A week or so ago I watched a Tony and Chelsea Northrop video bemoaning Adobe's current business plan. They not only castigated the subscription model, but also the use of subscribers' photos to develop Adobe's AI models. It was pretty strong stuff. In a further solo video, Tony criticises Abobe's use of customers' photos.
Today I came across Tony's "review" of PhotoLab 8. He is absolutely up front about this video being sponsored by DXO PhotoLab, and as sponsored reviews go, this one is fair. Yes, he waxes lyrical about the new post-processing love of his life. But he highlights the strengths of the program with good examples. (After seeing other reviews and tutorials, I found it refreshing that he gets right into the subject without BS or high pressure salesmanship.
Disclaimer: I am just a satisfied customer of DXO: I have been using the program since it was Photolab 4 and am very happy with the results I get. It took me a while to understand how things work differently than in Photoshop, and I have needed to look at a lot of tutorials, as I found the manuals hard to grasp. I gradually weaned myself from Photoshop (CS5), function by function and am amazed at the results that I can obtain from photos taken in highly adverse circumstances. The quality of the noise reduction is unbelievable.
There is a free 30-day trial version available. DXO have generous upgrade discounts, and further Black Friday discounts.
David