I’ve been fretting over this one, and wondering whether it was worth waiting for Black Friday to get a discount, but it would appear that would not be huge unless DxO broke with past practice which would be unlikely, so a purchase price of c.£190 would still be on the cards. So thinking about it, I thought I’d ask Perplexity Pro (using the Claude Sonnet 5.5 model what would be the best for me. This was the query I posed …
Do a comparison of LrC with Camera Raw, against PhotoLab 10 and give an opinion as to which of the two options is better for editing (ignore catalog benefits)
…remembering that I already had PureRAW and I was using macOS Tahoe, this was the response …
For editing alone, I’d pick Lightroom Classic with Camera Raw, mainly because you already own PureRAW. PhotoLab 10 is better at the raw conversion stage, but PureRAW gives you most of that advantage already. Reviewers rate the two as close on features, and the one gap I found that matters to you is at the start of the workflow.
Where each is stronger
Points that matter to you
- DxO says PhotoLab 10 doesn’t run on macOS Sequoia or earlier, so you’d need macOS Tahoe. Check that first on your Mac Mini M4 and MacBook Pro M1.
- A Luminous Landscape reviewer rated the two as close on features. He said Lightroom does some things more directly, PhotoLab does some things better, and switching probably isn’t worth it. His suggestion was to keep Lightroom and use PureRAW for the denoise and optics, which is what you can already do.
- DeepPRIME and the AI features depend heavily on the GPU, so large batch exports can be slow.
- Your Sony A7R III files are well supported by both programs. I didn’t find any A7R III-specific comparison.
- Some new Camera Raw features reached Lightroom Classic later than Camera Raw, because Adobe builds them in Camera Raw first.
Perplexity’s opinion
I’d stay with Lightroom Classic plus PureRAW. That gives you roughly 90% of PhotoLab’s image-quality advantage at no extra cost, plus the faster and more mature masking and presets.
PhotoLab 10 would be better if you dislike Adobe’s subscription and want to stop paying it. It would also be better if you want to do all your editing in one program, with depth masks as the main attraction. In that case I’d download the trial and test it on a few of your own A7R III files before paying £230.
My decision
So I think that helps me make up my mind. I’d previously done a bit of research on using Bridge + Camera RAW (ie Kloskowski’s recent post), but this was totally a no no as 1) I’d still need the Photography Plan to use Camera RAW, and 2) the migration of my existing catalog would not have been painless; indeed it would have been painful.
That had confirmed my thinking that if I was going to change my editor and abandon the Photography Plan, I could continue using LrC and Quick Develop (for free) and then go onto use PhotoLab or Affinity, but what would be the real benefit, and was there any guarantee that Adobe wouldn’t change their mind about allowing free access to the basic features. Uncertainty is not something I need these days.
So … I’m clearer now than I have been for a few months that I will stick with the Adobe Photography Plan and LrC/Photoshop etc.; I’ll see what the integration with Topaz brings us; I’ll use DxO PureRAW as a pre-processor (I’ve used it twice now with images in batch mode and will learn the best way to use it), and where appropriate (or where needed) DxO Nik Collections for effects, etc.
[In passing I ought to add that I’m getting my head round using Lightroom (ie mobile/cloud) to synchronise photos from both my Apple devices and from imported RAW images on attached SD-cards. I’m beginning to see this becoming a much more weight-aware way of importing images to my catalog when away from the home.]