DXo advice

[sniper]

Hi I have seen DXo mentioned a lot on the forum, I took a look and it looks pretty interesting,    I'm wondering if any users could advise me on whether it makes enough difference to be wirth the money.  
My second question is once I buy it do I have to buy the camera/len moduals or are they included ?   any advice welcome
I was looking at it for mainly quick auto editing of wedding proofs and the lens correction to improve quality..  Thanks  Wayne

[marcmccalmont]

Hi I have seen DXo mentioned a lot on the forum, I took a look and it looks pretty interesting,    I'm wondering if any users could advise me on whether it makes enough difference to be wirth the money. 
My second question is once I buy it do I have to buy the camera/len moduals or are they included ?   any advice welcome
I was looking at it for mainly quick auto editing of wedding proofs and the lens correction to improve quality..  Thanks  Wayne
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=145676\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I've been using it for a year and a half. It's personal taste but I like it's output compared to other raw converters. The modules are free (as many modules as  cameras and lenses that you have) and you can down load a  trial version with one lens module for a 30 day evaluation. If you go for the evaluation remember the default settings are soft so set lens softness to .5 and under noise set fine detail to 100, and select purple fringing.
Marc

[sniper]

I've been using it for a year and a half. It's personal taste but I like it's output compared to other raw converters. The modules are free (as many modules as  cameras and lenses that you have) and you can down load a  trial version with one lens module for a 30 day evaluation. If you go for the evaluation remember the default settings are soft so set lens softness to .5 and under noise set fine detail to 100, and select purple fringing.
Marc
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=145679\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks a lot Marc, I'll have to give it a try.  Wayne

[Kalin Wilson]

Hi I have seen DXo mentioned a lot on the forum, I took a look and it looks pretty interesting,    I'm wondering if any users could advise me on whether it makes enough difference to be wirth the money. 
My second question is once I buy it do I have to buy the camera/len moduals or are they included ?   any advice welcome
I was looking at it for mainly quick auto editing of wedding proofs and the lens correction to improve quality..  Thanks  Wayne
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=145676\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I've also been using it for about a year. I agree with Marc that some of it's features come down to personal taste. I like what the optical corrections do for my images, especially some of my medium-quality lenses.

It does a good job in most areas of processing but can be a little heavy-handed, especially the color and lighting adjustments. But sometimes those corrections look pretty nice. The 30-day eval is the way to go. Be sure to zoom to 100% to evaluate some of the adjustments.

I don't use DxO for the entire RAW processing flow. I used to run select images through DxO first for optical corrections and produced a DNG that I further processed in LightRoom. Recently I read, and confirmed, that LR's demosaicing does a better job of anti-aliasing than DxO, so I prefer to first convert the RAW in LR, then apply DxO corrections. I do this by editing the image from LR with the DxO plugin and applying optical corrections. The downside to this is that the result from DxO is a tiff rather than a DNG/Raw but I think the implications are minimal.

DxO has a lot to offer and it's not a 'take it all or leave it' kind of tool. Good luck.

[digitaldog]

I don't use DxO for the entire RAW processing flow. I used to run select images through DxO first for optical corrections and produced a DNG that I further processed in LightRoom

So how does that work? Does it render the Raw to pixels to do the corrections then back to DNG for LR? I can't see how it could be otherwise. If that's the case, it seems a bit of an odd way to work considering (despite the fact you've built a DNG), you're not really feeding LR a linear encoded Raw file.

Last time I looked at the product, you it didn't support ProPhoto RGB (sRGB and Adobe RGB (1998)) deal breaker for me. Plus I really don't want to hand off a rendered image to LR, I want to use it to build the rendering from Raw. But maybe I'm missing something.

I guess ideally we'd see a DxO module INSIDE of LR and both would work off the true Raw data.

[marcmccalmont]

So how does that work? Does it render the Raw to pixels to do the corrections then back to DNG for LR? I can't see how it could be otherwise. If that's the case, it seems a bit of an odd way to work considering (despite the fact you've built a DNG), you're not really feeding LR a linear encoded Raw file.

Last time I looked at the product, you it didn't support ProPhoto RGB (sRGB and Adobe RGB (1998)) deal breaker for me. Plus I really don't want to hand off a rendered image to LR, I want to use it to build the rendering from Raw. But maybe I'm missing something.

I guess ideally we'd see a DxO module INSIDE of LR and both would work off the true Raw data.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=145937\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

It now supports any ICC profile. Multiple profiles in one conversion also. I often convert into Dcam3 and Dcam4, check for clipping and work in the smallest usable color space. very powerful tool in my opinion.
Marc

You can also output a DNG

[marcmccalmont]

So how does that work? Does it render the Raw to pixels to do the corrections then back to DNG for LR? I can't see how it could be otherwise. If that's the case, it seems a bit of an odd way to work considering (despite the fact you've built a DNG), you're not really feeding LR a linear encoded Raw file.

Last time I looked at the product, you it didn't support ProPhoto RGB (sRGB and Adobe RGB (1998)) deal breaker for me. Plus I really don't want to hand off a rendered image to LR, I want to use it to build the rendering from Raw. But maybe I'm missing something.

