[Dlanor Sekao]

Im rather new ....well...... I am new to using Post processing in many ways. (not much experience)
Using Silkypics now , and have used some Canon software but not too impressed with either.
Stumbled on DXO and got excited !
Decided Im going to give it serious consideration in either stand alone or as a Plugin probably to Lightroom or Photoshop.

Im a bit confused though as to which version of DXO to get as it looks like one version is Supporting Raw in either mode and one is only supporting Raw in stand alone. Did I get that right ?

Ive pretty much decided DXO is a must for me ! But Im undecided as far as what else I should go with ? ... LR ?... PS ?

Then there are various versions of each and I even see there appears to be a third version of DXO now too ?

What should I get ? Would preffer using only one complete package , but it doesnt look like thats a real possibility to get the full benefit of Post processing and DXO combined ?

My ambitions lean towards Landscapes , travel and Macro..... with bits of everything else thrown in here and there. I want good sharpening and NR available plus all the filter and correction effects.
Im using RAW / DNG........and just as learning the K3 , guess Im needing to learn a bunch about the above.

I dont want to waste any $$$ in the process for something I dont really end up needing even though I have high ambitions now.
Neither do I want to purchase something and find out later I actually needed something more advanced and have to re purchase a better version or higher priced Package.

I also love old glass ! I love the effects of Film long past....Ilford , agfa , sensia , and Kodachrome.....DXO is a MUST have for me ! Its the rest of the puzzle I need help in deciding.

Is my enthusiasm for DXO justified ? Did I zero in on a top performer with DXO ? Is my choice of DXO valid ?

Thanks Pentaxians....I wouldnt mind some feedback ??

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Last edited by Dlanor Sekao; 12-14-2014 at 09:18 AM.

[Canada_Rockies]

DxO can be a resource hog at times, because it does so much without intervention. I hated darkroom work, and barely tolerate Lightroom work. DxO automates most of the post processing for me.

I use Lightroom with (recently upgraded to) DxO 10 elite as a plugin for the tricky bits. For an important set of images, I will just load the computer and turn DxO on while I go have supper and a beer or two.

Caveat: DxO is not much use except for the lens/body combinations they have. You noted that you love old glass. I don't find DxO much help with my SMC-M or M42 lenses. Personally, I would recommend starting with Lightroom. The catalogue is excellent, and the later processing abilities (I'm on v5.7) are quite good. It is a lot less expensive than Creative Suite, and a lot less hassle for me.

If you do a lot of architectural photography, you might pick up Viewpoint - it makes the corrections for buildings leaning back easy. Lightroom will do it, too, but not by simply drawing a couple of lines with the mouse.

[Dlanor Sekao]

Caveat: DxO is not much use except for the lens/body combinations they have. You noted that you love old glass. I don't find DxO much help with my SMC-M or M42 lenses. Personally, I would recommend starting with Lightroom. The catalogue is excellent, and the later processing abilities (I'm on v5.7) are quite good. It is a lot less expensive than Creative Suite, and a lot less hassle for me.

If you do a lot of architectural photography, you might pick up Viewpoint - it makes the corrections for buildings leaning back easy. Lightroom will do it, too, but not by simply drawing a couple of lines with the mouse.

YUP ! I only own 1 auto focus lens and its profile supported (18-135 WP) but not a stellar lens to start with.
Hmmmm....I dont think this DXO is gonna do much for me at all without fully profiled lenes.
So much for that one as Im not willing to upgrade a bunch of glass , nor do I have a desire to.
Guess I should have read in detail about DXO.......first !
FA and up there are quite a few that have profiles and the newer DA line there are most supported with profiles.
NOPE......this aint gonna cut it !

[MJSfoto1956]

actually, even without a specific lens+body profile, DxO still does a superlative job removing sensor noise via its PRIME processing. Once you have such an optimized TIFF, you can then apply another lens profile via Photoshop or PTlens or other 3rd party app. While not quite as good as a dedicated DxO lens+body profile you still get the best shadow detail from your sensor.

