DXO Photolab 7

[Deleted Member 5045]

Does anyone know much about this? It does allow the one off purchase which is attractive. Seems to have some fantastic reviews. It also sounds like the denoise is really impressive.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

I got On1 that time and it just didn't work for me at all on my computer. I like the look of this one, I might download the trial and see how I go from there.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

Just make sure you get plenty of time during the trial period, it's usually too short for me to get a good feel for the program.

Thirty days they have there for the trial. I have next week off work to hang around the beach with the weather getting warmer so I'll have a fair bit of time to check it out.

 

[Raz]

There is a full 31-day trial period. That is plenty long to test the software.

Be sure to watch as many tutorials as possible. There is a learning curve.

It took me some time to realize that, although defaults are good, one should not hesitate to play with settings.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

There is a full 31-day trial period. That is plenty long to test the software.

Be sure to watch as many tutorials as possible. There is a learning curve.

It took me some time to realize that, although defaults are good, one should not hesitate to play with settings.

Sweet! Cheers for that.

I've always had my own presets on LR which I use as a base for most images unless I just want to start from scratch for some reason. I don't like the idea of letting someone else decide what suits me or not.

 

[Clix Pix]

Probably I am not using DXO PhotoLab anywhere near its full potential, but some years ago when I was looking for a new editing program when I hit upon this (I think it was v.3 at the time) I immediately felt at home right away and was able to process images. A couple of months ago just out of curiosity I downloaded and installed ON1 and have to admit I haven't gotten very far with it, somehow it just isn't all that intuitive for me right away, which is disappointing. I know I need to spend more time actually exploring and working with the program, so I haven't given up on it yet. In the meantime I've still been working with DXO PhotoLab 6, the comfortable and familiar..... So now DXO has announced PhotoLab 7..... I think I'm going to wait a little while before jumping into that.

I just want something which is fairly easy to understand right out of the gate, I am not into doing fancy stuff with masks and layers and all of that. I just want to edit my RAW images so that they look reasonably close to what I saw or envisioned at the time I was taking the shot(s). Is that too much to ask?

 

[spudhead]

Thirty days they have there for the trial. I have next week off work to hang around the beach with the weather getting warmer so I'll have a fair bit of time to check it out.

I wonder if it is like capture one a cut down version, which is crazy because it does not show what the product can really do

 

[Clix Pix]

Capture One was way too out of my league, which I realized fairly early on and it was (thankfully) not long after that when I discovered DXO. We all have different thinking styles, learning styles and so on, and sometimes it does take a while to find an editing program which really works for us.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

Probably I am not using DXO PhotoLab anywhere near its full potential, but some years ago when I was looking for a new editing program when I hit upon this (I think it was v.3 at the time) I immediately felt at home right away and was able to process images. A couple of months ago just out of curiosity I downloaded and installed ON1 and have to admit I haven't gotten very far with it, somehow it just isn't all that intuitive for me right away, which is disappointing. I know I need to spend more time actually exploring and working with the program, so I haven't given up on it yet. In the meantime I've still been working with DXO PhotoLab 6, the comfortable and familiar..... So now DXO has announced PhotoLab 7..... I think I'm going to wait a little while before jumping into that.

I just want something which is fairly easy to understand right out of the gate, I am not into doing fancy stuff with masks and layers and all of that. I just want to edit my RAW images so that they look reasonably close to what I saw or envisioned at the time I was taking the shot(s). Is that too much to ask?

Thank you for the information mate, that's good to keep on board.

My view has been that I'd rather give my money to a smaller organisation providing the service is basically on par. In regards to masking and stuff, I do it to control colours and brightness of certain parts of the image, or I'll remove a rock or a buoy or something, but overall I like to keep my editing quite simple and reflective of the original image I had in front of me. Some time ago I was going to do Mads Peter Iversen tutorials on LR, but I seen his before and afters and know I just wouldn't feel right presenting an image which holds pretty much no resemblance to the original scene. I've never been able to grasp science fiction as something has to be real in order to hold my attention, this is why I only read autobiographies. So yes, as awesome as it looks I think photography is doing a misjustice by adding many artificial elements to an image, unless it is intended to be a completely fictional scene of course.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

I wonder if it is like capture one a cut down version, which is crazy because it does not show what the product can really do

I don't really believe in editing an image into oblivion, it's really just about giving my money to the little guy. As long as I'm getting a close to the same quality experience I'll be happy.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

So I gave it a crack. No sky or subject masking. Pretty annoyed that I just wasted two hours on it. Not really sure how an AI incorporated RAW editor wouldn't have those things in it.

Adobe lives on...

 

[Alan Clark]

I have been using ON1 for several years, but i was unhappy about some aspects of it, particularly the duplication of sliders, and also tools within tools, which is very messy. I don't know if this has been fixed in the recent release.

I recently tried DXO 6 to see if it was better. I like the colour wheel within DXO, which I find very useful for processing my infrared photos. This can now be used in local adjustments, but this is the only new feature in DXO 7 that I find useful, and I don't think other people will use the other new features very much , so I don't think that v7 has significantly more to offer than v6,

One strange omission from DXO that all other software has is a vignette tool. In DXO you can only remove vignetting, but not add it!

I expect that in future I will use DXO for my infrared photos but use ON1 for normal photos.

