[kenafein]

Each of us gets comfortable with something and goes with that. Since I was off work last winter, I made myself a challenge of learning all I could about LR to give it the best try I could. Bought LR 4, plus Scott Kelby's book and went through it one chapter at a time while taking notes and trying out each feature as I went. Also viewed many videos by Julieanne Kost which were great. There is so much hoop-la about LR everywhere I just wanted to see what it was all about.

After all that (2 months) and $150 later - yes it is a very good program, but as I said above I just can't connect with it - especially the Library function. I really studied on that and forced myself to use it for a couple months, but still hate it.

As for DxO, I guess I like the "science" behind it - especially the lens corrections. I typically run all my shots trough Dxo with mainly the default settings just to get the lens corrections, then finish my editing with Acdsee Pro. Since I have more time on my hands now, I have been digging into more of the different edits I can do with DxO - again really taking the time to learn the program, and because of that has become pretty intuitive to me.

Feeling comfortable with the UI of any program is important as is getting into a comfortable work flow. For me it has been Acdsee Pro for initial viewing and discarding, then through DxO for the raw conversion, then back to Acdsee Pro for the final edit and printing.

Late last night I tried DxO's new noise reduction - I don't have any examples to share yet, but I was very impressed with it. I usually try to keep my ISO down as low as possible on my K-5IIs, but there are times when some wildlife will show around dusk and just shoot to capture at that point. A couple ISO 12,800 shots I tried last night came out very well in the new version of DxO.

There are lot of things I don't like about Lightroom and there are a lot of things I love about DxO, but I tried the new DxO 9 on some recent pics I took and I preferred what I could achieve in Lightroom with less effort. Lightroom is also much cheaper. I think I am stuck with Lightroom.

[stormtech]

I did a noise test with no reduction, HIGH and PRIME of a ISO 51200 / K5 / FA 35mm f2 shot

I do not think it is without loss of detail to use PRIME at very high ISO as it tends to smear a bit too much. I think it works best at around ISO 6400 to 800.

Thanks for posting your examples. I testing a couple high ISO images with the same results. Also when reading the .pdf manual, in there, if I remember correctly, it says that the PRIME NR is most useful with images at 6400 ISO and above. I also noticed that the default slider for the PRIME was set at 40 which actually was a bit strong - I found that dialing it down a bit produced less smear.

Also noted was the highlight recovery which is supposed to be improved with v9 - I'll have to do some testing on that also.

[stormtech]

There are lot of things I don't like about Lightroom and there are a lot of things I love about DxO, but I tried the new DxO 9 on some recent pics I took and I preferred what I could achieve in Lightroom with less effort. Lightroom is also much cheaper. I think I am stuck with Lightroom.

As I said above, we all find what works best for us and what we feel more comfortable with. As far as cost goes, for me to upgrade from LR v4 to v5 would be $76 while the DxO upgrade from v8 to v9 is $49.

Also a lot of people seem to like the LR Library function - DxO doesn't have anything like that as far as a catalog function. I treat DxO as a raw converter/editor only.

[kenafein]

As I said above, we all find what works best for us and what we feel more comfortable with. As far as cost goes, for me to upgrade from LR v4 to v5 would be $76 while the DxO upgrade from v8 to v9 is $49.

Also a lot of people seem to like the LR Library function - DxO doesn't have anything like that as far as a catalog function. I treat DxO as a raw converter/editor only.

DxO responded back and told me that after my upgrade, the Elite renewal will be only $69. That's reasonable enough that I will consider it. I need to task myself to play with 9 a bit more. I still have a backlog of tutorials from 8 that I haven't finished. I've found that the SmartExposure doesn't work well with a picture with a lot of shadows and bright highlights. Adjusting manually the highlight, shadows and midtones created some funky results for me. Do you have any tips?

[stormtech]

DxO responded back and told me that after my upgrade, the Elite renewal will be only $69. That's reasonable enough that I will consider it. I need to task myself to play with 9 a bit more. I still have a backlog of tutorials from 8 that I haven't finished. I've found that the SmartExposure doesn't work well with a picture with a lot of shadows and bright highlights. Adjusting manually the highlight, shadows and midtones created some funky results for me. Do you have any tips?

Are you talking about v8 or v9? The auto highlight correction in v9 is supposed to be improved quite a bit.

I still have both versions on my computer - I'll find an image like you say and give it a go in both versions and let you know how I make out.

[stormtech]

I have to kind of laugh at myself a bit here......

I don't have many pics with both heavy shadow areas plus blown highlights, but did find one to play with that had some heavy shadows that I tried to lift. I immediately remembered what I did with images like this - ran them through DxO for the lens correction, then did the rest of my editing in Acdsee Pro where I can selectively work on different light channels (called Light EQ). I did see what you meant when trying to work on this in DxO.

