PART 3 to Lightroom seems too intrusive: DxO versus LR

<p>Okay, a last (?!) thread on the best (reasonably-priced) raw conversion software for my use / my needs, now that the <em>second</em> one:<br>

http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00cFmC<br>

is getting long and heading a bit toward the direction of a flame war.</p>

<p>The photo.net community has already given me a lot of good information, but the only suggested alternative to Lightroom that appeared likely to meet my needs was DxO Optics Pro. Tonight I downloaded the trial version and used it some. <strong>(And by the way, DxO Optics Pro 9 Standard Edition is on special ending 12-25-13 for $69 at B&H!)</strong> Yes, folks, it appears to be potentially a very reasonable alternative for my raw-conversion needs. My testing is far from exhaustive, but my initial observations are:<br>

* DxO-OP seems to have a lot more camera / lens correction profiles readily available, but the one or two I tried do not appear to do quite as good a job, e.g., correcting chromatic aberrations as the ones in LR.<br>

* I might like / be more impressed by LR's perspective distortion correction features, compared to DxO-OP's.<br>

* I might like / be more impressed by DxO-OP's noise reduction features, compared to LR's, but I have not really explored enough what LR (or for that matter, DxO-OP) can do.<br>

* I seem to be able to get the colors / densities I want a little easier in DxO-OP than in LR, although this may well be just my inexperience with LR.<br>

* LR seems <em><strong>fast</strong></em> and DxO-OP seems relatively s-l-o-w. Although it may be that my tests involved asking DxO-OP to do more things, I suspect that LR recalculates each change in the background as you make it, while DxO-OP does one giant, global recalculation of all changes when you go to export.<br>

* DxO-OP seems to open / import and save / export <em>somewhat</em> less bureaucratically than LR, but it's still far from ideal. Like LR, DxO-OP seems to gear the workflow to batch processing. Why can't I have a usual-type Save As dialog box?</p>

<p>So all things considered, I'm leaning slightly toward DxO-OP over Lightroom. However, I have a bunch of days left of the 30/31-day free trials of each, so more testing and experimentation is in order. Both seem to be very capable tools.</p>

<p>At this point, I'd just ask: what have your experiences been with the points raised above, especially (but not exclusively) if you've tried both DxO-OP and LR? Thanks all!</p>

 

<p>Personally, I don't find Optics Pro more or less satisfying, colours-wise, than Lr - they're of a sameness for me.</p>

<p>I can't comment on pros and cons of the distortion tool - shooting "long" this is rarely an issue for me - but it seems to me that Optic Pro usually gets the nod there.</p>

<p>Lr's NR is very good, but Optics Pro is definitely best in class, outperforming Lr, Photo Ninja and Capture One 7.</p>

<p><em>But... - </em>and this is s biggy for me - its highlight recovery abilities really are second rate compared to the opposition (useful discussion on the subject <a href="http://forum.dxo.com/index.php/topic,7388.0.html">here</a>), and probably <em>third</em> rate compared to Lr.</p>

<p>You can speed up Optic Pro's one file processing by using keyboard shortcuts: having set up the output dialogue once, <strong>Ctrl-K, Enter</strong> (on Windows) can be pressed almost as a single keystroke, and the image will process in the background while you get on with the next file.</p>

<p>Of course, this is also true of Lr, where <strong>Ctrl/Shift-E, Enter</strong> has the same effect. Really does speed things up, and its something I miss being able to do in Capture One 7 Express - we <em>used </em>to be able to use <strong>Ctrl-D</strong> to "develop" files in Capture One 6 and earlier, but Phase One broke that workflow with 7...</p>

<p>I'd recommend that you look at Capture One 7 in terms of results, but "Express", although a reasonable price, has even more frustrating file management than Lr.</p>

<p>I still think that you'd benefit from checking out Photo Ninja - it has <em>far and away</em><a href="http://www.picturecode.com/tutorials/browse_open.php"> the least obtrusive file handling</a>, and it's capable of truly excellent results: it has very good NR and highlight recovery, and although its colour management tools are rather basic on the face of it, they are effective, in my experience.</p>

<p>It has very good <a href="http://www.picturecode.com/tutorials/distortion_tool.php">distortion/correction tools</a>, but they're more hands-on than those in Optics Pro or Lr.</p>

<p>Quirky interface, but you get used to it very quickly, and in terms of getting files in and out, it's satisfyingly straightforward and undemanding. And again, once you've set up your output, <strong>Ctrl-S</strong> sends the file to conversion.</p>

<p>It's a little on the expensive side compared to some, but it's my converter of choice (and as I suggest, I also use Optics Pro 9, Lr 5, Capture One 7 Express - and others), not least <em>because</em> of its "easy in, easy out" workflow options. But I also really like the results it gives - and the authors are very receptive to user comments and bug reporting, and extremely quick to react to issues, which I appreciate a great deal.</p>

