DxO Optics Pro

[crisscross]

NX2 cannot correct the lens defects as comprehensively as DxO, nor can ACR

I have a copy of NX1.3, but never got round to loading it. Have I missed a trick here? Can NX2 do everything CS3 can do?

NX2 has a non-lens-specific distortion control, which is very useful at the 18mm end of my 18-135 kit lens. I immediately saw what you meant about correcting things one had not noticed were wrong on the 350D+Sigma 50-150 shot....but, for my landscapes, it only matters when a horizon becomes bowed or upright objects near edges lean in & NX2 is fine for that. For someone doing buildings it could be more valuable to have the more powerful DxO job.

NX2 although nominally an upgrade of NX1.3, is virtually a new program. It keeps some of the classic Capture tools, but the difference is that the dodgy 'U-point' is superseded by selections on which absolutely all enhancements can be applied. Also much faster on core2duo chip so you get right away from the preview+disappointment syndrome. I have a thread here + pbase intro gallery on NX2.

My belief is that NX2 can do everything in the way of photographic editing that PS can do, but there is no cut&paste nor full clone set, fancy borders; if you want filters you have to go to Nik software/effex (yuk). I also use PSE as a host for FocusMagic, which is a more sophisticated sharpener than usm and also has an excellent movement correction (see pbase sheet). There is also the advantage that all editing work can be re-accessed for fine tuning later with the edit instructions kept as in DxO 'sidecar', not making up a mega .psd file, which still only allows you to adjust the opacity of a layer on re-open rather than the tool settings that went into it.

[Slipstick]

Just a quick comment before I go out 5 minutes ago (!). I have been processing some portraits and the before/after comparison clearly shows the benefit of distortion correction; in my case barrel distortion, which did no favours to my 'models'.

Thanks for the other comments - appreciated.

Tony

[Colin Southern]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for your thoughts.

I have to admit to being baffled as to why they won't support DNG as an input file - I'm having trouble buying into their stated reason of "only working with unprocessed files" as my understanding of DNG is that ALL manufacturer data is included - there's even provision for manufacturers encrypted "secret sauce" fields, so as I now remember saying earlier, I would have thought that the standardisation of DNG would have made their job easier, not harder. I have to admit wondering if it's more of a business decision to force users to choose between ACR and DxO? (as they are competing entities).

It sounds like it suits your workflow well, but not so suited to mine. Primarily I'm a landscape / seascape shooter - so I take a number of images at each location - pick the best one - and process it from there; always with several adjustment layers at a minimum. A lot of work is done in ACR, and from what little I've seen of DxO, I don't think there's anything in the parts that I use than would offer any advantages over ACR - I suspect that in the hands of an experienced operator, both would probably produce similar outcomes.

Where I did find it exciting was in the possibility of various lens corrections, but issues like barrel distortion, keystone, vignetting, CA can be handled easily in PS (admittedly not in a batch process, but I only work one image at a time anyway), and I'm curious as to whether some of the more dramatic corrections are needed more due to folks using the wrong lens for the job in the first place (eg a WA lens up close for portraiture)?

I wonder if it's only a matter of time before camera manufacturers start building lens correction data into the camera firmware (I've already heard a whisper of this).

[crisscross]

The whole point about DxO is that it is based on their anylysis of 'hundreds' of actual camera bodies and lenses. Like most RAW converters it also picks up 'in house' rather similar settings/variables as the manufacturers build-in to theirs - as far as Canon DPP and Nikon NX series is concerned. Their contention is that this gets the best of both worlds, the manufacturers' knowledge of what happens between sensor and card and what imperfections are characteristic of the actual hardware.

As I understand it you have to convert your RAW to DNG format and do so in the expectation that it will be the eternal industry standard in years to come. All I say on that is I wish you better luck than the .dxf format in the CAD industry which, apart from changing every year, totally pisses up file formats of decent software like Microstation in favour of the industry monopolist Autocad.