The only kind of work around for something like this in DxO is to try the one-shot HDR preset and tweak from there.

[kenafein]

I have to kind of laugh at myself a bit here......

I don't have many pics with both heavy shadow areas plus blown highlights, but did find one to play with that had some heavy shadows that I tried to lift. I immediately remembered what I did with images like this - ran them through DxO for the lens correction, then did the rest of my editing in Acdsee Pro where I can selectively work on different light channels (called Light EQ). I did see what you meant when trying to work on this in DxO.

The only kind of work around for something like this in DxO is to try the one-shot HDR preset and tweak from there.

Well, at least it's not just me, thanks for looking into it.

[dmnf]

I have a quick question for stormtech:
When you "ran photo through DxO and then did the rest of editing in Acdsee", do you create a TIFF file in between or the software does it for you?

[stormtech]

I have a quick question for stormtech:
When you "ran photo through DxO and then did the rest of editing in Acdsee", do you create a TIFF file in between or the software does it for you?

I will set my output in DxO to .dng when doing something like that with extra editing afterward.

I shoot in .pef and normally have DxO set to .jpeg output, then do final sharpening and size reduction in Acdsee. With DxO it's nice as you can easily set multiple outputs - .dng, .jpeg, and .tiff. You can select any or these or all of them at the same time if you wish.

[Emacs]

From their description it is clear their denoising algorithm refers to kind of non local means denoising advancements. These methods works best for moderate noise then their efficiency drops very quickly when standard deviation of noise is increasing.
But for me it works reasonably well up to ISO12800 on my NEX-5n (in fact they are better than ISO6400 pics processed with Topaz Denoise which was my choice before).
Example (ISO3200 shot pulled up 2 stops).
Since I'm going to buy Sony A7r in the very near future, I was interested what will I get with its sensor which is quite close to D800E's one. IMO results are nothing short but spectacular:
D800E ISO3200 full size
D800E ISO6400 shot downsampled to 16Mp
D800E ISO12800 shot downsampled to 16Mp
ISO25600 was not good though, but looking at DxOmark charts I see noticeably higher SNR at ISO25600 for A7r compared to D800E, so there's a good chance ISO25600 will be usable with that Sony.

Some remarks about features of NR algorithms of its kind:
1) They love higher resolution to some extent (see #3), because for every certain part of an image they uses other parts of it to reconstruct taken one. Higher resolution sensor provides more information, so the reconstruction will likely be more «successful»
2) They work better at sharp details. You see it at my ISO3200*2² shot, where fine details are left, but bokeh is getting dirty.
3) So, they use patches in a neighborhood to reconstruct a certain pixel. However, those patches are not clean themselves and when noise getting more and more intense those patches are getting noisier too. And amount of these unacceptably noisy patches leads to errors in reconstruction.

[robgo2]

I was a regular user of DxO through version 6 but gave it up in favor of Capture One, which was much more user friendly and produced better results. Now I have discovered Photo Ninja, which is the best raw convertor yet IMO. However, I have kept abreast of every major DxO upgrade, including version 9. Here are my takes based on testing over the past several days:

1. For low to moderate ISO images, the output is very good, certainly better than ACR (2012) but not as good as Photo Ninja. I do not have access to the current version of ACR/LR, so I cannot compare the two, but unless Adobe has raised IQ very substantially, my conclusion would be the same. Gone is the amped up look that DxO Lighting routinely produced in earlier versions. DxO 9 has a huge menu of adjustment modules and tools, meaning that you had better be prepared to spend some time learning what they do.

2. For very high ISO images, the Prime engine is amazing at retaining detail, but it has a tendency to produce blotchiness in out of focus areas, at least in my testing. Possibly, there are means of minimizing the blotches, but I have yet to find it. Nevertheless, I think that DxO have made a real advance here, and I hope that they will build on it further.

3. DxO 9, like its predecessors, has one of the clunkiest, least user friendly interfaces of any editing software that I have ever used. This is especially true if you have an older, slower computer. Working with Prime is especially challenging and slow. Rendering a single TIFF with Prime activated can take from 5 to 10 minutes on my aging MacPro. Clearly, I would not be willing to put up with this except in special cases. Owners of newer computers may not experience this slow operation.

In summary, I think that DxO9 is the best version yet, but it is still cumbersome to use. This is something that regular users will take in stride. Output is very good, probably superior to ACR/LR, but not up to the level of Photo Ninja, which is fast and fun to use. I will continue to use PN as my main raw convertor, but I have purchased DxO 9 at an upgrade price for use on selected images with very high levels of noise. If I were choosing between DxO and LR, I would favor DxO 9 for its IQ, understanding that it is not the full featured image editor that Lightroom is. Also, I would get a new computer (which I need to do in any case).

Rob