<p><em>For me</em> it's the most capable "just a converter" (far and away my preferred model) all-rounder out there, by a goodly margin.</p>

<p>Well, this is thread number three on the same topic/question. By now you should see that alternatives to LR have been offered. The issue is that your problems with LR are your problems with LR, and not necessarily those of the responders to these threads. You are looking for software to please you, and you are the one that has to make that decision, nobody else can do that for you. If you can't find a software solution that pleases you, it is not the fault of anyone here, and you are either going to have to accept that fact, or perhaps give up digital processing. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Carl, that's the same sort of comment that derailed the two previous threads. It doesn't add any information. I'm reading - or trying to read - these threads hoping to learn some tricks to resolve my own issues with Lightroom, not to merely bitch about it or bitch about people who don't grok the Adobe way of doing things.</p>

<p>Yesterday John Crowe offered a tip on syncing a specific folder that helped easily resolve one of my primary problems with LR (I'd previously tried syncing the entire catalog, which didn't seem to resolve problems with several folders). That's the sort of thing I'm hoping to gain from these threads, and I get the impression that Dave is sincerely interested in resolving issues and finding a workflow that suits his preferences. He isn't merely complaining about LR or misrepresenting the product.</p>

<p>I'd also like to *learn* more specifics about other raw converters/editors. So I'm hoping this third thread doesn't get derailed with rants and invective again.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>So I'm hoping this third thread doesn't get derailed with rants and invective again.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Yeah, good luck with that, Lex...</p>

<p>Fair enough, Lex. </p>

<p>I do like Capture One 7 pro but the images while sharper they are more noisy than Lightroom. I will use Capture One with lower ISO stuff and switch to lightroom when noise becomes a problem. I import into lightroom first to two locations then import the backup location into Capture One to a third drive. Works quite well so far. I haven't used photoshop for quite sometime. I may look into the photoshop subscription but I'm not sure yet.</p>

<p>Staurt, the thing I could never get my head around in Capture 1 is the way it stores and moves photos. I always seem to end up with several sets of photos taking up a lot of space. Its not necessarily Capture's fault, I just had a mental block trying to understand it. But I think as far as an interpolation engine, it is one of the best out there.</p>

<p>FWIW, Capture One is a total non-starter for me because it does not have profiles for my equipment; so regardless of its other merits, as far as I can tell, it does not join the club that meets my requirements, apparently consisting of only Lightroom and DxO Optics Pro.</p>

<p>Between Lightroom and DxO Optics Pro, I'd welcome others' comments on the relative merits of each, and my own testing and experimentation continues. To illustrate my point about automatic fixing of lens distortions and chromatic aberrations, I did a comparison from a resent shot where I had very visible CA with the Sony DT 16-50mm f/2.8 SSM. I tried to process the raw file with different converters and no changes other than lens corrections. Below are small 100% crops of the most CA-affected area. Sony's Image Data Converter 4.2 did the first one; the lens correction option in it is grayed out. The second is also IDC, but with a manual fix in GIMP 2.8, with the Fix-CA GIMP plugin. The third is Lightroom 5.3 with the profile David Kilpatrick created for this lens with Adobe's tool (Adobe itself does not supply one--which is ridiculous--but you can download David's through Adobe). The fourth is DxO Optics Pro 9, with DxO's profile for this lens.</p>

<div></div>

<p>P.S.<br /> My manual adjustments with GIMP's Fix-CA plugin filter were maybe a tad too strong, and the sample above appears to maybe go from a strong red fringe to a <em>slight</em> blue fringe. My eyes currently indicate that I can improve it by decreasing the strength of one adjustment by 25%. Also, it appears to me--please tell me whether you agree--that DxO is only correcting the chromatic aberration about half-way or a little better.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Staurt, the thing I could never get my head around in Capture 1 is the way it stores and moves photos. I always seem to end up with several sets of photos taking up a lot of space.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's sound very similar to the way iPhoto on the Mac manages editing sessions on single images.</p>

<p>I could never understand when just checking out a Raw, jpeg or tiff image just to mess around with iPhoto's tools AND NOT SAVE the edits and quit out of iPhoto, several weeks later there would be a number of copies of the image or images whenever I did a random image search. Or maybe I did invoke a save on those edits and that created the extra copies. Not sure now. I never named the newly edited file which was puzzling.</p>

<p>Also never checked the file size to see if they were just place holders or "Point To" aliases created by the system, but I knew all I needed to know about iPhoto to never work in that app ever again.</p>

<p>Dave, that's an interesting and surprising demo in that it appears Gimp has done a better job. Coming from ACR 4.6 with PV2003 and now LR 4 with PV2012 I didn't know that type of correction is now part of the lens profile.</p>

