| > Genuine question, how do you find DxO PhotoLab lacking when compared to LR? It's mostly their "no catalog" approach that irks me. From what I understand they use a model that doesn't use a catalog, and requires you to import photos, but instead allow you to point it at any filesystem location, and work on those photos. Fair enough, but for me the question then immediately becomes how and where the data that I generate in PL7 is stored and managed - and I was struggling to find any comprehensive information on this. If it doesn't have a catalog, where does it store edits I make to my photos? Does it actually modify and write down some information in RAW files (that would be a non-starter for me)? Does it litter the filesystem with XMP sidecar files next to the originals? How does it keep (and repair) associations between original RAWs and their edits/metadata if they get moved on the file system outside of PL7? It allows to search/filter photos by metadata attributes "across your whole computer" (according to their tutorial video on organization). So it must keep some index somewhere, otherwise that would be dog slow. So how and when does that index get updated? Do I get any control over when that happens, any UI feedback when its happening and I'm potentially working with outdated metadata, etc..? LR's catalog approach has some drawbacks, but from an engineering standpoint, it seems to me that's the much simpler and robust approach to implement this. The LR catalog is a simple SQLite DB, and backup is trivial: Backup my originals and the catalog, done. Follow the simple rule "Don't modify originals behind LR's back" and you'll be good. (Or be prepared to do it in a very systematic way, and fix references in LR afterwards). The catalog approach definitely has its limitations and issues, but I find it very easy to reason about. No surprises. PL7's approach seems to require much more magic behind the scenes, which makes me quite uncomfortable. In terms of denoising, I have to agree - the DxO stuff is miles ahead in terms of quality for some algorithms, and denoising is one of them. I use NikCollection (as a PS plugin) for those 1 out of a 1000 photos that deserve some serious editing. |