Canon DPP vs Adobe Camera RAW

[ogrec]

I recently switched to newest photoshop (CS6). I've been using ACR that comes with PS6 for few days now, i've took my old photos and edited them again to see how big the difference is. My assumption is that DPP lens profiles that are used for DLO are better then those Adobe uses.
But before going any deeper into this conversation i'd like you to take a look at 3 takes at the same photo, taken with 60D and 15-85mm lens (handheld):
one is jpeg taken by the camera, one is DPP+Photoshop and one is ACR+Photoshop
I was not happy with the shot as i found dynamic range to be too low so i tryed to correct highlights and shadows (to what i think they should look like) using raw edited in DPP using luminosity masks. In ACR process was very fast, using highligts/shadows sliders gave me results i wanted before proceeding to rest of the editing.

I'm not going to tell you which photo was edited with which software, i'd like you to give me your input on which edit you like the most.

1 - http://i.imgur.com/4cuGAcn.jpg
2 - http://i.imgur.com/jYpVVE9.jpg
3 - http://i.imgur.com/VakFSQd.jpg

[nvitalephotography]

#2 is my favorite. I can also tell which one is the one straight from the camera. 1 and 2 seem a lot more similar to each other and 2 looks like it had more done to it.

[ahab1372]

​Ilike 2 the best. My guess is that 3 is camera jpg, and 1 DPP which adjusted according to camera picture style.

[ogrec]

yup, 3 is camera jpg
1 is DPP+PS and 2 is ACR+PS.

workflow for 2 is really quick and its the reason why i'm thinking about leaving DPP completely out of the whole process.
i know people reported before that theres color issues with ACR due to using adobe color profile instead of camera profiles, but latest version of ACR reads camera profiles (Neutral, Standard, Portrait, Landscape) and it seems to me its applying them correctly.

i'm guessing if you have a photo which is good as it is and only need a little bit of sharpening and correcting distortion/CA/vignetting and maybe adjusting white balance, DPP is the way to go, but as long as you feel like photo needs editing in PS (especial lightening or darkening parts of the photo), using ACR is better then using DPP.

what are your thoughts on this?

[shutterdown]

Stick with ACR. Much more versatile, plus you can do most of the editing in it, before bringing the image into Photoshop. For a single image, e.g., where you might meter the scene specifically, and it ends up with too much highlight on one side of the image, you can use ACR's graduated filter to adjust those highlights (also for shadows, color, contrast).