Maximize Photo Quality with DXO Optics Pro 9

DXO Optics Pro: superior results if your equipment is supported

Introduction

I tried DXO optics pro a couple of years ago and was not impressed. It did have some interesting features, but the stand-alone nature of this photo editing suite didn’t really fit into my Lightroom workflow, and the fact that not all my cameras where supported, meant it was left gathering virtual dust on my hard drive.

But it seems the French company has stepped up their game: the latest version DXO Optics Pro 9 allows you to export directly from Adobe Lightroom and back again. So I decided to give it a second try.

Another aspect that mades it more appealing to me is the fact that lens manufacturers seem to rely more and more on software corrections. As cameras and are getting smaller and smaller (think of the Full Frame Sony A7 range), lenses have to follow suit. You don’t always want to put a 1 kg lens on a 500 gr body as it does not handle well, and the miniaturisation of lenses seems to have run into some technical limits. This means that even manufacturers like Zeiss (who were actively opposed to software corrections in the past) are now relying more and more on software corrections for at least some products (like the Touit) in their range.

Now whether DXO Optics Pro 9 could be useful to you depends largely on their support of your camera and lens combination. They work with modules that can be downloaded separately in the program itself. It automatically reads EXIF data from your pictures, and if your lens camera combo it is available, you can download it from the DXO modules tab. They support most major camera manufacturers now, and even offer support for lenses with adapters on certain camera bodies. One major omittance is the lack of Fuji X-support. As you might know, Fuji uses a non-Bayer sensor layout, this means a lot of code re-writing, and it seems DXO development has stopped with the X100.

Now if your camera and lens are supported, DXO Optics Pro 9 can achieve superior results compared to any other software editing suite. DXO is most known for their testing benchmarks for cameras and lenses, and their corrections are excellent (and more easily applied) than any other that I’ve tried at least.

The ironic thing is that I decided to give them a second try because of the new Lightroom integration, and I have now started using it mostly as a stand-alone application.

An example:

I was photographing a wedding last weekend with a Sony A6000 and A7R, the Zeiss Touit 32mm and 12mm and the Sony FE 70-200. All possible combinations of these have optics modules, and I finished editing about 400 images in half the time it would usually take me. I had the additional problem that the dinner was in a dark crypt, the clients insisted on have as many pictures as possible and it would have been too intrusive to flash all the time. This meant going up to higher ISO, with the inherent noise problem. Well, DXO’s PRIME noise reduction saved many pictures I thought would be unusable.

OK, so let’s go over all the features and functions of this software suite:

DXO Optics Pro Features

Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic Aberrations lets you correct color artefacts that appear especially in transitions between dark and bright zones. Controls include intensity that allows you to adjust the strength of the correction, size that gives you control over the width of the suppressed coloured fringe and a purple fringe button that removes that annoying ghost-like purple fringing. Yes, press the magic wand if you prefer to let the program make these decisions.

Essential Tools

White balance

selector with a colour picker

Exposure compensation:

– Correction

smart: is DXO’s proprietary compensation algorithm that works best if you use their Smart Lighting (see next)
Highlight Priority: for recovering clipped highlights
Center Weighted Average: for when you have a clear center subject

– Exposure slider: tweaking of the overall brightness of the entire image

DXO Smart Lighting

This module optimises the Dynamic range by automatically unblocking shadows and recovering highlights. Choose between Slight, Medium, Strong or Custom depending on the scene. There is an intensity slider for further tweaking.

Contrast

You have a general contrast and also a micro contrast slider that enhances small details in the image. Micro contrast is an excellent tool to give your image some extra bite, but be careful on faces because it will exaggerate blemishes and faults.

Color Accentuation

Vibrancy slider increases/decreases color saturation while preserving skin tones and enhancing blue skies.
Saturation slider increases/decreases color saturation in the traditional way, affecting all colours equally.

Selective Tone

Highlight slider recovers highlights with negative values or makes them brighter
Midtones slider controls the brightness of the levels located in the middle of the histogram
Shadows controls the brightness of dark areas, shadow recovery
Blacks set the black point

Noise reduction

The noise reduction module has a magnifier window that previews the amount at 100%.

High and Prime noise reduction is available. Prime noise reduction is probably one of the best NR out there, it is fantastic, but does add some processing time when exporting images later on.

Luminance slider can be used to reduce fine grain

Crop

All standard cropping tools are available and an attractive Auto setting that takes horizon and perspective (after corrections have been applied) into account.

Light and color advanced

Color Rendering

Color rendering simulates the rendering of a particular camera or film, or lets you use an ICC profile generated by a calibration device.

Intensity slider: tweak the amount of effect
Protect saturated colors: slider recovers details in very saturated areas (has an auto button)

Style and Toning

Lets you apply a particular predefined effect. If you also own DXO film pack, these presets will also be available here. These styling effects are pretty powerful and can give a selection of images a uniform look.

Intensity can be adjusted by a slider.

Tone Curve

The tone curve is something you will be familiar with from other editing programs. It allows you to modify the brightness of pixels globally or per colour channel through separate curves.

Hue, Saturation and Lightness

Another function you’ll be familiar with if you have any experience in this field. These 3 sliders can be adjusted globally or channel-by-channel.

Multi-Point Color balance

A nice tool that lets you pick and modify colour balance at multiple points in your image through a visual colour picker.

Details and Geometry Advanced

Besides the basic corrections DXO Optics pro will apply to your pictures using the optics module, this module lets you fine-tune them even further.

Unsharpen Mask

This tool lets you increase the sharpness of your images

Intensity: sets the amount of sharpening to be applied to the whole image
Radius: sets the thickness of the edges to be sharpened
Threshold: sets the level above which details will be sharpened. Low values give a sharper image but may amplify noise
Edge offset: applies additional sharpening towards the edges of the image. Useful on lenses with soft corners when there are no Optics modules available.
Dust: remove spects of dust with a spot tool

Volume Deformation

Allows you to correct distorted elements in the corners of wide-angle shots that are image specific. 2 types are available:

Diagonal: will fix these distorted elements in most situations but may introduce a slight curvature on straight lines
Horizontal/Vertical: best for group portraits when bodies are stretched horizontally

Optical Corrections

Focal Length

Lets you actually change the focal length recorded in the EXIF data. As this information is used to do all automatic corrections, if you feel that it was wrongly recored, you can change this here.

Distortion

This module lets you correct curved straight lines by the lens.

Correction: either automatic where it will use the DXO optics module or manual
Type: specify Barrel, Pincushion or Fish-Eye for manual corrections
Intensity: lets you adjust the strength of correction applied
Keep aspect ratio: maintains original aspect ratio (or not) after correction

Focussing Distance

Lets you change the focussing distance recorded in the EXIF data. As this information is used to do all automatic corrections, if you feel that it was wrongly recored, you can change this here.

Vignetting

Corrects lens vignetting, either manually or automatic via the DXO module
intensity slider lets you adjust the strength of the correction
Middle: when manually correcting vignetting, this lets you specify how far towards the centre of the image the correction will be applied
Preservation: In Automatic mode this will prevent highlights from being clipped and noise appearing in the shadows