YMMV

Michael

[Des]

Decided Im going to give it serious consideration in either stand alone or as a Plugin probably to Lightroom or Photoshop.

Im a bit confused though as to which version of DXO to get as it looks like one version is Supporting Raw in either mode and one is only supporting Raw in stand alone. Did I get that right ?

DxO have three products:

• DxO Optics Pro - a fully-featured RAW converter and image processing program in the manner of Lightroom. It offers automatic correction for many camera+lens combinations. Its stellar feature is PRIME noise reduction (in the Elite edition). The ClearView feature added in v.10 is handy too, for removing haze. Available as a standalone program or a plugin for Lightroom.
• ViewPoint - for correcting distortions from wide angle lenses. Available as a standalone program or plugin for OP, Lightroom or other programs
• Filmpack - a program that replicates numerous film effects. Available as a standalone program or plugin for OP, Lightroom or other programs

I have the first two and they fulfil all my post-processing needs. But then almost all my lenses are supported. as Canada_Rockies points out, if most of your camera and lens combinations are not supported, the case for DxO Optics Pro as a standalone is less compelling. There are tools to make corrections manually (for distortion, vignetting, CA, etc) but you might be better just using LR for this. But as Michael says, the PRIME noise reduction function in DxO Optics Pro is so good it would be worth getting as a LR plugin for this alone.

I also love old glass ! I love the effects of Film long past....Ilford , agfa , sensia , and Kodachrome.....DXO is a MUST have for me ! Its the rest of the puzzle I need help in deciding.

I think you are referring to Filmpack. Sounds like you would find this a worthwhile plugin for LR too.

[Fauxton]

I have DXO10, Viewpoint and I have been using it since DXO version 8. I use DXO and Viewpoint for photos that I want to spend particular attention to (I also have Filmpack 3 loaded but I haven't used it much). I then load them into CS6 as DNGs and continue whatever I want to do there. I have number of third party plugins for CS6 but I find the most useful are the Nik suite.


I have recently tested the results against a number of its contemporaries - ACR8.7 (recent), Rawtherapee 4.2.30, DCU (5.2.1), and Photo Ninja 1.2.4RC. I had an old copy of C1 V6 but not the newer one. Interestingly I found that Rawtherapee provides a pretty compelling conversion for the K3. Good detail but I haven't yet figured out the denoising.


ACR is perhaps the easiest to use. I have a K3 profile (and K5) dialed in so I get a rich set of accurate colors. DXO lens corrections are better than ACR and the lens softness correction is quite something. As far as correcting problems caused by wide angle lens DXO Viewpoint has no peer. Its easy and leaves a believable result.


Out of all the convertors I think it depends. Most viewers wouldn't see much difference between any of them and for the most part you can come close to duplicating any results with any one of them. In other words they are roughly comparable. I do think for my purposes DXO is easier to use and give the best with the least effort. By that is an opinion and I'm sure others have theirs. In the end it depends on your taste, your budget and what you intentions are regarding your photographs.

[Dlanor Sekao]

I think you are referring to Filmpack. Sounds like you would find this a worthwhile plugin for LR too.

Im playing with DxO filmpack 5 free 30 day limited version......I think this is a must have for me reguardless whatever else I go with. I really like it.

[emalvick]

Without profiles, all the Raw software isn't going to help you much in terms of automatic edits. I like DxO because with Viewpoint (add-on) I can at least fix distortion issues. By hand I can fix other lens issues as easily as I can with LR. DxO is still as good as LR without profiles (it exceeds with them). It isn't as easy, but it's noise correction is better, and it does have features I like. RawTherapee is definitely improving, but I find it a bit complicated and resource hungry.