I have now surprised myself with 1st go at a nef file converting/tuning using DxO then continuing in NX2 and improving on the final outcome. I obviously chose a pig of an image. Maybe I have had more practice in PP in the intevening months. This one also doesn't take in to account lens characteristics as DxO don't include my 80-400VR, not a popular lens as it is very slow, but seems pretty good in every other way.

I am now going to see what happens on an 18mm shot from my 18-135 kit which should be really lousy as it was more or less given away free.

My hat is at risk Tony.

[Slipstick]

Hi Colin

Like you, I cannot understand why they cannot use DNG files IF they have no further processing information other than the original camera + image data in the exif. I am not aware of what is contained in a DNG file exif and how this differs from the 'virgin' raw file data.

Interestingly, I have read in their operating manual under the colour rendering section, p42 (out of 67!): 'in RAW [as opposed to RGB JPG/TIFF], the basic rendering is the one measured by DxO for a 'standard' or 'normal' setting of the camera - we'll refer to this as the 'factory setting', it's the one preselected by the camera as supplied.' So even the user-selected colour settings on the camera seem to be ignored, to be replaced by DxO computed settings!

I've not noticed this in my use of DxO, but I will look out for it. The default settings seem to enhance the image in almost every case for every parameter.

Most of my work is on landscapes and initially, I thought such lens distortions would not be apparent (on a wavy field with shapely sheep and gnarled trees) and like you, I do a lot of layer work in PS. However, I have found that the mere fact that fringing and vignetting is eliminated, noise dramatically reduced and shadow detail is improved, together with global and detail sharpening, are sufficient reasons to go with DxO. Lens distortion removal is the a big bonus and is immediately obvious on water horizons. All this happens automatically, whereas I used to spend ages correcting each of these aspects one at a time for each image.

Whilst I agree many of these can be handled easily in ACR and PS, I see no reason to have to do them every time, when I can be spending my time better adding the creative changes to the already-corrected image. Actually, neither ACR nor PS can correct complex distortions, although admittedly these only become apparent on architectural shots.

Must go ... back to some image manipulation

Regards

Tony

[Colin Southern]

Hi Tony,

If you override DxO automatic choices for a single image, are these or can these be saved anywhere, or must you start from scratch everytime you open the RAW file?

[atvinnys]

Colin,

like Lightroom, Dxo allows to create presets...
you can import pictures within a project with that presets and then do further tweaking or go directly to processing..

so it's very flexible...it also has virtual copies, etc...

[Slipstick]

Agree with atvinnys. Also, there are several presets built-in, any of which can be selected, then modified as you wish and saved as named preset for regular further use. Presets produced by others can also be imported (I understand, though I've not yet tried it).

[Slipstick]

I have now surprised myself with 1st go at a nef file converting/tuning using DxO then continuing in NX2 and improving on the final outcome. I obviously chose a pig of an image. Maybe I have had more practice in PP in the intevening months. This one also doesn't take in to account lens characteristics as DxO don't include my 80-400VR, not a popular lens as it is very slow, but seems pretty good in every other way.

I am now going to see what happens on an 18mm shot from my 18-135 kit which should be really lousy as it was more or less given away free.

My hat is at risk Tony.

I hope your 18-135 lens is one of the module lenses - that's really where DxO wins out.

I think we would all like to see this hat of yours which you are about to consume ...

[Slipstick]

Just a quick one, the user guide is on the website but not easy to find. This is the link:

http://www.dxo.com/var/dxo/storage/f...al_EN_V5.3.pdf

[atvinnys]

Presets produced by others can also be imported (I understand, though I've not yet tried it).

seems the accross platform import doesn't work just yet...otherwise works like a champ.
Editing preset is also very easy and you can tell very easily 1/ if a correction feature is enabled (those are grouped by palettes) and 2/ if it is, which correction gets applied, how much ,e tc...

so flexible..

