Show more →įor skintones, check whether you should like setting Vibrancy to +50 and Saturation to -30 as a starting point, from which you can, if needed, make further small adjustments. I also find I increase the global contrast a lot compared to CO, but maybe CO's contrast defaults are simply higher. I purchased FilmPack, and I am very happy with the several new features I see added in Photolab. Like you, I wish the feature had been part of Photolab Elite. Thank you for mentioning Fine Contrast which requires purchasing DxO FilmPack - I was not aware of that. I like the program, which has grown significantly in the last 5 years. Thus, it is natural that the user experience with, and the opinions about DxO Photolab can be vastly different. Understandably, there are different needs, and those of a wedding photographer can be quite different from the needs of someone working on art projects. In my experience, the main adjustment is usually toward the Highlights the Shadows and Blacks change little (e.g., +10 and -5, respectively) The subsequent adjustments in Selective Tone are often minimal and straightforward. I think of this as a "vehicle" that, although would not take one to the destination, yet helps to approach it. This is an automated dynamic range optimizer, and most of the time it does a reasonable job of adjusting the highlights and shadows. The amount of postprocessing so much depends on the choice of the right profile, that the users who are not aware of the profiles in Photolab may well dislike working with the program while using the default profile.ĭxO Smart Lighting usually works for me. I regularly use the Cobalt DCP profiles as well as more recently I have enjoyed using the newest addition in Photolab 5, the Fujifilm GFX 50R. This is especially true when working with images obtained in varied light, from bright day to low artificial light. Too often, the camera default rendering is not the best profile. I think of this as a key choice in postprocessing in Photolab. I agree on "the most overlooked aspect of DXO Photolab" - the Color Rendering. Thank you for the thorough review! I have been using DxO Photolab for about 5 years. The default film curve of C1 is indeed contrasty, but DXO is not bad either in this area, most of the time, the default rendering has a strong curve applied. The area I struggle the most is, as usual, skintones, where I often don't like the effect of increasing saturation and vibrance (and have to resort to HSL + curve +. I find Smart Lightning a must if I want to get close to CO's highlights preservation. I thought I was going crazy when adjusting shadows/midtones/highlights compared to CaptureOne.Īnyways, I learned to reach pleasing (to my eye) colors in most cases in PL5, by a subtle and ever changing combination of contrast* + levels* + curve (I usually lower Red gamma) + Smart Lightning (and sometimes, if I want more "bite", - ClearViewPlus, but it is limited to only some pictures) adjustments. Nice to see it matches my observations in some areas, i.e. Thanks! This is very informative and useful. The Auto sharpening default in DxO is very aggressive and almost always I have to pull back from it. I don’t use any of the other features of DxO. I use DeepPrime + Lens Sharpening and then export the DNG to Adobe Camera Raw (make sure you reset/check your camera profile at this step as DxO may not preserve your intended camera profile). This alone makes Photolab 5 worth its price.
#Lightroom vs dxo photolab 5 software#
I’m not an expert software user, prefer things to be simple to be honest but find that I get on well with DXO, use it to work on raws then finish in AffinityĪfter reading your review I understand how it works a bit betterĪgree with you about deep prime it’s amazingĪs the OP has observed, the real star of DxO Photolab 5 is the DeepPrime technology for noise reduction. I’ve recently changed over to DXO Photolab 5, I use it in conjunction with Affinity photo Thanks for the review very interesting and helpful It's unfortunate that dxo puts such a dysfunctional interface on this software, if the cropping/leveling/exporting/etc features worked better i'd be tempted to dump photoshop.