Let me start off by saying this is not for everyone. If your first thought after reading the article and checking out the price point is to scoff at this, you already know it is not for you. This is for content creators whose time literally is money. In my first test, I saved over two hours with the Expert kit, and even assuming a modest value of $15/hr of my time, that is $30 or 10% of the kit's value back already. Extrapolating this, I predict a 100% return in less than two months. This product is for my fellow editors, reviewers, writers, artists, video creators, and more, those who were not aware of the product or wanted more details from a similar perspective. Even with batch editing and automated processes, there will always be the need for individual item editing, which is where the Palette Expert Kit can help you further cut down on workflow time.

It was imperative then that Palette come out with a flawless product at launch and only improve from there. There are competing products in the market already, especially on MacOS, but they either cost more, require a separate software purchase, or have single-piece controllers instead of the modular concept here. On Windows, the choices are next to none, with a proper driver seemingly rarer than a unicorn. There is MIDI2LR, which aims to be an open source driver, allowing any MIDI controller to be used with Lightroom, but I found it fairly basic in functionality and not playing very well with Windows 10 and, again, high DPI monitors. Palette also opts to directly communicate with these programs rather than go over MIDI, which allows for a generally more robust and responsive interaction. Given these choices, or the lack thereof, Palette is an increasingly appealing product - especially with their kits offering a good deal of savings. Oh, the 15-20% discount on Adobe CC products is an incentive as well.

This is not to say all is perfect in this world. Palette is a startup still, and with it come all the risks of dealing with one. So far, they have seemingly not taken a wrong step in their path towards becoming an established long-term brand, and from everything I have seen, their community involvement and interaction has been excellent. Users actively discuss functionality, beta test the driver, and help release new features from both a hardware and software end. You are paying for both here, and despite the overall good impressions, some may find the non-motorized sliders too much of an annoyance in practice. It also does not help that the promised 2016 deadline for motorized sliders has come and gone, with only more promises about their development in their place.

As of now, Palette has done enough for me personally to justify keeping track of their upcoming products in order to purchase them if I find them worthy. The modular concept really helps here as I only have to replace or add what I need instead of getting a whole new set, which is also why I have no problem recommending it to my peers.