Fred
You know I loves ya, but here I have to take issue. PS might be obliged in most of your cases, but it certainly is not in mine. Lightroom has pretty much everything I need for my B/W landscapes, and I can just import my 3FR files into it and get going. It's horses for courses, again. Your needs, and the needs of many pros here, are way different to mine - I don't have to worry about colour balance or colour profiles, for example. And I certainly don't want lens corrections - the aberations in the old Zeiss glass are part of what gives them their character. Yes, I know, you will just dismiss all this as the ravings of a senile old fool who refuses to move with the times. And of course it's true . . . and I'm proud of it
And Keith - yes I am the Vignette King.
John
Not at all John.
In fact you are right. It just depends on your needs and imagery. If I where in your case I'd use Lightroom without doubt and that's all I'd need. Lightroom has certainly its strenghs and suits many photographers. In my case it is just a non sense because I do not gain what I need because it's more than a raw developer but not enough for by-passing the ps stage for my case, but my case is far from being everybody's case.
This world is as diverse as softwares are.
What yes it is generally admited is MF manufacturers tend to apply their special sauce in their softwares and generally the raw stage is done "better" with the brand's software.
Is it really better? Well, honestly I found some corrections indeed working more straightforward with more efficiency. It's not a gap, it's not huge but enough to be relevant for some. The Phocus mobile is a great gadget (and beleive me, I hate gadgeteries).
The vignette (ah, a french word) is maybe fun for streetshot but not at all for other works. I find that pushing isos to 800, I got better results with brands softwares in chroma and luminance noise than using a third party software. But nothing groundbreaking though. The part of the cake is how lenses are corrected.
It is also true that I'm reserved of this clinical imagery and search for perfection in digital world, and probably working with uncorrected lenses, some vignette, noise and the moire sagas is also a respectable path and powerfull imagery can be acheived with reduced DR and very old non-coated glass.