New thread on DXO Photolab 4

[Adrian]

I decided to start a new thread as my previous one has got somewhat bogged down by my pursuit of library issues. However, my main driver is processing. A kind person here recommended I try DXO Photolab 4 Elite and so I have spent about 7 hours fiddling with a trial version and reading reviews.

The reviews generally say that DXO is in a different league to Lightroom for rendering etc. To rehash a bit: I have about 12 years experience with Photoshop and Lightroom, as part of Creative Cloud in latter years, but I stopped using it last July when I sold a business. In reality almost all use was delegated to a graphic designer who produced our web images and brochures using InDesign etc, but I was very familiar with processing my own images. As per the other thread I don't like the adobe subscription model. I am no longer running an up to date version of Adobe software so comparisons are difficult. I also trialled Luminar AI and found it unsatisfactory.

DXO Photolab 4 first thoughts

• Only useful for RAW processing as the best features require that. My wife will not be pleased.
• Colour rendering can be selected by camera body. This is a good idea.
• Lens correction is very good (Raw only). We use good L glass pretty much exclusively (apart from one 50mm and a compact travel long zoom green ring lens) and all of the lens profiles are set up)
• I really like the super easy watermarking which can use logos and text and be batch applied
• Batch renaming is very handy and helps address some of my library issues, though so far in my trial I have just been playing with individual images mainly
• Batch processing seems to give a great deal of choice on customising - for example you can elect not to apply it to a certain lens (such as our f1.2L 85mm). I like that feature.
• Noise reduction has completely shocked me. There is a thing called "deep Prime" which seems to fish details out of the depths and make them visible. I have never seen anything come close to this.

I am still attempting to establish if I can be mean and use my very old version of DXO as an upgrade path. But The Elite version otherwise (which is needed to get the noise reduction and some other gadgets) is £179 less a £10 discount code, and runs on three machines. The standard version is £115 but all the stuff I like with batch processing only seems to be available in the Elite one.

I will now move on and have a look at library functionality, but if necessary I will use different software for that if I can preserve all the batch id's and EXIF data.

Adrian

[davidedric]

Hi Adrian,

If you didn't know, DeepPRIME and PRIME work during de-mosaicing, and so far as I know they are the only ones that do. Obviously, it's why they only work on raw, but for my m4/3 files it's a step change

[Adrian]

Yes, thanks Dave, I have discovered that.

I am slightly in two minds about the menu structure. They follow the conventional pattern of sliders on the right had side, but as there are a lot of adjustments available they also have a grouping menu across the top. I suppose it is logical but it adds navigation steps versus just scrolling up and down. Trivial issue though I suppose. Lack of familiarity currently.

[DanK]

I have heard very good things about Prime, but I use noise reduction (other than long-exposure or black frame NR) so rarely that it's not worth the travail of switching to a new raw processor. In the old days, some vendors sold NR as stand-alones or plug-ins, and if DXO offers Deep Prime as a reasonably priced plug-in, I might be tempted.

[Adrian]

I can see that Dan. However, as I am effectively starting from a clean sheet, it is a feature worth exploring. Overall, I have to ask myself will it do everything I need as a processor. Needs more investigation. Haven't tried it on a laptop yet.

[Donald]

I am slightly in two minds about the menu structure. They follow the conventional pattern of sliders on the right had side, but as there are a lot of adjustments available they also have a grouping menu across the top. I suppose it is logical but it adds navigation steps versus just scrolling up and down. Trivial issue though I suppose. Lack of familiarity currently.

You can customise a menu that suit what you do and how you do it. I don't like the running order of some of the tools, so I just move them around and re-order so that I end up with exactly what I want.

[xpatUSA]

Mentioned nowhere here that I could see:

https://www.dxo.com/

It does not support Sigma/Foveon stuff ... Not that dXo ever did.

[stuck]

...[*]Colour rendering can be selected by camera body. This is a good idea.

Photolab's the default setting (“Camera default rendering” - OR, with the Colour Rendering tool switched OFF) is the rendering as defined by your camera. The point of this feature is to make your shots mimic what you'd get had they been shot on a different camera.

...
I am still attempting to establish if I can be mean and use my very old version of DXO as an upgrade path.

Probably, email them and ask.

...
The Elite version... ...is £179 less a £10 discount code... ...The standard version is £115...

If you must have it now then you'll have to pay 'full' price. If you can wait a bit then eventually they'll have a sale, maybe around Easter and again in the summer and you'll get it at perhaps 25% off. If you wait till the autumn and buy the next version of PL (will be PL 5) the instant it comes out you'll probably get about 33% off. If you hold your nerve even longer and wait for Black Friday you'll get an even bigger discount. At lest that's how they've operated for several years. I've never paid anything close to full price.

stuck

[Adrian]

I've been doing some price comparisons. To run Lightroom CC with enough storage capacity to host my Raw library alone, will work out at approximately £40 per month as it is close to £10 per Tb of cloud space. I can reduce this by restriction of the library size (which defeats the point of a library to a degree). LR usually ranks third for ability in reviews of LR, Capture 1 and DXO4. Adobe suggest you can get 20,000 RAW images per Tb. 200,000 jpegs. Their cloud storage and sync in the present market is VERY expensive.