 

[spudhead]

DXO Masking tutorial - Bing

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2 hours isn't enough time to evaluate a program. And unless you really dedicate yourself, neither is 30 days. This is exactly what I meant in my post. Every time I think about a new program, I remind myself of the effort it takes to become fluent in it. No thanks. Something would have to be pretty spectacular for me to change up. I've been using Darktable for years and recently had an issue with it. My own fault, but it took a bit to sort it out. I've had Affinity now for a few years and still don't fully know my way around it.

I think the stuff you want to do is there, probably just not where/how you're used to seeing it. Some of the tutorial videos in the link talk about auto masking.

This is the problem I think people get used to what they have used before and it is a big deal to change editing software and change workflow and relearn

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

Watch the tutorial for auto mask and you'll see it's dumb. You literally manually draw over the space you want to do then it does it, then use the eraser to correct any over hang. So then you would manually also have to do between a bird's leg or some leaves in the sky etc. I have no idea why they named it auto mask...

Not sure how it makes sense to spend an extra hour on an image to manually do a mask and still not have it perfect when I can have the program automatically select the subject perfectly for me.

As I said earlier, if I find something that is on par then I will happily switch over, but I'm not going to change for something if it is actually no where near as good and just adds a tonne more work to my already too much time spent editing.

 

[Matthias]

I can only speak for DxO Deepprime denoise software, which I bought last year as a black Friday deal. It is now part of my editing workflow, I select the photos that I want to edit (in LR) and select via 'Plugin Extras' the option to 'Process with DxO'. The photos get processed (converted from ARW to DNG, causing a file size increase of around 4x) and automatically imported back in LR where you can make your final edits before export.

In short, the denoise capabilities are of epic proportions! I can use ISO6400 and after processing it looks like ISO100.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

I can only speak for DxO Deepprime denoise software, which I bought last year as a black Friday deal. It is now part of my editing workflow, I select the photos that I want to edit (in LR) and select via 'Plugin Extras' the option to 'Process with DxO'. The photos get processed (converted from ARW to DNG, causing a file size increase of around 4x) and automatically imported back in LR where you can make your final edits before export.

In short, the denoise capabilities are of epic proportions! I can use ISO6400 and after processing it looks like ISO100.

A 4x file size increase on a 60mp image would equate to 1/2 a gigabyte!

How long does the denoise process take?

 

[Matthias]

A 4x file size increase on a 60mp image would equate to 1/2 a gigabyte!

How long does the denoise process take?

Yes, you will need a lot of storage space. My 24mp photos (around 25mb) will change into 100mb DNG's. After processing and exporting you can delete them ofcourse and keep the original ARW, as your can easily redo the DxO processing.

I think the processing time depends heavily on the system you are using.

I have a laptop with a GPU which helps in processing time. For me it takes on average around 7-8 seconds per photo.

Edit: the file size increase and processing time is for the DeepPrime denoise function. There are 2 other options for processing (I don't recall the names) that are less taxing on the system and produce DNG's with smaller file size

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

Yes, you will need a lot of storage space. My 24mp photos (around 25mb) will change into 100mb DNG's. After processing and exporting you can delete them ofcourse and keep the original ARW, as your can easily redo the DxO processing.

I think the processing time depends heavily on the system you are using.

I have a laptop with a GPU which helps in processing time. For me it takes on average around 7-8 seconds per photo.

Edit: the file size increase and processing time is for the DeepPrime denoise function. There are 2 other options for processing (I don't recall the names) that are less taxing on the system and produce DNG's with smaller file size

Silly me actually bought PhotoLab 7! It does Deepprime XD in a few seconds whereas LR takes anywhere from 8-20 minutes. I might use PhotoLab to denoise then send it over to LR.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

Silly me actually bought PhotoLab 7! It does Deepprime XD in a few seconds whereas LR takes anywhere from 8-20 minutes. I might use PhotoLab to denoise then send it over to LR.

Thank you Matthias! I done a few images last night to test it out. At worst I'm having an image take about a minute and a half to noise process in DXO and be sitting on the screen in LR Classic waiting to be edited, at best I'm looking at around thirty seconds. My LR took anywhere from about six to twenty minutes before! The denoising on DXO is probably even a fraction better in the areas of fine detail from what I can see and the time I will save has made this stuff up purchase valuable after all.

What an exercise this past couple of days was! What I first thought was a mistake has resulted in me moving from that LR basic to LR Classic which delivers much better images alone, then on top of that I've discovered an AI denoise which takes next to no time to work. What a win!

 

[Matthias]

Thank you Matthias! I done a few images last night to test it out. At worst I'm having an image take about a minute and a half to noise process in DXO and be sitting on the screen in LR Classic waiting to be edited, at best I'm looking at around thirty seconds. My LR took anywhere from about six to twenty minutes before! The denoising on DXO is probably even a fraction better in the areas of fine detail from what I can see and the time I will save has made this stuff up purchase valuable after all.

What an exercise this past couple of days was! What I first thought was a mistake has resulted in me moving from that LR basic to LR Classic which delivers much better images alone, then on top of that I've discovered an AI denoise which takes next to no time to work. What a win!

More part was little but glad to be of help! Enjoy all the extra time you now have

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

More part was little but glad to be of help! Enjoy all the extra time you now have

Luckily I've only been using Denoise AI for a couple of weeks now, so this little happening was well timed.

 

[Landshark99]

My only comment on anything DXO is in the past their support email response was extremely lacking, lately though that seemed to have been improved a lot.