[exuvia]

People like LR because it's easy to find on the net for "free" That said, it's a good software, but a little "wanna-do-it-all", which leads to some stiffness.

 

I used to use Silkypix: best color rendition out there, smooth details in color-saturated areas, lot of well done and "out of the box" controls; in the last years, however, it has been left behind in resolution and ISO noise by most of the other main players. Pity.

 

In the last couple of years I'm using Capture One Pro, the best to me. It is made by people who understand how photographers work, and you can easily see it. Noise treatment and resolution at the highest level; complete, logic and customizable interface. I just hope it won't follow the LR philosophy to try to do it all, from slide-shows to web publishing (well, it already do those things, but in a discreet way) and so on: I think there is the right tool for every different task, somewhere else.

 

However, a RAW converter could be only evaluated as a whole: if we are talking about single features, some are always better than others. RAW Therapee, for example, is still the king of the hill when it comes to "resolution": very good software, and free.

Just my 2 cents.