My workflow is a bit different. I import my files on DXO, apply lens correction and Prime denoise reduction and export them as DNGs to work with them on ACR. Apart from the superb noise reduction and sharpening, the software seems to do something special to the images. Especially those shot with a wide angle lens. My 12 mm shots (with the 12-40mm) benefit from a wider perspective. This is evident, even on the resolution. Instead of the typical 5184x3888 the output is now over 5350 pixels on the horizontal axis making it almost as if they were shot on a 10mm lens. The aspect ratio is no more 4 by 3.
i dont mean to be so offtopic but does any of you know of a trick to get back into an instagram account?? I was dumb forgot the account password. I would appreciate any help you can offer me!
@Jayden Quentin I really appreciate your reply. I got to the site thru google and Im in the hacking process atm. Seems to take a while so I will reply here later with my results.
Good review but I think you should of mentioned how slow dxo can be to output a file. Like a couple of minutes for a single 42m file, similar time to Topaz.
On1 Nonoise is one of the best, even better than DXO at noise control. Only downside is that sometimes introduces a subtle weird color cast to the image. Please try the ON1 Nonoise!
I usually do all the editing in Lightroom and then do both Denoise and sharpen in Topaz Denoise app in the AI Clear setting with the exported JPEG. I will completely go through all my edits first. Then I do a batch process on Topaz when I'm done for the day and review them later to make sure they came out good. I've gotten to the point where I know about how much to slide the recover original detail, color noise reductions depending on the type of photography I'm doing. If you want a man to look like he has a baby face in a high ISO shot, just crank the noise reduction all the way with no other adjustments. 😂 I realized he would probably not like that so I did have to redo the batch. I've been happy enough with Topaz Denoise sharpen settings that the trial version of Topaz Sharpen didn't impress me much.
that's interesting to know. So there trial version isn't the 'full' version. That's rubbish. How can one try and believe in the software if the trial version is limited...
@@Red35Photography The Topaz Sharpen is a fully functional 30 day trial. It does have all these modes from the standard sharpen tools to motion, camera shake and out of focus sharpening tools. The difference between the Denoise app's ability to sharpen and Sharpen Ai was very minimal. I tested images that had motion blur, camera shake and out of focus. To me the results were nothing to get excited about and pay for it. However with each update that comes, I think it will improve. They have done a great job updating Denoise.
Totally agree on all points Jimmy. Topaz is handy if you don’t have RAW, but my overall workflow is mostly DxO for everything from basic to creative. With just a touch of Photoshop every now and then. And the latest DxO stuff flys on a Mac M1 😊👍🏻
I now use Photolab and have let my Topaz Denoise licence lapse. Topaz is great but I think Deep Prime is pretty amazing. One thing to note is that you can turn off the auto update preview in Topaz. Also Deep Prime and Prime only show in the small window - so you can’t properly see the results until you export - except possibly if you view your file at 100% in main window.
I held a EM Mark II today and I really liked it. I don't think I'll get a Z5 but held that today too and omg that might be the best feeling body ever so far.
Nice video! Any major developments since this video was created? I just started using DxO and I'm blown away. However, I do notice it seems to tweak the colors a bit and bump the saturation. There are times that looks nice, and other times I would prefer to just denoise. Other than that, no major criticisms.
@ProjectDo So I ended up going with DxO Photolab, which has DeepPrime built in. What was nice there was that I was able to toggle off everything else, and it lets you change how much deep prime you apply. I'm still using lightroom classic to develop photos, and I'm only using a small portion of the Photolab features. Regarding photo exports, mine are pretty quick, but my PC is home built and high end. I process 48MP pictures from my R5 in maybe 10 seconds or less? The computer has a Ryzen 5900x, 64GB of Crucial CL16 DDR 3600, a 3808TI FE, and a 2TB WD_Black SN850 NVMe SSD. I built it as a video editing rig, and it can handle 8k RAW video pretty much real time out of my R5. =)
Nice review Jimmy - extremely tempted to buy especially with the current black fri offer of £110 for the elite version with deep prime .. for M43 enthusiasts it seems to remove any lingering doubts about low light usage, but of course users of all formats will benefit getting cleaner images a couple of ISO stops higher than normal , cheers Rich.