[Colin Southern]

Colin,

like Lightroom, Dxo allows to create presets...
you can import pictures within a project with that presets and then do further tweaking or go directly to processing..

so it's very flexible...it also has virtual copies, etc...

Thanks for that, but I'm not talking about presets - I'm talking about preferences selected for an individual image.

Presets are great for batch processing, but that's not what I do (well not for landscape anyway) - it's more a case of picking 1 image out of 50, and loving it to death with highly personalised RAW conversion settings, so the RAW conversion settings are never the same for even 2 files.

ACR remembers these (it writes them to a DNG file, or creates a companion *.XMP "sidecar" file, or stores them in an internal database), but I'm just curious to know if DxO is capable of doing that, or would they all need to be documented and re-entered if the file was ever re-processed?

[atvinnys]

Dxo does allow you to save a sidecar file (.dxo) which is pretty much like an xmp file (set of all the correction for that picture).

note that this sidecar file is of the same format as a preset (after all, just the snapshot of all the modification), so you can easily create a preset from it. (however, they won't allow sidecar generation for virtual copies...another PITA I had to complain about...)

Dxo then is not greatly flexible...there is a general setting (not per picture thingy...I did ask about this though) that allows you to loadup automatically those .dxo file if they exist (instead of applying the preset you selected for import).

but you can find/archive those settings...
those will also be stored as part of the database/project (and again, another pb with the latest design of Dxo, only one database with multiple project, and you cannot export a project....just inconvenience really...)

hope this helps...

[crisscross]

I hope your 18-135 lens is one of the module lenses - that's really where DxO wins out.

I think we would all like to see this hat of yours which you are about to consume ...

The lens is, will try this afternoon & also post hat pic!

BTW the deal was also that you should try NX2 for comparison; I have made it easy for you by doing an intro at http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/nx2 whereas I have to grapple with the mickey mouse style DxO interface & manual from a standing start

I am not going to join in on the presets etc as at present I am only interested in conversion; as long as I can do one 'circuit' going back to fine tune its .tif before continuing in NX2 that's fine. Batchworking must be great for folks who have, say taken 500 wedding pics in an underlit hall, but I rarely apply settings even on to a 2nd image, mine are all different. And no way am I going to allow any prog to disturb my own filing system.

[Slipstick]

The lens is, will try this afternoon & also post hat pic!

BTW the deal was also that you should try NX2 for comparison; I have made it easy for you by doing an intro at http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/nx2 whereas I have to grapple with the mickey mouse style DxO interface & manual from a standing start

Look forward to seeing the hat. I imagine it to be a furry thing with a bobble on it ...

I have looked at the link and will spend some time studying it. Many thanks.

OK, OK, I will try NX2 - stop nagging! To be honest, I was put off after trying the Nik plug-in for PS CS3 using U-Point technology. I found it to be very awkward to use, and I understand the same technology is used for NX2.

As for the DxO interface, yes, it is not what we have come to expect with our PS training, but PS was strange on first use. I have been grappling with the manual over the last few days. There are lots of nuggets in there, in particular, explanations of why they do things the way they do, which is most useful.

Have you discovered/tried the Multi-Point Color Balance tool? Any thoughts? Seems to have some similarities with U-Point tech.

[crisscross]

Look forward to seeing the hat. I imagine it to be a furry thing with a bobble on it ...

Have you discovered/tried the Multi-Point Color Balance tool? Any thoughts? Seems to have some similarities with U-Point tech.

I have done post on the hat at
the hat I may have to eat in landscape context (!)

I haven't tried the DxO multi-point and never like the u-point thing, now superseded by NX2 full enhancement facility on all selections.

I have tried DxO on an 18mm shot, which I see was also be around 1.0EV underexposed, must have turned the speed knob the wrong way to 1/1000. The distortion correction defaulted at 100% does just remove the barrel distortion, but in NX2 the same correction is achieved by 23% with a potential to go up to 100% (and -100% the other way).