I guess ideally we'd see a DxO module INSIDE of LR and both would work off the true Raw data.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=145937\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

It now supports any ICC profile. Multiple profiles in one conversion also. I often convert into Dcam3 and Dcam4, check for clipping and work in the smallest usable color space. very powerful tool in my opinion.
Marc

[digitaldog]

You can also output a DNG
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=145966\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

But that doesn't mean you're producing a DNG that contains Raw data. Unfortunately Adobe has confused things a bit by allowing one to contain rendered data in the DNG container.

[BernardLanguillier]

But that doesn't mean you're producing a DNG that contains Raw data. Unfortunately Adobe has confused things a bit by allowing one to contain rendered data in the DNG container.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=145990\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

My understanding is that the DNG produced by DxO is indeed RAW data.

Regards,
Bernard

[sojournerphoto]

My understanding is that the DNG produced by DxO is indeed RAW data.

Regards,
Bernard
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146051\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I thought the DNG file produced by DXo was a 'linear DNG', i.e. a linear demosaiced file but probably in the camera's colour space.

I like DXo, and until the latest version of ACR thought it did a better job of demosaicing - the latest version of DXo should improve that functionality, so it may then be better or a match for ACR. At that point the workflow should be better, with either DXo doing lens correction and demosaicing with lightroom doing colour and contrast or DXO doing evertything.  At the moment I like both packages for different reasons, so some proper integration would be good.

Finally, it would be good if Canon would include focus distance in the exif data and DXo could read it.

Mike.

[digitaldog]

I thought the DNG file produced by DXo was a 'linear DNG', i.e. a linear demosaiced file but probably in the camera's colour space.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146085\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That makes more sense to me. Then its not a Raw file which is what I suspected and makes this workflow less useful to me. What we need is a Dxo module in Lightroom as an example, so it provides all the corrections along with the Raw converter to a final rendered file. Saving out a demoasiced DNG isn't too useful IMHO although I can see that's the best the current technology allows.

[httivals]

That makes more sense to me. Then its not a Raw file which is what I suspected and makes this workflow less useful to me. What we need is a Dxo module in Lightroom as an example, so it provides all the corrections along with the Raw converter to a final rendered file. Saving out a demoasiced DNG isn't too useful IMHO although I can see that's the best the current technology allows.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146096\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

What's the drawback of a linear, demoasiced DNG file?  I've been using DXO for about the last month, and have done quite a few tests to make sure I'm not losing any information by first doing certain corrections in DXO before opening the file in Lightroom.  As far as I can tell, there is no lost information -- e.g., the ability to recover blown highlights is the same, whether I start with a file that has first been demosaiced in DXO, or not.  DXO is excellent for eliminating chromatic aberration (much better than Lightroom's functions in this regard), and for correcting for what DXO calls "lens softness" (which is apparently different from an unsharp mask feature; rather DXO apparently corrects for lens blur, and some believe, though it's unclear, measured effects of the particular camera's AA filter).

[DiaAzul]

What's the drawback of a linear, demoasiced DNG file? 

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146110\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The issue so far (up to v4.5 of DxO) has been the quality of their interpolation algorithm to produce a demosaiced image is not particularly good (though this can be debated until the cows come home).

If the image is already interpolated, as is the case with the DxO DNG file, then it is not possible to go back to the RAW data and re-interpolate the image using the preferred RAW converter. This impacts on the sharpnes/ resolved detail/ noise reduction algorithms, that the second converter would normally apply.

Version 5 of DxO due out soon includes a new interpolation algorithm which is supposed to improve the quality of the final image...it doesn't change the fact that you can't re-interpolate the image in a second RAW converter, but it may remove the necessity to do so if DxO can do a good enough interpolation in the first place.

[digitaldog]

What's the drawback of a linear, demoasiced DNG file? 

I don't want them to render the data, I want to use Lightroom for this.

Right now, we're all stuck in picking ONE rendering pipeline. Having them render linear demoasiced data, then putting into a DNG dont' make it a Raw any more. I understand that what I want isn't possible. I'd need Dxo processing inside Lightroom as a module. Having saved demoasiced DNG seems kind of pointless. I might as well just use the rest of their rendering engine but again, I want to do this in Lightroom. They have a few PDF's that give the impression they are doing something special workflow wise with LR but that's apparently not the case. Its more a marketing slant which I guess if fine as long as users understand what's really going on here from start to finish. The part of saving out a DNG kind of gives the impression they are handing off the Raw which apparently isn't the case or today, possible.

[luong]

Having saved demoasiced DNG seems kind of pointless. I might as well just use the rest of their rendering engine but again, I want to do this in Lightroom.

It is correct that you do not get the Adobe demosaicing, but you still get the workflow, the color rendering (which I find more pleasant than DxO), all the controls, including highlight recovery, which as a previous poster indicated, works quite well. Far from useless in my opinion.

[sojournerphoto]

I don't want them to render the data, I want to use Lightroom for this.

