Shadows adjusts unusally far into midtones Darktable (filmic v6)įilmic v6, zero latitude, no color preservation Highlights turn strongly yellow Capture One

Regardless, my comparison is probably less scientific than last time, because my brain sort of broke after staring at too many renderings of the same images for too long.

I tried to inject some objectivity by limiting my edits to the most obvious sliders wherever possible, especially in the programs I know better. Of course I am no expert in any of them except Darktable and Capture One, so my results are probably flawed. In order to put them through their paces, I took a random smattering of images from the last few years that I found difficult to work with for one reason or another, and checked how each of the programs dealt with them. I also installed Luminar Neo (€120 or €80/a) and Radiant Photo (€140) but I disliked them so immediately and viscerally that I didn't include them in the comparison below. Or maybe I just wanted a justification for buying DxO PhotoLab, because people on the internet speak so well of it 🙄.įor the following comparison I downloaded trial versions of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 (€155), Capture One 22 (€350 or €220/a), Darktable 4.0 (free), DxO Photolab 6 (€220 + €140 for FilmPack 6 + €99 for ViewPoint), Adobe Lightroom Classic 11.5 (€142/a), ON1 Photo Raw 2023 (€126), RawTherapee 5.8 (free), Silkypix Developer Studio Pro 11 (€155), Exposure X7 (€165), and Zoner Photo Studio X Fall 2022 (€60/a). This comes at an inopportune time, as I feel restless of late.

It's that time of the year again when all image editing programs come out with new versions.

Silkypix 9