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Lightroom is reverse engineered. Adobe does not have Canon's RAW specification. Canon provides developers an SDK to go and make software to their heart's content, but, third party converters do not deliver precisely what was captured in the camera at the time the image was made. It is an approximation.
Have I used Lightroom? I was using it when it first came out. I stopped using it at version 1.2.
Have you ever noticed when you import a library into Lightroom, that at first the images look great, and, then, a moment later, the images change? That's the tone curve being applied to the image. What you saw initially was the embedded JPG thumbnail in the image.
I have spent many thousands of dollars on my gear, and, I simply can't have third party software ape the data that my camera captured.
DPP gives precise, accurate colour (particularly when it comes to skin tones -- I shoot weddings and got fed up of what Lightroom (ACR) was doing to skin, which is what made me change back to DPP). And, now with the DLO module, it now corrects for virtually every known (visible) aberration that can degrade an image for a vast range of Canon lenses and teleconverters. The software models the path a photon of light travels through the entire lens and delivers an optimised image. The corners on even the softest of lenses are now sharp. It is truly remarkable.
There's no denying that Lightroom gives vastly more options when it comes to image processing. However, for me, when more work needs to be done to an image, I use the Transfer to Photoshop option, which then exports the image as a 16-bit TIFF. I prefer knowing that the baseline image that I started to work on, was a true representation of what was captured (and, not what Adobe thinks I captured), regardless of how far I take the image in processing afterwards. In essence, I see on my computer screen, exactly what I saw on the back of the camera, give or take brightness differences between the camera's LCD and my LCD display that I work on.
It comes down to how anal you are. I'm a stickler for quality and true colour. Digital Photo Professional wins every time.
H
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