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Do you prefer DPP or Lightroom

John_SD
Whiz

I haven't tried Lightroom, so I cannot comment on its benefits or shotcomings. I am just starting to dip my toes into DPP, and while I am far from conversant about it's intracacies, benefits and quirks, I feel that for now it will be sufficient for my needs. 

 

A real benefit of DPP, in my view is that it's free -- and it seems robust in its abilities, of which I haven't yet scratched the surface. But so far I like what i see.

 

Do you guys feel stongly about one product or the other? If so, why? 

56 REPLIES 56

Yes.  I don't want to bother with a splintered solution. 

 

Maybe I am reading the support page incorrectly?

 

SIGMA 24-70mm F2.8 DG OS HSM A017Canon7.0/10.0

   

 

This says I need LR v7.0.  The perpetual stops at 6.14 right?

 

And second..  the camera RAW format.  I mentioned this before.  You have to download the RAW converter and import in.  Or I just buy DxO and everything is there.  And next year when the 5D5 or 4D1 with an articulating screen and whatever else Canon decicdes ro give us is released...  Hopefully, I'll be ready. 

 

What would really be nice is if Canon offered 3rd party lens correction as an add-on in DPP.  I'd even pay for it. 

~Rick
Bay Area - CA


~R5 C (1.0.6.1) ~RF Trinity, ~RF 100 Macro, ~RF 100~400, ~RF 100~500, +RF 1.4x TC, +Canon Control Ring, BG-R10

~DxO PhotoLab Elite ~DaVinci Resolve ~Windows11 Pro ~ImageClass MF644Cdw/MF656Cdw ~Pixel 8 ~CarePaks Are Worth It


@shadowsports wrote:

Yes.  I don't want to bother with a splintered solution. 

 

Maybe I am reading the support page incorrectly?

 

SIGMA 24-70mm F2.8 DG OS HSM A017Canon7.0/10.0

   

 

This says I need LR v7.0.  The perpetual stops at 6.14 right?

 

And second..  the camera RAW format.  I mentioned this before.  You have to download the RAW converter and import in.  Or I just buy DxO and everything is there.  And next year when the 5D5 or 4D1 with an articulating screen and whatever else Canon decicdes ro give us is released...  Hopefully, I'll be ready. 

 

What would really be nice is if Canon offered 3rd party lens correction as an add-on in DPP.  I'd even pay for it. 


Are you saying that the Sigma 24-70 is what is not supported?  The perpetual license supports all of your gear.  I am not worried about it working with a camera that I have not bought yet.    

 

I do not have to download the DNG converter, not unless you mean updating ACR, which is something you would have to do if you were running a subscription license, anyway.  That is how they add compatibility for new gear.  I just download from the camera, and then Import into LR6.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

Do you really think the same thing won't happen when the new version of DxO Photlab comes out. Here is a cut from the DxO site saying whats new with PhotoLab (vs earlier version of DxO)

 

 

 

"New cameras, and even drones!

 

 

DxO PhotoLab 1.1 supports four new cameras and two drones: Canon EOS M100, Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III, Olympus Tough TG-5, Sony RX10 IV, DJI Mavic PRO and DJI Phantom 4 PRO"

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

John,

DxO has a tool for checking lens and body compatibility tool like Adobe, except with it, my gear is supported.  I have already checked.  My current gear is supported the the current release v1.1.2.  v2.0 gets released next month.  It will include full NIX integration.  They acquired these from Google late last year and have fully reverse engineered the tools (as promised) and integrated into their product.  Optics Pro v11.0 is now PhotoLab v1.x.  There will be no v12.

 

 

~Rick
Bay Area - CA


~R5 C (1.0.6.1) ~RF Trinity, ~RF 100 Macro, ~RF 100~400, ~RF 100~500, +RF 1.4x TC, +Canon Control Ring, BG-R10

~DxO PhotoLab Elite ~DaVinci Resolve ~Windows11 Pro ~ImageClass MF644Cdw/MF656Cdw ~Pixel 8 ~CarePaks Are Worth It


@John_SD wrote:

@shadowsports wrote:

If you want a complete photo editing solution with 3rd party lens correction support in a perpetual license, PhotoLab is the way to go.      