Good video about results. Do you know how theese all ai softwares use your photos in future and what about copyrights? I assume this all are databased and there is many questions in bigger picture. Peace (:
I like the Capture One colours but they stopped making the cheaper LE version and they moved to a pay monthly model. C1 has the best non-caucasian skin tones. Since then I use Oly convertor for the Oly colours and output to a TIFF file. No adjustment made apart from white balance then I pull it into Luminar 4 and post-process and as final step use DeNoiseAI...That way I keep the famed Oly colours...Looking at the DxO and it's very orangey/consumer colours, the DeNoise looks more professional/cinematic/muted/moody. I'm looking at them on my hardware colour-managed (handled in the monitor rather colour profile applied in software - it's more accurate) Eizo. TBH honest Oly JPGs look awesome, for snapshots I use those and DeNoiseAI.
I found it is better to control only color noise and let the luminance noise just as it is. The luminance noise stay as a fine grain and it is pleasing in some images.
Thank you for the comparison video. I like Lightroom because it provides a good and fast workflow for large event photographers like me to process thousands of photos per event. Great to know that different platform providers are competing to provide improvements all the time. Now that your video is almost two years old, I wonder if you think the situation is the same among these software in respect to noise reduction?
Thanks for the review. How well does dxO work with the Olympus high res files (tripod or handheld)? Do you see similar noise reduction benefits as with the native 20mp files? Thanks.
Really helpful. I was looking at picking up NIK or Topaz Suites during the holidays. NIK has always felt like a defacto standard, but seems like Topaz are the cool kids on the block now.
Nik is still great in some areas, but Dfine(and the pre-sharpener) is no longer one of them :-( But Viveza, ColourEfex, Analog Efex and SilverEfex are still great and the new PerspectiveEfex is basically DxO Viewpoint bundled for free! HDR is OK if you don't have anything else and already bought nik but Aurora is better if you need a dedicated HDR tool. Nik is great value as a collection but don't buy it for just one tool (except maybe SilverEfex...)
Topaz introduces colour /chroma noise IMO, since I found DxO I haven't looked back. Works brilliantly on 12,800 ISO shots from a Sony A9. My M1Mkiii high ISO shots are almost jawdropping after DxO. I really only use Lr for DAM now as all my older images are linked through it. Stay safe or move here to Australia , whole country almost c***d free.
Having used them both, is the price difference between the 2 worth it? I am seeing DXO with the prime noise reduction is $120 USD now ($200 normally) and the Topaz $80USD. Is the DXO that much better?
Try Topaz sharpening AI. It removes noise as well and you'll see it blows the DXO result (which is actually quite good) out of the water. For some extreme images though it can help to make an additional noise reduction step before going for the sharpening. I'm totally with you though that Topaz is slow and for me it is thus my go to sharpener for single pictures. I'm using the old DXO3 so far, since I didn't see much benefit from the new one, but seeing your results I'll likely soon upgrade to process batches. PS: As a bonus, if you still feel it is not sharp enough add some Unsharp Mask in the end. It really works well together with that, what is very nice for printing.
topaz and dxo are just another league. I noticed some strange halos of some settings applied to DxO results at taxi cab image. I think both are quite similar if you dial right settings. Topaz Denoise Ai and DXO Deep Prime are best for advanced denoising. All in all LR also is good enough for standarad denoising when you dont need some heavy work on a high iso photos. CHeers!
@@Red35Photography Its not a problem with ram. My MacBook Pro is a i7 with 16gigs of ram. The Windows version is crashing with my bootcamp install on my MacBook Pro. So its the same computer that's also running the mac version. Also other people are reporting its not stable on Windows. Version 3 is very stable I heard for Windows.
@@crsk1567 I did export 400 raw files on DXO PhotoLab 4 Windows version once. Another time was only able to export 100 and other times no more then two files. I need to be able to load up a lot of files and render them out at night because I'm a wedding photographer.