The exposure correction, saturation compensation and noise removal at first looked promising at the transfer stage of the DxO tif to NX2 and the sharpening better - but the tif breaks up horribly with any further adjustments, whereas the nef holds up; so in the end its a win for NX2 on that particular test.

I really don't like the 'keystoning' thing in DxO. I use GraphicConverter (sorry mac only) for that - it has an 'unskew' in which you drag a square of lines to what you think you want done - and its still there if, as usual, the first attempt is not quite what is required, so you can progress to wha you want. (I only have PSE4 where you have to place all 4 corners at each try, may well have improved in newer CS)

I think I will get DxO for (a) re-visiting my 350D collection for club competition entries and greetings cards (b) a second string for nefs that really won't behave*. But the gross disruption of workflow compared to the usual seamless Nikon Transfer>View NX>Capture NX2 will require a fair bit of justifying.

* You also mention landscapes with sheep Tony, so may also find yourself up against the ghastly pale blue light thick with water vapour that we get in the midlands and can produce incredibly bland images even though the human eye can interpret it so it seems worth pressing the shutter? Do you have a public gallery?

[Slipstick]

Hi Chris

Firstly, no public gallery (as yet!) but I will try to put some images on here. From your comments I guess the hat is still intact! Your Lakes images are good. I have some that are rather different - again will put up here.

Your comments are very useful. I think the 100% correction of distortion means that the full correction has been applied as determined by the module: a fully corrected image. I surmise that as NX2 is not lens-specific, its 23% corresponds to approx full correction, with plenty in hand for other lenses needing more correction. I'm happy with this aspect of the programme.

Point noted about TIF. I intend to save to DNG mainly for further work in PS CS3. The default sharpening continues to surprise me, indeed, do I really need to do final sharpening in CS3 prior to printing? Will make some checks.

The keystoning is supposed to be good in DxO and I'm still doing some checks on this. Cropping seems very odd; an image I've just played with ended up without the crop I applied, so not sure what I did wrong.

My main attenton at present is directed at the colour and contrast rendition adjustments. A lot of this seems confusing. I hope I will be able to reduce my workflow to just the basic adjustments and save these as presets. The potential in this area is impressively high; it's just a matter of grasping it and applying it.

The main drawback is the high RAM and fast CPU demands. My 1.81GHz AMD Athlon 64 3400+ processor + 1.5 GB RAM really struggles to refresh the screen when I'm trying out adjustments. CS4 runs far faster.

I hope you've enjoyed the DxO experience. I intend to persevere; the correction features are really valuable to me and if I can include the other adjustments it means I will do little or nothing in ACR - just move directly to CS4. That's plan A, anyway ...

Tony

[shreds]

Chris, you might want to check Lightroom2...the brush tool allows you to do some local adjustment only (don't remember if sharpening is one of them though...I think it mostly covers exposure, color, etc..)

Then again, you can start with Dxo, and send a tiff 16 bit to Light room for more detailed work..

Vincent,

LR2 can deal with white balance, exposure, recovery, fill, blacks, brightness, contrast, clarity and vibrance. Within the presets it has sharpening for portraits and sharpening for landscapes, but I prefer NX2 for this. LR2 is a good cataloguing/library tool that is incredibly intuitive for workflow, but you do need PS+LR2 for more advanced operations.

Ian

[Colin Southern]

Vincent,

LR2 can deal with white balance, exposure, recovery, fill, blacks, brightness, contrast, clarity and vibrance.

BTW, LR2 uses the same processing engine as ACR (Adobe Camera RAW).

[atvinnys]

Ian,

I know LR2 can do all that...and Dxo/LR have quite a lot of feature in common (kind cover the basics for PP, the same way DPP does to some extent, etc...)
what I am saying is simply that Dxo has lens distortion as well...
LR however is doing some other stuff better (like the brush), at least in term of UI...

no perfect tool it seems.....but like my wife says: if you took the picture correctly to begin with, you wouldn't need all those tools....
Vincent