High Dynamic Range raw shot DXO Photo Lab 6 vs Lightroom Classic

Currently comparing the processing abilities of DXO Photolab 6 with Lightroom Classic, this HDR raw image that I took with my Nikon Zfc that had completely blown highlights and too dark shadows seemed like a challenging photo to compare the two programs with.

I do also enjoy using Nikon NX Studio as well a raw editor, however I wasn't really able to improve on this shot too well. I've had my best go so far using PL6 and LrC.
I'm a huge fan of the noise reduction on PL6, which definitely exceeds LrC usually. Photos have been resized to upload here, so the difference in noise reduction may not be as apparent, but there was a distinct win for PL6 when zoomed in on the full res images.

First up a Jpg of how the raw file originally looked:

Processed with Photolab 6:

Processed with Lightroom Classic

Any opinions on which program has produced a better result? I'm still figuring out how to work with HDR images on both programs and have a lot to learn still.

Lightroom looks a bit more hdrish, I don't like how the clouds look right above the trees. DXO looks a bit less vibrant, has more contrast, a little bit darker, the sky looks grayish.

I can't say I prefer one to another (Bottom part of the image I like the lightroom one, and the sky part from DXO), but if I'm to further edit, I'd take the DXO one.

Also, you can just do raw processing with deepprime in DXO and export as dng to lightroom. I myself use DXO for that and further edit the dng in Capture One.

Thank you so much for the feedback :) agree completely about the sky, I'm just trying out the deepprime export to Lightroom :) going to try and play some more and see if I can get it to look a bit better.

DxO PL6 can't deal w/ data in raw channels that is not clipped yet but within ~0.4 stops to clipping unlike ACR/LR - as such it can't be recommended for shots where details/colors in the areas near clipping are important... now if you do not care or can't notice what DxO PL6 does near clipping in raw channels that is another story

"Currently comparing the processing abilities of DXO Photolab 6 with Lightroom Classic, this HDR raw image that I took with my Nikon Zfc that had completely blown highlights and too dark shadows seemed like a challenging photo to compare the two programs with".

I'm confused. I think that the HDR feature in your Zfc creates a jpeg, not a raw file. At least that is the case with my Nikon Z bodies, although I do not have the Zfc. Frankly, that is the reason that hardly anyone uses that in-camera HDR feature.

If it's maximum dynamic range you are looking for, just use the original raw file and forget the HDR feature. Either that, or shoot an exposure bracketed set, and use the Merge To HDR feature in Lr with those files. That gives you a 32 bit, very high DR, raw file to work with.

Good to know, the main thing I really like DXO for is the noise reduction, now Lightroom have released their new AI based noise reduction I'm very interested to see how it compares.

I didn't use the HDR feature in camera, to be honest I've not even tried it yet, as I do shoot mainly in Raw. I see why my initial post was confusing, I only meant HDR in the sense that the photo is an example of a high dynamic range shot.

Okay, thanks. Either Adobe or DXO both give me way more DR when using a raw file than I usually need. If you have Adobe and want more DR, simply shoot 2 or three shots and use the Merge To HDR feature. The result is in incredibly high DR, 32 bit image.

Answer to Naia :

While the Adobe AI denoiser works, it takes "forever" to do its job but can´t quite match DxO PL6.
For the sake of comparison this image was rendered in ACR which took 15 minutes(!), while the DxO rendering took 20 seconds. And yet DxO does a better job.
This on my laptop with nVidia RTX 3050 gpu.

(Viewed at 200%, as it says in the head of the file).

@Rubank

Adobe LR Classic

DXO PL6 DeepPrime

DeepPrimeXD

GPU NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
All at default settings

Heya.
Awesome topic. Multiple parallel topics go in the other forums.
The decision for ones process flow is hard. DXO has little better, more "acute" sharpening, giving little more fine detail. Also Denoise is generally better, although I can see many artifacts coming with it, so it is not like there is no price to pay. But, colors are all messed up on my EOS M6 II, these artifacts, especially at higher ISO speeds, poorly usable brush/masks, I got longer processig times, so it is hard to use it as a single tool. It would be best, if one could set "amount" on the DXO plugin for LR, and then process in LR. But it is not posible. One would have to buy full versions of DXO and Adobe. They certainly know how to milk it. :-)