The room at 2:57 I think is LV2 - LV6 hard to say doing this in my head and not knowing how much light MFT has lost. You must've underexposed by 1 stop Maybe 1.3ev idk. I'm doing weird light math in my head. Not sure if I'm accurate. I'm basically reverse engineering your EV to LV0 and figuring out the difference but I know I'm missing light lost from the smaller sensor and mentally that .3 is messing my head up. I want to say the LV in that room at 2:57 is LV3.3
@@sigbjoernrevheim2125 thank you. Will try it then. Any workflow recommendations? I would love to keep caoture one as my main browsing and retouching program
@@rafaelsegui4845 Do the denoising as the first step in Photolab 4 and then export to DNG. Then import the DNG into Capture One. You may want to make a style that you apply at import where the noise reduction in Capture One is eliminated (NR settings: Luminance=0, Detail=100,Color=0,Singel Pixel=0) or you may get a softer image. However, if you have taken very high ISO images, then there is very little little room left for raising shadow/black or increasing exposure, so it will probably be better to expose a little bit up when taking the picture if possible. I usually expose a little bit down (on low ISO) to avoid highlight clipping and then adjust exposure and HDR settings in post, but on high ISO this doesn't work.
Tried DxO on ISO 10000 picture taken with Panasonic G9, with setting 80 the picture get superclean with no apparent loss of detail. Much better than Topaz IMO,. Too bad it only works on Raw files and that DxO doesn’t support Fuji cameras and older cameras like Olympus E-500.
I think the reasons that DxO is better and only works with RAW is that all their camera and lens profiles from their lab were tested using RAW data. And this will give the best possible corrections in addition to the deep prime noise reduction, such as Lens Sharpening, distortion controls. Yeah, shame that it's not compatible with some cameras, including DNG and drones :(
Thanks for an interesting comparison. Unfortunately, because DXO can only work with RAW files, it cannot be used as a plugin for Lightroom where the image has had some Lightroom edits carried out first. I will have to stick with Topaz as my de-noise option as I normally de-noise and sharpen as the last steps of my editing workflow. Also when using Lightroom noise reduction, it is a balance between that and sharpening. I find that by using the sharpen mask I can find the balance a lot better and can get some respectable results. Although DXO can possibly be a replacement for Lightroom, does it have layers and blend modes so that it is able to replace Photoshop too?
And.... Despite the fact that Topaz has in THEIR end user license agreement, upgrades are FREE, they have decided to charge for upgrades. That’s right...... They are just ignoring their own end user license agreement. Huge thread on their website with pissed off customers... Jerks.
There are people working there that needs to be paid. The old business model just did not bring enough money to sustain the business so they had to change it. Their initial idea was to upgrade less but develop new products instead, wich proved to be a bad idea. Paying for upgrades is a healthy business decision, no one works for free in this world.
@@p.io7 You also only get one chance in life to lose your integrity and for me..... they have done just that. They should never be trusted again as they have not only broken a promise, they broke one that they put in writing in a formal agreement. Nobody forced them to put it in writing. They did. They were so proud to say they would never charge for upgrades and used that as a marketing tool. So much for believing anything they say. I’ll never upgrade, or ever buy another product from them. Too many other competitors. That’s the way the world works. If you want to pay for it, go for it.
@@Bassbarbie Agreed. They did give a long notice, but it doesn't change the issue because the people they sent it to had already purchased their product. Doesn't change the fact that they lied.
Thanks for the info Keith, I didn't know about that (though I thought free upgrades sounded a bit too good to be true...) Now that I've tried DxO, I'm definitely not going back. I think they made a good decision giving you just a small preview instead of updating the whole image 👍
I am wondering what am I doing wrong to have experience so different from most of comments here. With two different cameras, I find Lab's preprocessing artificial and terrible, sharpening is so unnatural as when I push Topaz Sharpen sliders too much, but it cannot be adjusted as in Topaz, as basic level of processing is done through camera+lens profile feature. It might work well on latest high-end cameras that anyhow have clean file to start with, but not with my EM10MKII. When DeepPrime is set to auto slider adjustment, it always stays at 40, and I don't see any autoadjustment working. At 40, image is smooth as a silk, which somewhat mitigates heavy presharpening, but similar result can be achieved in LR with heavy NR plus heavy sharpening. In such scenario LR does have more artifacts than PL, but such settings are useful for abstract evaluation only, not for real-life use. I came to a feel that I can achieve results similar to PL with any other software, only if I push sliders harder... Control points are great after some accustomation, but they seem to be the only thing I get to like there.
I bought PL4 in the Black Friday sale, too good price to miss. Dfine was state of the art 20 years ago but basically hasn't changed and the rest of the world has caught up. You probably could have done much better in the taxi shot using the control points to target reduction, and then using the Nik pre-sharpener tool - I find you need to use those two in tandem. But I don't think anything would have worked on the last shot, Dfine's just getting past it, sadly.