  


Perhaps so, but their GUI is humongous and would require a substantial amount of time to become fluent with it. 

 

I've looked at it (they have a 30-day trial), and I've tried other products including Gimp, which I do like, but it is slower than I would prefer. I also looked at Luminar, which I like, but which I also found slow. However, I understand the recent updates to the product makes it more efficient.

 

Here is my plan now. I'm sticking with DPP for the forseeable future. I am hopeful that Adobe takes enough of a beating on their ill-considerd and confusing subscription model to once again offer Lightroom as a "one-time" purchase. From everything I'm reading, a lot of photographers are abandoning ship and searching for a Lightroom replacement that is free of the monthly money-grab. I'd go with Lightroom, but I'm not interested in entering into a lifelong rental situation. 

 

 


Please do not hold your breath.  I do not think Adobe cares if people leave, because they know that they have a superior product in Lightroom and Photoshop.  

 

The Lightroom GUI is pretty intuitive, provided that you know what you are trying to achieve.  The Photoshop GUI is similar to most image editors, and fairly intuitive, provided that you know what you are trying to achieve.  Some of the Photoshop tools can be used in very creative ways to reduce noise, and can be more effective than Lightroom.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

"Please do not hold your breath.  I do not think Adobe cares if people leave, because they know that they have a superior product in Lightroom and Photoshop."

 

I hope you are wrong, but I fear that you are not. Still, despite their superior product, it seems that many photographers are rejecting Adobe's subscription model, but I would imagine many a photographer with years on Adobe will just "grin and bear it," as it were, as migrating to a totally different platform brings its own headaches.

 

Maybe it will take years before Adobe feels it in their bottom line, but I for one am "subscriptioned out" and am sick of it. Thus, I reject the subscription model that is increasingly part of modern life as much as reasonably possible. 

 

 

848291kmp
Apprentice

Lightroom is far superior is you want to do more advanced organization and searching of photos and videos. Facial recognition, keyword tags, GPS location searches, multiple collections (albums) are among some of the extras. Download the free trial and check it out.


@848291kmp wrote:

Lightroom is far superior is you want to do more advanced organization and searching of photos and videos. Facial recognition, keyword tags, GPS location searches, multiple collections (albums) are among some of the extras. Download the free trial and check it out.


You sound like you're selling an iPad or something.

 

I don't use lightroom. Even though I do have the Adobe CC subscription. DPP is far superior in terms of color reproduction over Adobe RAW (= Lightroom).

 

I do agree that Lightroom is much faster and more intuitive than DPP at the moment, but I choose photo software based on the results, and not a fancy UI. Adobe RAW suffers from shifting colors and ugly blown out highlights if it contains colors like a sunset for example. Adobe RAW makes photo's look 'digital' where DPP looks very real and natural. Especially for landscapes DPP is a much better choice.

It is quite easy to combine the RAW conversion and lens correction capabilities of DPP (for those who consider it better than LR) with the cataloging and superior overall editing capabilities of LR.

 

A LR plugin called "Open Directly" lets you select a file in LR and then open that .CR2 file in DPP. Do as much or as little as editing that you want in DPP and then "Convert & Save" a TIFF back to LR for more editing. 

 

A no-cost approach would be to open a file in DPP, work on it in DPP and then "Batch Process" a TIFF into LR. Then it becomes necessary to import the TIFF into LR. Easy, but a few more steps than above process.

 

For folks who prefer PhotoShop there is a direct Transfer to PhotoShop feature in DPP.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

848291kmp
Apprentice

For EOS compatibility (Picture Style, Lens Correction, etc), DPP is the way to go. However, DPP is EXTREMELY SLOW in generating thumbnails and filter lists especially when there are 100s of raw images per folder. You can expect ever more lag if those folders are located on a NAS. It's almost like the way to go is to process the CR2/CR3 files initially in DPP and convert them into JPGs or TIFFs and then use Lightroom from that point on. The problem with the TIFFs that DPP produces is that there's no LZW (lossless) compression so the files are huge.

 

What would really move folks like me off of Lightroom completely is if DPP adopted the catalog concept with keywording and GPS functionality.

 

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