With so many editing and post-processing software packages on the market today, photographers might find it rather difficult to go through them all and compare key features in order to pick something that would ultimately work for their needs. Many of us go through that stage, especially when starting out. What is the best software for photo editing? What features does it have? Is it easy to learn and how much does it cost? These are just some of the things photographers need to know. We decided to put together a detailed table that compares the most popular non-destructive editing tools on the market today.
X-T20 + XC16-50mmF3.5-5.6 OIS II @ 16.7mm, ISO 200, 1/6, f/8.0 © Nasim Mansurov
We picked the following six software packages that offer non-destructive editing based on their popularity among photographers:
- Adobe Lightroom Classic CC
- Capture One Pro
- ACDSee Photo Studio
- On1 Photo RAW
- DxO PhotoLab
- Luminar
- Darktable
We recognize that there are many more out there, but we cannot include them all, since such research would take a lot more time and the chart would get massive, making it hard to read. If you disagree with our choices and would like to see other non-destructive software included, please let us know in the comments section below (note that destructive software editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Elements, Affinity Photo, PaintShop Pro and GIMP should not be in this list).
To come up with all the data below, we had to install every software package on a single machine and run them all for some time, going through and testing out the features. It was a pretty exhausting task to say the least! Below is the software comparison table:
| Feature | Lightroom Classic | Capture One Pro | ACDSee | On1 Photo | DxO PhotoLab | Luminar | Darktable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Subjective opinion based on personal experience of the author 2HDR Merge Tool in ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2020 is extremely poor / unusable 3Aurora HDR Tool must be purchased separately | |||||||
| Operating Systems | Win/Mac | Win/Mac | Win/Mac | Win/Mac | Win/Mac | Win/Mac | Win/Mac/Linux |
| Open Source | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Database Catalog | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Import Tool | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| File Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Color Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| RAW File Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Fuji X-Trans RAW Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tethered Shooting | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| GUI Customization | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 4K+ / Retina Screen Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dual Monitor Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| GPU Acceleration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Lens Corrections | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Basic RAW File Editing (Crop, Exposure, WB, etc) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Templates / Presets | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Selective Sharpening | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Selective Noise Reduction | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced Color Adjustments | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Distortion, CA and Vignetting Corrections | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Perspective Correction | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Merge to HDR | Yes | No | Yes2 | Yes | No | No3 | No |
| Merge to Panorama | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| Photoshop / Lightroom Integration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Brushes / Masking | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Layers | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Luminosity Masking | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Spot / Dust Removal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Haze Removal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Focus Stacking | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| Insert New Objects | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Sky Replacement | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Annotations | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Multi-Batch Export | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Stability1 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 4/5 | 3/5 | 4/5 |
| Speed / Performance1 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 5/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Learning Curve | Medium | Difficult | Medium | Medium | Easy | Medium | Medium |
| Update Frequency | 5/5 | 4/5 | 3/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Training Availability | 5/5 | 4/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 | 5/5 |
| Retail Price (MSRP) | N/A | $299 | $149 | $50 | $199 | $89 | FREE |
| Cloud Subscription Price | $10/mo (+PS) | $24/mo | $69/yr (+extras) | $60/yr (+extras) | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Device Activation Limit | 2 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 2 | ∞ |
Please note that we did not list every possible feature and slider offered by each individual software package, as it would make the above chart unreadable. Instead, we decided to focus on the key features and include additional data for consideration, such as Stability, Performance, Learning Curve and Update Frequency. Some of this data such as Stability and Learning Curve is rather subjective – it is based on my experience running the software, which might differ from other people’s experiences.
Comparisons
Based on the above chart, it is pretty clear that most modern image editing tools tightly compete with each other. If just a few years back Lightroom and Capture One were in the lead, other software such as On1 Photo RAW and Lumunar caught up with a lot of the features, including Digital Asset Management (DAM) for the proper file management.
Personally, I primarily use Lightroom Classic CC for my editing needs, but every once in a while, I fire up Capture One Pro to do some editing. While some of the features that Capture One Pro offers are light years ahead of Lightroom, its file management features DAM are weaker, and it is not an easy tool to get used to.
ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate is great for those who are starting out, and its extensive list of features is impressive. However, ACDsee is quite buggy, has very annoying notifications that cannot be easily turned off, and its license limit of 1 is very limiting for those who own more than one machine. I used to rely on ACDSee for viewing images before, and ever since I started using FastRawViewer for image culling, I see no need for it anymore.
DxO PhotoLab 7 is focused on file editing and has fewer extras like tethering, panorama support, and HDR merge. However, it has its latest machine-learning denoising algorithms built in along with excellent lens correction modules. Thus, for those that don’t need the extra features of Lightroom or Capture One Pro, it’s worth looking into.
On1 Photo RAW and Luminar have evolved quite a bit in the past few years, going from a very limited feature-set to a full-blown solution that competes head-to-head with Lightroom and Capture One. However, On1 has inferior noise reduction compared to its competitors and Luminar can sometimes be a bit buggy.
Finally, Darktable is free and open source. Although it once lacked some features of commercial editors, it can now compete with them in almost every way. It also has an advanced masking system that, except for machine-learning features such as smart subject selection, competes or exceeds the masking of most other editors. It’s also got more features for image manipulation than any other editor.