Yeah, the deal was good right? No, i wouldn’t do anything different in this video, the sole purpose is to do noise reduction and nothing else. this is a fair fight between them and looking at nothing but noise reduction. Yes, there are ways to enhance further but I am not interested in it in this video :)
Did you look at the denoise performance or at the overall rendering? You mixed everything a bit that's unfortunate. Here on the images you present the sharpening on the DxO ones is atrocious. And it also applies way too much contrast. Even maybe saturation. The guy in the party looks awefully red and the "no smoking" sign in the cab looks like you changed it to fluo color. This is horrible really. This is not what you should aim for. A denoising software should only denoise, and apply the least amount of sharpening possible, or at least let you decide. So when you compare multiple different products with different algorithms, you should aim for the same level of sharpness and contrast in order to truly judge what is the level of denoising performance they achieve. Or you're just comparing apples to oranges. And the one software that basically push all sliders to the right should not be the best one in my opinion.
My workflow is a bit different. I import my files on DXO, apply lens correction and Prime denoise reduction and export them as DNGs to work with them on ACR. Apart from the superb noise reduction and sharpening, the software seems to do something special to the images. Especially those shot with a wide angle lens. My 12 mm shots (with the 12-40mm) benefit from a wider perspective. This is evident, even on the resolution. Instead of the typical 5184x3888 the output is now over 5350 pixels on the horizontal axis making it almost as if they were shot on a 10mm lens. The aspect ratio is no more 4 by 3.
i dont mean to be so offtopic but does any of you know of a trick to get back into an instagram account??
I was dumb forgot the account password. I would appreciate any help you can offer me!
@Blaine Trenton instablaster :)
@Jayden Quentin I really appreciate your reply. I got to the site thru google and Im in the hacking process atm.
Seems to take a while so I will reply here later with my results.
@Jayden Quentin it worked and I actually got access to my account again. I'm so happy!
Thank you so much, you saved my account :D
@Blaine Trenton glad I could help :D
DxO is a critical part of my workflow and now that it operates as a Plugin within Lightroom I can plow thorough images even faster.
Good review but I think you should of mentioned how slow dxo can be to output a file.
Like a couple of minutes for a single 42m file, similar time to Topaz.
On1 Nonoise is one of the best, even better than DXO at noise control. Only downside is that sometimes introduces a subtle weird color cast to the image. Please try the ON1 Nonoise!
I usually do all the editing in Lightroom and then do both Denoise and sharpen in Topaz Denoise app in the AI Clear setting with the exported JPEG. I will completely go through all my edits first. Then I do a batch process on Topaz when I'm done for the day and review them later to make sure they came out good. I've gotten to the point where I know about how much to slide the recover original detail, color noise reductions depending on the type of photography I'm doing.
If you want a man to look like he has a baby face in a high ISO shot, just crank the noise reduction all the way with no other adjustments. 😂 I realized he would probably not like that so I did have to redo the batch. I've been happy enough with Topaz Denoise sharpen settings that the trial version of Topaz Sharpen didn't impress me much.
that's interesting to know. So there trial version isn't the 'full' version. That's rubbish. How can one try and believe in the software if the trial version is limited...
@@Red35Photography The Topaz Sharpen is a fully functional 30 day trial. It does have all these modes from the standard sharpen tools to motion, camera shake and out of focus sharpening tools. The difference between the Denoise app's ability to sharpen and Sharpen Ai was very minimal. I tested images that had motion blur, camera shake and out of focus. To me the results were nothing to get excited about and pay for it. However with each update that comes, I think it will improve. They have done a great job updating Denoise.
Totally agree on all points Jimmy. Topaz is handy if you don’t have RAW, but my overall workflow is mostly DxO for everything from basic to creative. With just a touch of Photoshop every now and then. And the latest DxO stuff flys on a Mac M1 😊👍🏻
I now use Photolab and have let my Topaz Denoise licence lapse. Topaz is great but I think Deep Prime is pretty amazing.
One thing to note is that you can turn off the auto update preview in Topaz. Also Deep Prime and Prime only show in the small window - so you can’t properly see the results until you export - except possibly if you view your file at 100% in main window.
True. I usually do a side by side comparison with the DeepPRIME using the main window at 100%....
I held a EM Mark II today and I really liked it. I don't think I'll get a Z5 but held that today too and omg that might be the best feeling body ever so far.
