[emalvick]

That's kind of what I am thinking. I don't usually filter or even use collections. I just work from folders, usually. I'll definitely investigate. I never really thought about it much until this thread. LR has always been fast enough, and there is enough information out on the web about DxO being slow that I just assumed it was the way it is. I really like DxO, however, and would likely give up LR if they ever go to a subscription only format (or stick with LR5 until it no longer works with my camera/lens combos).

[Canada_Rockies]

If I have a set of images on my cards that I really think I want to see the absolute best "development" possible, I will just turn them over to DxO without using LR to handle it, and then import the results into LR because, even if DxO takes longer to process them, the work left in LR is minimal. So I come home, copy the cards into a folder on my computer, set DxO to work and go have supper and maybe a beer or two or a sleep and come back to them after DxO has done its thing. I do notice that DxO 10 Elite, that I just installed, is noticeably faster than 9 Standard. We are off to Hawaii for Christmas, 10 days, so I think I may have quite a few images when I get back, so I will just hand them over to DxO and do the keywording, sorting, rating, final white balance and cropping in LR. I really do like the cataloguing in LR. I can find images on my disk in no time. I also use smart collections quite a bit. For example, with any bird picture, I put "Bird" in the keywords, and now every bird picture is in a smart collection called Wildlife - Birds.

[emalvick]

Cataloging in LR is ok, but admittedly I've been using a higher featured software, IMatch for cataloging for about 10 years now and it works a bit better for the initial keywording, etc. LR's catalog is really just used as a higher featured browser. I tend to try and PP with LR first, so it serves as an initial trial for RAW processing. If any image is difficult, I then move to a plugin stage going to DxO, Nik, CS6, etc. as the file dictates. I haven't been 100% happy with LR in the initial PP stage, and have been moving to DxO. I actually wanted to like CaptureOne, but I find its catalog and interface are more challenging than LR.

The thing with DxO is that if I can use it everywhere, I can pretty much skip LR. I can customize a plugin from IMatch and skip the LR stage altogether. This will be my plan if LR goes subscription. I think I hang on to LR now for the plugins as it works a bit more smoothly with Nik and CS6 for what I need.

[Nicolas06]

Lightroom strengths vs DxO
- Catalogging features
- Some local editing features
- The standard: more third parties software work with it
- Faster

DxO Strengths vs Lightroom
- Does lot of things automatically in particular all optical corrections and denoising.
- Perspective correction bundled in. Invaluable for architecture shoots.
- Some cool advenced tools bundled in. DxO ClearView: replace key feature of Topaz clarity & Topaz adjust, DxO SmartLighting does mono image HDR,
- Do not force you using a proprietary cataloging library... DxO work directly on the file system. Library do not slow down or goes corrupt over time.

I would add that DxO film pack is quite good to help recreate the film renderings. One should not look at them only like film rendering but at nice rendering presets that can match well a type of photograph (portraiture, macro, landscape...) but also what one want to express. With DxO Optics Pro, if one buy Film pack it become fully embedded, there no need to open Film pack at all to apply the rendering, vigneting, film noise... you want.

If you are interrested: in the thread I explain how I use latest DxO Optics Pro to do some post processing: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/32-digital-processing-software-printing/2...-released.html

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Last edited by Nicolas06; 12-27-2014 at 06:51 AM.

[Stagnant]

I have been using DxO since the 7th version, recently upgrading from 9th to 10th. The whole philosophy of this programme is different from Lightroom. Whereas is Lightroom you are encouraged to manually adjust majority of parameters, in DxO you are encouraged to rely on a set of automated actions and adjust the rest accordingly, if needed. It is really hard to tell if DxO is better than LR, or vice versa. Personally I use them both, depending on the scene.
* DxO is better for processing high ISO scenes and dark scenes. PRIME noise reduction engine easily beats any other software in this category. The processing speed was considerably improved with the release of the 10th version.
* DxO's sharpening, considering that there are matching modules is better than the one offered by Lightroom. Without modules - it is quite good but nothing special.
* Correction of various kinds of distortions and perspective is easier with DxO, but not always. Volume anamorphic is a very handy feature for wide angle lenses.
* Lightroom reigns supreme when it comes to recovering blown out highlights and when it comes to handling the high dynamic range scenes. In DxO 10 Smart Lighting engine seems to have undergone some re-engineering and now treats highlights better.
* For certain scenes I prefer the rendering of LR.

I run Win 7 x64 on Intel i7, SSD and 16 GB ram, but even with this hardware processing series of images in DxO with PRIME engine enabled was a painfully slow. On the other the resulting images were well worth it.