As a hobby APS-C photographer who bought DxO PhotoLab yesterday, I feel obliged to say that unless you actually make money from photography, you WILL shed a tear when paying for either.

$229?[0] I don’t find that to be excessive. You gotta hit four digit to get my tear ducts to engage.

[0] https://shop.dxo.com/en/dxo-photolab7-elite.html

I’m in a lower cost of living European country, a lot of people use $200 phones here. $230 for “some photo editing software” made even my fiancée raise her eyebrows, and she’s used to seeing me pay a lot for computer stuff.

Yeah $229 is about $229 too much for something that comes bundled with a rootkit (nee Pace Interlok). Lightroom was about $140 ($80 for an upgrade) with no DRM, and pretty slick asset management.

Is that still true? I only found some very old forum posts, but nothing about the newer versions.

https://www.dxo.com/eula/

  For security reasons, DxO integrates DRM (“Digital Rights Management”)
  software components in the Software.

Don't know if it's still Pace Interlok, don't care.

DxO came bundled with that rootkit disguised as DRM. No idea if they still do, but I've not bothered with them since. The C1 workflow never reall gelled with me, but really neither do the asset management thing that Lightroom does so well (although to some extent Aperture came close).