I think I have heard a lot of noise about this! 😀
Cheers David! haha yes a lot of NOISE :)
Nice video! Any major developments since this video was created? I just started using DxO and I'm blown away. However, I do notice it seems to tweak the colors a bit and bump the saturation. There are times that looks nice, and other times I would prefer to just denoise. Other than that, no major criticisms.
@ProjectDo So I ended up going with DxO Photolab, which has DeepPrime built in. What was nice there was that I was able to toggle off everything else, and it lets you change how much deep prime you apply. I'm still using lightroom classic to develop photos, and I'm only using a small portion of the Photolab features.
Regarding photo exports, mine are pretty quick, but my PC is home built and high end. I process 48MP pictures from my R5 in maybe 10 seconds or less? The computer has a Ryzen 5900x, 64GB of Crucial CL16 DDR 3600, a 3808TI FE, and a 2TB WD_Black SN850 NVMe SSD. I built it as a video editing rig, and it can handle 8k RAW video pretty much real time out of my R5. =)
Nice review Jimmy - extremely tempted to buy especially with the current black fri offer of £110 for the elite version with deep prime .. for M43 enthusiasts it seems to remove any lingering doubts about low light usage, but of course users of all formats will benefit getting cleaner images a couple of ISO stops higher than normal , cheers Rich.
Good video about results. Do you know how theese all ai softwares use your photos in future and what about copyrights? I assume this all are databased and there is many questions in bigger picture. Peace (:
I like the Capture One colours but they stopped making the cheaper LE version and they moved to a pay monthly model. C1 has the best non-caucasian skin tones. Since then I use Oly convertor for the Oly colours and output to a TIFF file. No adjustment made apart from white balance then I pull it into Luminar 4 and post-process and as final step use DeNoiseAI...That way I keep the famed Oly colours...Looking at the DxO and it's very orangey/consumer colours, the DeNoise looks more professional/cinematic/muted/moody. I'm looking at them on my hardware colour-managed (handled in the monitor rather colour profile applied in software - it's more accurate) Eizo. TBH honest Oly JPGs look awesome, for snapshots I use those and DeNoiseAI.
I found it is better to control only color noise and let the luminance noise just as it is. The luminance noise stay as a fine grain and it is pleasing in some images.
Thank you for the comparison video. I like Lightroom because it provides a good and fast workflow for large event photographers like me to process thousands of photos per event. Great to know that different platform providers are competing to provide improvements all the time. Now that your video is almost two years old, I wonder if you think the situation is the same among these software in respect to noise reduction?
Thanks for the review. How well does dxO work with the Olympus high res files (tripod or handheld)? Do you see similar noise reduction benefits as with the native 20mp files? Thanks.
Really helpful. I was looking at picking up NIK or Topaz Suites during the holidays. NIK has always felt like a defacto standard, but seems like Topaz are the cool kids on the block now.
Angus Gibbins I have DXO Photolab and the noise reduction is stunning. Try it.
Nik is still great in some areas, but Dfine(and the pre-sharpener) is no longer one of them :-(
But Viveza, ColourEfex, Analog Efex and SilverEfex are still great and the new PerspectiveEfex is basically DxO Viewpoint bundled for free! HDR is OK if you don't have anything else and already bought nik but Aurora is better if you need a dedicated HDR tool. Nik is great value as a collection but don't buy it for just one tool (except maybe SilverEfex...)
Topaz introduces colour /chroma noise IMO, since I found DxO I haven't looked back. Works brilliantly on 12,800 ISO shots from a Sony A9. My M1Mkiii high ISO shots are almost jawdropping after DxO. I really only use Lr for DAM now as all my older images are linked through it. Stay safe or move here to Australia , whole country almost c***d free.
Gary S quite agree that DXO DeepPrime is jaw dropping.
Same here.
Having used them both, is the price difference between the 2 worth it? I am seeing DXO with the prime noise reduction is $120 USD now ($200 normally) and the Topaz $80USD. Is the DXO that much better?
Am I the only one who prefers the slightly noisier but much more organic looking RAW over all of the denoised photos?
Try Topaz sharpening AI. It removes noise as well and you'll see it blows the DXO result (which is actually quite good) out of the water. For some extreme images though it can help to make an additional noise reduction step before going for the sharpening. I'm totally with you though that Topaz is slow and for me it is thus my go to sharpener for single pictures.
