
I believe both programs can be downloaded as demos and that would be the best test for your needs. If you go that route I strongly recommend spending some quality time with tutorials on the LR catalog system.I initially made a huge mess. Although Photoshop and Lightroom have a range of built-in profiles for correcting your images automatically, I'm a big fan of DxO's PhotoLab software. I used to do that once in a while but I've quit using DXO after their last release. Now a separate entity from the DxOMark camera equipment testing lab, DxO has long been among the most dynamic photo editing software makers. You can even route raw files from LR to DXO. LR and PS also have the advantage of being able to run a huge range of software running as plugins. The spot healing tool in PS does the best job of any of these kinds of tools I've tried. The plugins launch as stand-alone programs as long as you are editing JPEG or TIFF files. But you can also use the Nik Collection without a parent photo editing program. The plugins now work with Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, and DxO Photolab. Even if you don't use PS much it has a few tools that are pretty much the best I've seen. The plugins initially were designed to work within Adobe Photoshop.

But compared to DXO it feels like a sports car on my machine. It's often said the LR is a resource hog. DXO can also take a very long time to support new cameras and lenses, though if you shoot Canon, Nikon, or Sony you're probably in better shape.

Just moving basic adjustment sliders It's slow refreshing the image. It doesn't have a dam, it doesn't have layers, and it feels very slow on my machine. Using 2012 Mac mini (albeit one of the quad core i7 2.6ghz versions with 16gb ram) I really have two major advantages for DXO: IMO, their Prime noise reduction and lens corrections modules are really excellent.