The downside to Darktable compared to the commercial options is that it takes longer to get new camera support, it doesn’t have advanced file management features like Lightroom, and does not have many extras like panorama support.
Conclusion
Choosing a Raw editor is a bit like choosing a car. Nowadays, they will all get you to where you want to go, but they do so in different ways and often with different features that suit the needs of some over others. In fact, we at Photography Life each use a different editor (Lightroom, Capture One, and Darktable).
If you still can’t decide even after reading about the general characteristics and features of each, you should try the trial versions and see which one works best for you!
What software do you use for post-processing and what do you like or dislike about it? Please let me know in the comments section below!
It is always necessary to use only quality software, so as not to have problems with the equipment. Some people encounter problems when using pirated copies. It is also possible to order a developer’s program.
I’m currently looking for new software that will support a 30 bit display output and a wide gamut working space such as Prophoto RGB. I know PS does but I don’t have any internet connection up in the hills where I live. What a shame that information is not included in the article. Never mind, maybe somebody has a suggestion?
I switched from LR 6 standalone to C1 a few years ago. because my images processed with C1 had better colors and better noise profile that I got with LR. I think the photo editing capabilities of C1 are very good BUT the DAM is pretty awful – incredibly slow and sometimes inaccurate search results. They keep updating the UI and have added a few new features over the years but they never update the DAM. For just editing photos, C1 is great. For anything else, it’s not so good.
My version of C1 crashes pretty often, though. This has happened with several versions of C1 and on different hardware and different versions of Windows. This is pretty annoying!
As for ease of use, it uses a very different paradigm than LR. Moving from LR to C1 is a challenge at first because you have to learn the C1 way of doing things. Once you get used to their way of doing things it becomes simple. I still use LR sometimes for specific things – the DAM is much better than C1 and the automatic keystone adjustments are missing in C1. C1 keystone adustments are manual, primitive, and yield inaccurate results.
I am still using C1 v11. I could spend $300 to upgrade to C1 v20 (actually the 13th version but named v20 after the year 2020) but there haven’t been that many updates since v11. a revamped UI and a few changes to functionality of some of the tools and, from what I can tell from their bug fix history included with each new version, not many bugs fixed.
I own Luminar 4 and On1RawPhoto. Luminar is extremely slow, almost unusable. On1 performs much better. I own old hardware. MacBook Air i7 from 2012. Extremely happy with On1 results. They can do pretty much the same, the brush in On1 is better though. Eg to lighten up the subject.
Hello Nasim, As usual, a good article. Your work in general, and the work you put into this one are greatly appreciated. But may I politely object to the classification of C1 as “difficult” to learn? I mean, to develop an image at the most basic level, one can simply: import an image, to go the Exposure tab & drag a few sliders around, then go to the output tab & make a couple of selections and then press “process”. Its really not difficult. Now, yes, C1 has some very powerful features for things like color editing that take a while to learn. But I see that as taking time to learn the more advanced features, rather than the whole app being “difficult”. Further, one can choose a workspace configuration that only provides the essential tools, if that’s all you want. I dare say that, with a proper 5 minute overview to attenuate a new user to the, if you will, “worldview” for C1, that any/ all of your readers can be going both quickly and easily with the essential features. That said, I feel that your classification of C1 as “difficult” is, to some extent, propagating a stereotype. I do not work for C1, and have no vested interest therein. I used Lightroom extensively for years before switching to C1, and would never go back now. I do agree with the comments of some of your readers that catalog management could be improved. I do not agree with the comments to the effect that C1 should be turned into a Swiss Army Knife of sorts. You and yours have a terrific site, and do a terrific job for the community. Cheers!
I’m puzzled that you still don’t include Exposure X5 in this list. Strange that it always gets overlooked, it is a very strong competitor.
Hi Nasim, thanks a lot for your comparison.
What do you mean by “Multi-Batch Export”? Exporting a couple of pictures into different sizes, file types, with and without watermark? I think you need to include C1 then – as soon as I use recipes, I can just check the recipes I like (web-gallery, print, mail, whatever) and let it run – unfortunately they “forgot” a cancel-function. Once it’s running, it can’t be stopped. At least I haven’t foudn the handbrake for it.
And Iridient developer is at least a non-destructive editor which usually is one of the first to support new cameras. Not bad for a one-man-show…
Depending on how ‘Multi-Batch Export’ is defined (export multiple image types/sizes, etc., at once), DxO PhotoLab has also supported this for years: help-photolab3.dxo.com/en/export-to-disk.
Lightroom Classic comes with Photoshop CC, you can not get LR Classic without PS. That turns all of the “No” entries in your chart for LR Classic to a “Yes.” For me, the subscription cost of LR + PS is well worth it.
Good article. However LR Classic has tethering.
I love Lightroom and now have an extensive catalog of all my images so like. choosing a camera system its hard to go back. But LR is very computationally intensive so it takes the fastest computer I can afford to be usable. I also hate the subscription model and feel ripped off and over a barrel having to pay monthly to access all of my time investment in edits.