Is ON1’s Photo RAW, now in version 2024, ‘better enough’ than Lightroom Classic to be worth a switch? After using Aperture (until it was discontinued), Capture One (for a few years), and now Lightroom Classic (for several years), Lightroom Classic has become my standard against which others are judged. To be worth moving to another program, it has to have something pretty good going for it.
Capture One, Lightroom Classic, PhotoLab Elite, and Photo Raw have all been updated this Fall. The question for me is whether or not these changes make switching from Lightroom Classic a good choice.
I wrote about my approach to selecting a post-processing software for my photography earlier. My approach now is the same; what I consider important has not changed. What has changed are the features of the different programs.
I’ve spent the last couple of months working back and forth between the raw processors Capture One, Lightroom Classic, PhotoLab Elite, and Photo RAW in an attempt to settle on just one going into 2024. Owning more than one is just too expensive and too complicated trying to keep edits and metadata in sync. My primary raw post-processing tools have been Capture One and Lightroom Classic. So that’s where I started my efforts.
I’ve been working with PhotoLab Elite 6 over the last couple of weeks re-editing some of my better images from the last few years. The more I work with it, the more I see the missing pieces yet to be included to make it a real competitor to Lightroom Classic, Capture One, and Photo RAW. And that’s making me question if PhotoLab Elite can really replace Lightroom Classic for me.