Right now, we're all stuck in picking ONE rendering pipeline. Having them render linear demoasiced data, then putting into a DNG dont' make it a Raw any more. I understand that what I want isn't possible. I'd need Dxo processing inside Lightroom as a module. Having saved demoasiced DNG seems kind of pointless. I might as well just use the rest of their rendering engine but again, I want to do this in Lightroom. They have a few PDF's that give the impression they are doing something special workflow wise with LR but that's apparently not the case. Its more a marketing slant which I guess if fine as long as users understand what's really going on here from start to finish. The part of saving out a DNG kind of gives the impression they are handing off the Raw which apparently isn't the case or today, possible.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146116\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I think there are a few things going on here. At the moment there are various options open:-

1. Do everything in LR
2. Do optical corrections and demosaic in DXO, all other rendering work in LR
3. Demosaic and colour render in LR, send to DXo as a tiff for optical and other corrections
4. Do everything in DXo and send to LR as a tiff - you can still make further adjustment in LR.

You can do photoshop work at the end of all these proceses and send back to LR as a tiff (same as DXo).

What isn't possible at present is to manage the raw file in LR as a dng, and then set up the rendering preferences to include DXo as an alternative to the ACR pipeline from within LR for 'render on demand'. Even better would be to be able to pick and choose bits of each pipeline (which I think is what your getting at in looking for a non-demosaiced dng file incorporating optical corrections).

Really how to work depends on the image and use, together with your view/preference as to the ability of each converter. I used to prefer DXo against previous ACR for demosaicing, as well as optical correction and rendering. Now with ACR 4.2 I like the rendering and have got much better at managing the appearance of images in LR. But I still have a place for DXO and hope that v5 does improve the demosaic to match or better ACR 4.2. I suspect I'll need to find time to do some big comparison prints to know though.

Mike.

[digitaldog]

3. Demosaic and colour render in LR, send to DXo as a tiff for optical and other corrections
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146177\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Door #3 sounds like it would please me the most. Might try that.

Door #4 doesn't sound all that useful to me as I don't think LR or CR are really the place to do post rendering work (Photoshop seems best for this). Maybe I'm old fashioned but I think of LR and CR as Raw processing engines even though you can run rendered images through them. But since I do everything in 16-bit Pro Photo, seems like converting to linear encoded ProPhoto to further work on the data is the least damaging. Taking an 8-bit sRGB rendered image is another story....

[Kalin Wilson]

I think there are a few things going on here. At the moment there are various options open:-

1. Do everything in LR
2. Do optical corrections and demosaic in DXO, all other rendering work in LR
3. Demosaic and colour render in LR, send to DXo as a tiff for optical and other corrections
4. Do everything in DXo and send to LR as a tiff - you can still make further adjustment in LR.

Mike.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146177\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Sorry I missed your original question back to me, Andrew; took a day off from the forums. The thread is interesting though, and I agree that a LR DxO module would be much nicer and a better solution.

The DxO plugin, as it stands, is just a shortcut to help enable a workflow between LR and DxO. The downside to using the plugin, as you mentioned, is that you get back a tiff and the RAW workflow is now over.

Option 3 would work for me but it's been problematic for me when I take an image to DxO whether the needed EXIF info is available for DxO module selection. LR rendered files don't have the EXIF info needed and LR develop settings are not seen by the DxO plugin when you go through the 'edit with' option in LR.

So you either process the raw in DxO first and get a linearized DNG, and continue the raw workflow in LR, or you edit from LR to the plugin which results in a tiff and you lose any further raw benefits. Clearly many compromises.

I just saw something that confirmed that the DNG output is still a raw file (of some sort). I opened a .cr2 raw file in DxO, applied some corrections, and output to the same directory as DNG. LR would not import the DNG as it declared it a duplicate of the .cr2 file, even though the extensions differed. I had to rename the file (added '-dxo') to get LR to import it. I opened the DNG in CS3 to see what ACR thought of it, I also rendered it from LR to CS3 to confirm I got the image in ProPhotoRGB. Its obvious that the file from DxO is not the original raw data - it's been changed by DxO, but I think it still classifies as a raw file. Or am I mistaken?

I think both tools have merit. Maybe the next version of DxO will get us closer to a reasonable, minimally destructive workflow between them.

[digitaldog]

A demosiced file is not a Raw file IMHO.

[httivals]

A demosiced file is not a Raw file IMHO.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Andrew, would you care to explain why it's not "raw"?  It's been demosaiced, and it's true as the previous poster states that in the process of doing this DxO does change it (slightly), but it contains all of the headroom of a raw file in my experience (i.e., about a stop of exposure to play with in the highlights).  See: [a href=\"http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/dng/linear.htm]http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/dng/linear.htm[/url] . . .  Of course, the point of a progam like DxO is to change the raw data -- improve it, but to maintain as many of the benefits as possible of raw.  I suppose Andrew's point is that he'd like to see programs like Lightroom and DxO process the same raw data at the same time so that the entire workflow is nondestructive.  But I wonder how that would be possible?  Does Lightroom alone even process all the data at once rather than sequentially?  I doubt it (but that would be great if I'm wrong).