DxO Optics Pro now supports A900

[DavieR]

http://www.dxo.com/intl/photo/news/DxO- ... on-Modules

I might take a look. I'm using Raw Therapee and Capture One at present.

[rogprov]

Very interesting. I used the trial version some time ago and frankly I wasn't that impressed considering the price they want. The Elite edition, which alone supports the a900, is very expensive. There are other more economical ways of doing much the same thing - try PTLens coupled with Raw Therapee for example.

[picman]

Very interesting. I used the trial version some time ago and frankly I wasn't that impressed considering the price they want. The Elite edition, which alone supports the a900, is very expensive. There are other more economical ways of doing much the same thing - try PTLens coupled with Raw Therapee for example.

I've been trying it for a few days now and I must say I am impressed. At this moment it has a nice selection of FF lenses, only the CZ 16-35 is still missing from my point of view, but I guess that will come pretty quickly. Correction is automatic and can be tweaked to perfection. Nice if you want to treat a whole batch of pictures. Workflow and GUI is really nice, large selection of modules for tweaking. Results are just as good as Capture One IMHO. Only thing which bothers me a bit is that some changes are only visible from a 75% enlargement and not when viewing the entire picture (30%).

Is anyone else using Dx0? Any experiences you would care to share?

Cheers, Bob.

[picman]

I have to comment on my own post. Up to now I've only been treating pictures without noise, mainly looking at the lens corrections. I've now been trying some pictures with a lot of noise in them and here Capture One does a far better job. I cannot reduce the colored blotchiness in DxO whereas in Capture One this is simply no problem. Has anyone else had the same experience?

[picman]

More info here:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readf ... d=31307703" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[stevecim]

I've been using dxo for a few months, have not tried phaseone, have played with IDC and PS CS2 (but first I need to convert the Song RAW to DNG raw before I can use them in PS CS2)
dxo seems to do a great job on removing CA, miles better than PS CS2, Nosie is not bad, but I try to not shoot above iso400 with the a350 I also use Noise Ninja when needed.

I like it's work follow, but it's painfully slow in creating final jpgs .

Also it does not support RAW 2.2 (Sony's RAW with layers) and both IDC and PS CS2 kill it with DRO support.

Cheers, Stephen

[DavieR]

I had been pleased enough with the files from Raw Therapee and Capture One and didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for trying DxO. Well, I'm glad I did! I'm getting much better results with DxO on my A900 images, there's more "pop" and they seem cleaner somehow. I guess a lot of it is down to my skills with each program but DxO seems to make it easy for me.

I've yet to try high ISO, but as I rarely go above base level, I'm not that interested. I like the DxO lens corrections - I've been using PTLens for years but I prefer DxO already (I don't prefer the price though ).

To be honest I was hoping that DxO would not be an improvment on my other options because I didn't want to learn yet another RAW processor. I didn't want to spend the money either, but it looks as though I might.

David

[picman]

Second is from C1 and first picture is from DxO. They are screen captures of the best I can get with each program. The picture is a 100% crop of a small part of a photo taken with the A900 + 16-35 ISO 200 inside with light from outside (daylight). What did I do wrong to get that poor result with DxO?

[stevecim]

Sorry Picman
I would like to say send me the RAW and I'll have a try, but I only have the standard version, a900 files don't work with it

Cheers, Stephen

[DavieR]

Hi picman,
Can you send me the RAW file, or upload it somewhere?

Although the noise is well controlled by CO, the image looks really flat. I imagine that the DxO image would be nicer to look at print size. Is the image correcetly exposed? Are you trying to pull detail out of deep shadows? It's hard to tell from the crops.

David

[picman]

Hi David,

Thank you for this offer. Unfortunately I do not have that picture any more. I took another one of the same corridor but the light coming into the room was better. Nevertheless, in the shadowy areas I am still unable to get the noise down to a good level. I actually do not see much difference with or without DxO noise. I have sent you a raw file via the email of your website.

Thanks again, cheers, Bob.

[DavieR]

Hi Bob,

Firstly, let me point out that I am no expert and usually refrain from getting involved in forum pixel peeping. However, now I have my new A900 I'm trying to find the best RAW processor. IQ comes first, workflow second for me.

Raw Therapee opens images without any adjustments and the histogram shows that all the data, except the window highlight, is in the lower 1/3rd. With RT I can't improve on the colour noise, but I managed to stop the window highlights blowing.


Capture One shows the best noise levels but I couldn't hold any detail in the window.


DxO - maybe I've improved on the noise but it's not as good as CO. I've kept more highlight detail though.


Playing around with noise sliders didn't make much difference in any of the programs but "Grey Equaliser" in DxO helped. All images are unsharpened. I was unsure of the white balance but picked the same spot in all processors.

If I've learnt anything it's that no one processor can cope with all images. However, I'm finding that I can either get better images, or the same IQ easier, with DxO, but I still need to process a few more RAWs before spending my cash.

I hope that helps (a bit at least!)

David

[picman]

Hi David,

Thanks for this! Your conclusion fit with my own: there is no one raw processor that works best for all types of pictures. So I guess now it is time to learn what are the strong points of each of them so that in future we pick the right one without too much trial and error. I'm without my photo computer at the moment (video card gave up), but as soon as it is back I'll do some further testing of my own as well and report if I have anything interesting to show.

Once thanks a lot!

Cheers, Bob.

[picman]

DxO is scheduled to add more lenses for Alpha in Q2 of this year. It is becoming more and more interesting.

http://www.dxo.com/intl/photo/dxo_optic ... op_modules" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[braeside]

I downloaded the trial today and am impressed. The lens correction is really excellent (provided your lens is supported). Better than PTLens by a fair margin. Purple fringe removal is great, CA correction (automatic ) wonderful and best of all is correction of wide angle stretching at the edge of the frame. You can make faces and bodies look correct again.

I took some old A700 + 11-18mm shots and processed them, wow I wish I still had that set up, it now looks great.

An example of anamorphosis (note the balls) crop of lower left part of photo - Sony A700 11-18mm



Another 11-18mm shot - this time all of the frame