Capture 1 usually wins, marginally in terms of processing, then DXO4 (which seems to have a more fiddly workflow) then LR. DXO4 has the best lens correction and noise reduction but most basic library. However, as a standalone Capture 1 is £300 versus £169 for DXO4, and Capture 1 is £500 if you buy the profile pack.

To use Adobe CC as a library host makes it the most expensive by a very long way and is not justifiable for my amateur use, especially as pretty much every review I have seen ranks it lowest for processing capacity. Part of this seems to be that it is slower in use.

So I am going to do a trial of Capture One (but not the expensive add ons) and see if it worth nearly double DXO4.

[pschlute]

I've been doing some price comparisons. To run Lightroom CC with enough storage capacity to host my Raw library alone, will work out at approximately £40 per month as it is close to £10 per Tb of cloud space. I can reduce this by restriction of the library size (which defeats the point of a library to a degree). LR usually ranks third for ability in reviews of LR, Capture 1 and DXO4. Adobe suggest you can get 20,000 RAW images per Tb. 200,000 jpegs. Their cloud storage and sync in the present market is VERY expensive.

Capture 1 usually wins, marginally in terms of processing, then DXO4 (which seems to have a more fiddly workflow) then LR. DXO4 has the best lens correction and noise reduction but most basic library. However, as a standalone Capture 1 is £300 versus £169 for DXO4, and Capture 1 is £500 if you buy the profile pack.

To use Adobe CC as a library host makes it the most expensive by a very long way and is not justifiable for my amateur use, especially as pretty much every review I have seen ranks it lowest for processing capacity. Part of this seems to be that it is slower in use.

So I am going to do a trial of Capture One (but not the expensive add ons) and see if it worth nearly double DXO4.

You don't need to use cloud storage with LR Classic. Keep all the images on your own hard drives.

[Adrian]

As per previous thread Peter - I don't like subscription models. If Adobe are selling LRC as a standalone now they are hiding it well. But in any case I downloaded the trial yesterday and it crashes like mad on OSX Big Sur using Xeon 10 core 4.5GHz chip. Also with classic you have to manually input keywords. I find that tedious. My gut feel, despite using Adobe for 10 years or so, is that many people would not choose LR now if they were starting from scratch.

[DanK]

You don't need to use cloud storage with LR Classic. Keep all the images on your own hard drives.

That's what I do. I then have a cloud backup using Backblaze, which costs me US$60/year, and a local mirror on an external hard drive for a second backup. I have fewer photos, so I can make do with a 2 TB external mirror, but a 4 TB external drive now costs about US$100.

[Manfred M]

You don't need to use cloud storage with LR Classic. Keep all the images on your own hard drives.

I believe Adobe killed the stand-alone Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CS6 stand-alone boxed sets a couple of years ago. Anything out there is probably old stock.

[DanK]

I believe Adobe killed the stand-alone Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CS6 stand-alone boxed sets a couple of years ago. Anything out there is probably old stock.

I think Peter's comment was about the current subscription LR Classic. mine was.

[Adrian]

LR Classic keeps coming up. The thread is about DXO4. For me LRC is deeply compromised and pretty old software now. If I were to go for a subscription model that would be bottom of my list.

From what I can see Capture One eats LRC alive.

[pschlute]

I believe Adobe killed the stand-alone Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CS6 stand-alone boxed sets a couple of years ago. Anything out there is probably old stock.

I am referring to LR Classic CC. It is the current subscription based product. It gets updated regularly. It does not require you to have any of your files uploaded to a cloud.

[pschlute]

As per previous thread Peter - I don't like subscription models. If Adobe are selling LRC as a standalone now they are hiding it well.

LR Classic is a current subscription based product, not a stand-alone. I only mentioned it as you brought up LR in this quote......

I've been doing some price comparisons. To run Lightroom CC with enough storage capacity to host my Raw library alone, will work out at approximately £40 per month as it is close to £10 per Tb of cloud space.

[Manfred M]

I am referring to LR Classic CC. It is the current subscription based product. It gets updated regularly. It does not require you to have any of your files uploaded to a cloud.

100% Correct. Only Lightroom requires the cloud and is basically targeting the device (phone and tablet) market. I don't use Lightroom at all because I don't do a lot of photography on portable devices.

The Lightroom Classic (formerly known as Lightroom) is indeed what you describe. My wife does her culling and initial edits using it before flipping me her work to do the detail work and printing.

[Manfred M]

Mentioned nowhere here that I could see:

https://www.dxo.com/

It does not support Sigma/Foveon stuff ... Not that dXo ever did.

You are not alone. It does not support Phase One / Mamiya bodies either and only one Hasselblad model. It supports a number of DJI cameras (the company that now controls Hasselblad). Leica is well supported, which is a bit of a surprise, but as Leica output is natively DNG format, that may explain things.

I expect the issue is that there is too much work with too small a potential market to take a product based on a Bayer sensor and remap it to the three layer Foveon approach.

[pschlute]

The naming of the LR products is a bit odd. My natural assumption with a "classic" nomenclature, would be that it refers to a legacy product, so I am not surprised there might be some confusion.