tools to be inac- tive: Highlight recovery, Shadow ll, Clarity, Lens corrections, Noise reduction and Scene calibration."
I do sometimes wonder, for those who need a bit more than Photos it might be a pretty powerful improvement?
