DXO PhotoLab 9 – The End-Game for Adobe Lightroom?
Now everyone's got AI masks...
In mid-2025, the battle for the crown in the high-end commercial photo editing niche is basically a three-way contest between Adobe Lightroom, Capture One and DXO PhotoLab.
Lightroom is the safe, middle-of-the-road comfort zone for the risk averse: vanilla ice cream, plain toast, salted crisps, and small talk about the weather. Capture One is for Sony A1 shooters who treat their camera like a toddler’s weighted security blanket, forever tethered to a computer. PhotoLab, meanwhile, appeals to purists convinced that real creativity requires a mix of suffering, self-denial, and the occasional set of nipple clamps.
But those roles could be about to change. Yes, even the nipple clamps.
After years of denying their customers access to noob-friendly easy-mode tools like Lightroom’s AI masks, DXO have pulled a plot twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan. Best demosaicing, best denoising, best lens correction and now … best masking?
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Also published in RAW & Unfiltered on Substack.