If you want to catalog your images and you're not picky on RAW processor, well LR or ACDSee will essentially give you both. Capture One does now too, although when I tried 7 out, I hated its cataloging software. I've heard it has been improved with version 8, but I haven't tried it yet myself. I really wanted it for RAW processing, but I never got a knack for its workflow.

If you are not going to marry yourself to LR for RAW processing, then you might try other dedicated cataloging software. LR is a bit resource hungry, and I find it can interfere with using DxO if I try to invoke DxO from within it. My actual catalog software is IMatch (no RAW processing), and I find it works wonderfully with DxO. It is amazing how much these software can compete with each other once you try to use a few all together. It shouldn't be a surprise, but sometimes we just don't think about it.

[Canada_Rockies]

emalvick - I have no linking problems using DxO as a LightRoom plugin. I'm using Win 7 Pro, that might make a difference. I send it out, it comes back as a TIFF and sits beside the original.

[emalvick]

emalvick - I have no linking problems using DxO as a LightRoom plugin. I'm using Win 7 Pro, that might make a difference. I send it out, it comes back as a TIFF and sits beside the original.

That's not the problem. The problem is that running LR side by side with DxO makes DxO seem quite slow compared to just processing the photos in LR. I always thought DxO was this slow klug of a program until I stopped using it as a plugin within LR.

LR is not my catalog software but rather just a Raw processor that can access my metadata. I use it primarily to drive my PP, and so I was in the habit of using LR to export to all other PP software. Then one day I was in a hurry and didn't have time to deal with cataloging and finding the photo in LR. I opened the file directly in DxO and the speed improved significantly.... significantly enough to make DxO appear to be my fastest Raw software. I'm not sure it is the fastest since I tended to export to other ones from LR, too.

This probably explains my typical observation that LR is my fastest Raw processor. LR is notoriously bad at managing resources, so while I have a good system, one badly managed program can probably bring others down.

[Canada_Rockies]

emalvick, I have 8 Gb RAM with an i7 processor and a 7200 rpm 1 Gb hard drive. That helps with the processing speed.

[emalvick]

emalvick, I have 8 Gb RAM with an i7 processor and a 7200 rpm 1 Gb hard drive. That helps with the processing speed.

I have 16 GB, an i7 and an SDD drive.... It's not a slouch. But I'm talking all relative. That's the best any of us can do.

On my PC, LR is much faster for processing than DxO... if I have LR open while I'm processing in DxO. I often have LR open while I'm doing PP on images.

I've always noticed this, but it was just relative. With the K5 (primary camera until the end of October when I got the K3), both ran fast enough, but I could always see that DxO was slower. With the K3, LR became noticeably slower and DxO slower still. Then I tried DxO without using LR to send an image over to it. DxO became fast (faster than even it was with K5 files and LR open).

That's all. I'm pinning the blame on LR for the time being. Just my observations.

[Canada_Rockies]

I've never tried it without LR running - I'll have to do that and see if there is a difference. My K10D doesn't produce files sizes like the K3 - that's probably why I don't notice the time so much.

[emalvick]

I've never tried it without LR running - I'll have to do that and see if there is a difference. My K10D doesn't produce files sizes like the K3 - that's probably why I don't notice the time so much.

That's the inherent issue in upgrading camera bodies.... you end up having to upgrade your computer. The upgrade from a K10d to K5 ultimately led to the PC I have now. I really don't want to upgrade the PC I have now because I have a K3. Since I don't have to use LR to get to DxO, I probably won't need to upgrade the PC.

LR has this bad habit of loading a lot of images into memory based on where one is at in the library. I feel like that really drags the whole system down, needlessly. I'll have to play around with it a bit more as I suspect that if I moved images into a small collection, things would get more efficient. I don't know that, but I suspect it. Conversely, when I use just Photoshop with one image or even Bridge and just access ACR, I have no issues what-so-ever.

[Canada_Rockies]

I wonder if filtering the images reduces the memory consumption. I think I'll put my system monitor into front and centre and see if filtering to "Picks" makes a difference in largish collections.