I'm using the old DXO3 so far, since I didn't see much benefit from the new one, but seeing your results I'll likely soon upgrade to process batches.
PS: As a bonus, if you still feel it is not sharp enough add some Unsharp Mask in the end. It really works well together with that, what is very nice for printing.
DxO PureRAW now is a gamechanger
topaz and dxo are just another league. I noticed some strange halos of some settings applied to DxO results at taxi cab image. I think both are quite similar if you dial right settings. Topaz Denoise Ai and DXO Deep Prime are best for advanced denoising. All in all LR also is good enough for standarad denoising when you dont need some heavy work on a high iso photos. CHeers!
DXO PhotoLab on MAC is very stable but on Windows you can only export one file at time or it will crash.
Unfortunately I haven't a Window machine to test but it's mostly to do with available RAM too. Which a lot of these new AI powered software needs.
@@Red35Photography Its not a problem with ram. My MacBook Pro is a i7 with 16gigs of ram. The Windows version is crashing with my bootcamp install on my MacBook Pro. So its the same computer that's also running the mac version. Also other people are reporting its not stable on Windows. Version 3 is very stable I heard for Windows.
GamingWithStand Have you contacted DXO? They're usually excellent at customer support (and they haven't paid me to say that).
At my Windows machine, exporting batches up to 100 files are working with no problem. Contact DXO helpdesk or forums to get it working right for you
@@crsk1567 I did export 400 raw files on DXO PhotoLab 4 Windows version once. Another time was only able to export 100 and other times no more then two files.
I need to be able to load up a lot of files and render them out at night because I'm a wedding photographer.
Thank you! Great video.
The room at 2:57 I think is LV2 - LV6 hard to say doing this in my head and not knowing how much light MFT has lost.
You must've underexposed by 1 stop Maybe 1.3ev idk. I'm doing weird light math in my head. Not sure if I'm accurate.
I'm basically reverse engineering your EV to LV0 and figuring out the difference but I know I'm missing light lost from the smaller sensor and mentally that .3 is messing my head up.
I want to say the LV in that room at 2:57 is LV3.3
What about capture one noise reduction? Is dxo better?
I have latest version of both, DxO is much better.
@@sigbjoernrevheim2125 thank you. Will try it then. Any workflow recommendations? I would love to keep caoture one as my main browsing and retouching program
@@rafaelsegui4845 Do the denoising as the first step in Photolab 4 and then export to DNG. Then import the DNG into Capture One. You may want to make a style that you apply at import where the noise reduction in Capture One is eliminated (NR settings: Luminance=0, Detail=100,Color=0,Singel Pixel=0) or you may get a softer image. However, if you have taken very high ISO images, then there is very little little room left for raising shadow/black or increasing exposure, so it will probably be better to expose a little bit up when taking the picture if possible. I usually expose a little bit down (on low ISO) to avoid highlight clipping and then adjust exposure and HDR settings in post, but on high ISO this doesn't work.
@@sigbjoernrevheim2125 many thanks!!!! Will give it a try!
Very informative
Tried DxO on ISO 10000 picture taken with Panasonic G9, with setting 80 the picture get superclean with no apparent loss of detail. Much better than Topaz IMO,.
Too bad it only works on Raw files and that DxO doesn’t support Fuji cameras and older cameras like Olympus E-500.
I think the reasons that DxO is better and only works with RAW is that all their camera and lens profiles from their lab were tested using RAW data. And this will give the best possible corrections in addition to the deep prime noise reduction, such as Lens Sharpening, distortion controls. Yeah, shame that it's not compatible with some cameras, including DNG and drones :(
DxO will probably support Fuji X-Trans pretty soon ( picked up from their forum...)
@@Jon1a Wow, that is really great news!
Thanks for an interesting comparison.
Unfortunately, because DXO can only work with RAW files, it cannot be used as a plugin for Lightroom where the image has had some Lightroom edits carried out first. I will have to stick with Topaz as my de-noise option as I normally de-noise and sharpen as the last steps of my editing workflow.
Also when using Lightroom noise reduction, it is a balance between that and sharpening. I find that by using the sharpen mask I can find the balance a lot better and can get some respectable results.
Although DXO can possibly be a replacement for Lightroom, does it have layers and blend modes so that it is able to replace Photoshop too?
