DxO’s new handoff removes a small but recurring workflow annoyance: finish optical correction, denoising and local edits in PhotoLab, then choose Export to Affinity. The receiving document is a native .af file rather than an intermediate image manually reopened in another application.
The export can include the uncorrected original as a second layer. That makes side-by-side pixel retouching or compositing easier. DxO says the 10.1 update is free for PhotoLab 10 owners, while a new perpetual license is $249.99.
The useful test is to process one noisy RAW photograph, export it, and compare the layer behavior with your established Lightroom-to-Photoshop workflow. If you do not own PhotoLab, do not buy solely for this feature without testing its RAW quality.
What to do: Watch the official workflow example and decide whether a PhotoLab trial is worth comparing with Lightroom Classic.