I need a Black Friday plan for software. Lightroom / Topaz / DXO / Luminar Neo, Portrait Pro, etc.

[LovePhotography]

Well, I used to spend a lot of time on CR circa 2014-2016, but my house burned down, I moved to he Caribbean, helped start a crypto, and just got busy as heck.

So, I've fallen way behind. Just updated all my gear, (even then there was nothing wrong with my EOS 5Ds and lots of L lenses). Bought a EOS R5 and 5 new RF L lenses and a Mavic 3 drone. I have an ages old versions of DXO.

So, here is my question. I need a plan for software that covers all the needed bases for landscape, portrait and architectural photography, plus, now drone video.

I'm willing to buy what I need and works, but I don't want to miss something I need, and I also don't want to buy to products that largely overlap.

What is a sane software plan? Sorry for an essentially newbie questions. Unfortunately, I'm essentially a newbie, again.

Thanks in advance for any thought, links, and possible Black Friday insights...

Thanks,

LovePhotography

p.s. Moon photo 3 weeks ago with my 5Ds and EF 600 2.8 with DXO demo deep prime.

 

[koenkooi]

Provided you're shooting (C)RAW, I find DxO to provide much better noise reduction compared to Topaz Denoise. I still use LR Classic to keep track of all my photos, its asset management is pretty good. Photos with a lot of noise get run through DxO PL first, then I import the resulting DNG and original CR3 into LR.

The recent update to LR Classic have really improved the masking (e.g. human and subject autodetect) and retouching tools, which is another point in its favour.

I recently bought the DxO Viewpoint module, it's very impressive at fixing faces that are near the edge of wide angle shots, it might come in handy for your architecture work as well.

DxO has a black/cyber weekday sale every year, I'm planning to get the discounted upgrade rate at that point.

 

[LovePhotography]

Provided you're shooting (C)RAW, I find DxO to provide much better noise reduction compared to Topaz Denoise. I still use LR Classic to keep track of all my photos, its asset management is pretty good. Photos with a lot of noise get run through DxO PL first, then I import the resulting DNG and original CR3 into LR.

The recent update to LR Classic have really improved the masking (e.g. human and subject autodetect) and retouching tools, which is another point in its favour.

I recently bought the DxO Viewpoint module, it's very impressive at fixing faces that are near the edge of wide angle shots, it might come in handy for your architecture work as well.

DxO has a black/cyber weekday sale every year, I'm planning to get the discounted upgrade rate at that point.

When I try to save a DxO Raw file, it seems to only offer to save as a jpeg or a tiff.
Can I save separately as a RAW, or do I have to make a copy of the original first (if I want to keep the original image)?
Thanks,
LovePhotography

 

[koenkooi]

When I try to save a DxO Raw file, it seems to only offer to save as a jpeg or a tiff.
Can I save separately as a RAW, or do I have to make a copy of the original first (if I want to keep the original image)?
Thanks,
LovePhotography

I use ‘export’ in Photolab5 to save it as a dng.

 

[Kit.]

For noise reduction, is DxO PureRAW 2 Lightroom plugin recommended as a part of Lightroom Classic workflow?

 

[AlanF]

When I try to save a DxO Raw file, it seems to only offer to save as a jpeg or a tiff.
Can I save separately as a RAW, or do I have to make a copy of the original first (if I want to keep the original image)?
Thanks,
LovePhotography

When you are working in PL, it doesn't change the RAW files - it just saves what you want to do with its output in a separate sidecar. ending in in .dop. So, simply export the file to jpeg or tiff for the processed output and you still have the unchanged RAW.

 

[scyrene]

"EF 600mm f/2.8"???