There are no layers and blend modes in Photolab
Problem with DXO is that it can't open some dng files.
I believe there is a difference in this latest version (4) so might be worth checking
If i didn't use ps as much as i did , i do alot of luminosity masking. i would drop adobe, hate the subscription model.
And.... Despite the fact that Topaz has in THEIR end user license agreement, upgrades are FREE, they have decided to charge for upgrades. That’s right...... They are just ignoring their own end user license agreement. Huge thread on their website with pissed off customers... Jerks.
There are people working there that needs to be paid. The old business model just did not bring enough money to sustain the business so they had to change it. Their initial idea was to upgrade less but develop new products instead, wich proved to be a bad idea. Paying for upgrades is a healthy business decision, no one works for free in this world.
@@p.io7 You also only get one chance in life to lose your integrity and for me..... they have done just that. They should never be trusted again as they have not only broken a promise, they broke one that they put in writing in a formal agreement. Nobody forced them to put it in writing. They did. They were so proud to say they would never charge for upgrades and used that as a marketing tool. So much for believing anything they say. I’ll never upgrade, or ever buy another product from them. Too many other competitors. That’s the way the world works. If you want to pay for it, go for it.
When they announced the change, they did give at least a years use, but I confess I was also taken in by their unsustainable model.
@@Bassbarbie Agreed. They did give a long notice, but it doesn't change the issue because the people they sent it to had already purchased their product. Doesn't change the fact that they lied.
Thanks for the info Keith, I didn't know about that (though I thought free upgrades sounded a bit too good to be true...)
Now that I've tried DxO, I'm definitely not going back. I think they made a good decision giving you just a small preview instead of updating the whole image 👍
I am wondering what am I doing wrong to have experience so different from most of comments here. With two different cameras, I find Lab's preprocessing artificial and terrible, sharpening is so unnatural as when I push Topaz Sharpen sliders too much, but it cannot be adjusted as in Topaz, as basic level of processing is done through camera+lens profile feature.
It might work well on latest high-end cameras that anyhow have clean file to start with, but not with my EM10MKII. When DeepPrime is set to auto slider adjustment, it always stays at 40, and I don't see any autoadjustment working. At 40, image is smooth as a silk, which somewhat mitigates heavy presharpening, but similar result can be achieved in LR with heavy NR plus heavy sharpening. In such scenario LR does have more artifacts than PL, but such settings are useful for abstract evaluation only, not for real-life use.
I came to a feel that I can achieve results similar to PL with any other software, only if I push sliders harder... Control points are great after some accustomation, but they seem to be the only thing I get to like there.
M1 mark ii 849 usd...... Tempting
I bought PL4 in the Black Friday sale, too good price to miss. Dfine was state of the art 20 years ago but basically hasn't changed and the rest of the world has caught up. You probably could have done much better in the taxi shot using the control points to target reduction, and then using the Nik pre-sharpener tool - I find you need to use those two in tandem. But I don't think anything would have worked on the last shot, Dfine's just getting past it, sadly.
Yeah, the deal was good right? No, i wouldn’t do anything different in this video, the sole purpose is to do noise reduction and nothing else. this is a fair fight between them and looking at nothing but noise reduction. Yes, there are ways to enhance further but I am not interested in it in this video :)
I need a bit more time to process each multiple photo comparisons. Good info but too fast for this old brain to absorb ... will rinse & repeat! Thx!
Did you look at the denoise performance or at the overall rendering? You mixed everything a bit that's unfortunate.
Here on the images you present the sharpening on the DxO ones is atrocious. And it also applies way too much contrast. Even maybe saturation. The guy in the party looks awefully red and the "no smoking" sign in the cab looks like you changed it to fluo color. This is horrible really.
This is not what you should aim for. A denoising software should only denoise, and apply the least amount of sharpening possible, or at least let you decide.
So when you compare multiple different products with different algorithms, you should aim for the same level of sharpness and contrast in order to truly judge what is the level of denoising performance they achieve. Or you're just comparing apples to oranges.
And the one software that basically push all sliders to the right should not be the best one in my opinion.
Life is too short to spend time on noise deduction. get a camera with better noise performance.
No, even full frame cameras such as Sony's a7iii are noisy at high ISO.
Sports, action and wildlife photography lives at high ISO. You NEED good noise reduction.