<p>Before LR 4 I could easily get rid of those types of CA using ACR 4.6's CA slider tools. It even works on my jpegs. LR4's handling on my Pentax PEF's works better but with different results using their sliders and eyedropper sample tool on the actual CA color but it tends to noticeably reduce overall saturation if you don't isolate that particular color with the eyedropper tool.</p>

<p>Tim, it surprised me too--I figured Adobe and DxO would both have figured out quite well how to correct chromatic aberrations (and geometric distortions and vignetting) on this lens, which is Sony's high-end 'kit lens' for the A77 (separately it goes for $800). But Adobe doesn't even have its own profile, although it serves you up David Kilpatrick's evidently pretty good one; and DxO's profile obviously only partially fixes the CA. With further tinkering (see below), I think GIMP can do as well as the best (LR + Kilpatrick). But in this day and age, any top-flight raw converter ought to automatically perform these corrections well.</p>

<div></div>

<p>I think the original Gimp attempt is better. The second one has the vertical edge of the building less sharp. But what I'm also surprised about is the pastel reddish orange cloud in the middle still maintains saturation while LR diminishes the vibrance which is the result I've come to expect as normal from both ACR/LR. Although the LR version is lighter so that makes it a tough call to judge by.</p>

<p>Have you tried LR's CA eyedropper tool on such heavy CA fringing? I'm amazed by how well that works.</p>

<p>I use both LR and DxO and as far as basic raw conversions go DxO works a touch better than LR for me. The main advantage for me of DxO is that I can open up, edit and process files a LOT faster than with LR. LR's whole import/cataloguing process annoys me and takes up oodles of time that I could spend doing something else. When I come back from a wedding and want to batch process a few thousand files DxO takes less time to open and process than LR does.<br>

That said I do like the finer adjustments that LR allows for taming over exposed highlights better, but if I expose correctly to start off with I don't need that feature so much either.<br>

Both of these I use only for basic raw conversion/lens profile corrections/chromatic aberration removal/noise reduction (they both do these well) and then use a proper/more complete photo editor for everything else.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Dave Redman said:</p>

<p>that DxO is only correcting the chromatic aberration about half-way or a little better.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Where is the slider set? You're comparing a default setting for OP to a custom setting for LR.</p>

<p>I'm now using DxO Optics Pro 9.1 and find the PRIME noise reduction excellent; however, you still need to play with it to get a good compromise between noise and details. I took a number of shots of white-tail bucks jumping a fence before sunrise, with the camera at ISO 3200. The body was the Canon 7D, which find to produce a lot of noise above ISO 800, even with proper exposure. PRIME wanted to crush the noise and sacrifice too much fur detail for my tastes, so I dialed Luminance reduction way back and Chrominance about halfway lower than the default. The I added some Micro Contrast and even some sharpening on top of that.</p>

<p>DxO's defaults are pretty good, but don't blindly follow them.</p>

<p>I had about fifty deer shots. I worked the first one for about five-minutes, created a Preset and then applied it to all the others. PRIME takes five to ten-minutes per image to process, so it took over four hours to process my batch.</p>

<p>About batch; if you want to work just one image, it's easy and you don't need to create a batch. Just hit Export File when you're finished. I do that quite often when reworking a file. Usually I do create a batch.</p>

<p><em>You're comparing a default setting for OP to a custom setting for LR.</em></p>

<p>I understand your concern that you think this is not a fair comparison, but I'm pretty confident that in fact your assumption of the settings is incorrect, and the comparison is more than fair to DxO. In Lightroom I'm using David Kilpatrick's lens profile for my lens (and a slightly different camera) because Adobe amazingly fails to provide one; David used Adobe's automated tool to create his lens profile, and I downloaded it from Adobe. For DxO Optics Pro, I downloaded and installed DxO's own specific "Sony DSLR-A580 / Sony DT 16-50mm f/2.8 SSM" profile, ID number C14667a. So with both programs, I'm using the default settings <em>attached to lens-specific profiles</em>. My settings in DxO Optics Pro are shown below, in case I'm missing something.<br /><br /></p>

<div></div>

<p>To explain a bit more, when you open the DxO Optics Module referred to above ("Auto with DxO Optics Module"), you can see what DxO profiles are installed, and I have installed DxO's own specific profile for my camera-and-lens combination. What the sample image exhibits is not (to my eyes) purple fringing, but red-blue chromatic aberration. So I think I'm letting DxO correct exactly as its module / profile thinks is best.</p>

<p>Dave, particularly with kit zooms, there's going to be sample to sample variation. Simply using the default is not the way most of us use these kinds of programs. I'd raise shadow detail first, get my levels right (they're way off) and then work on CA. The Defaults are great starting points, but don't show the full potential of the programs by any means.</p>

<p><em>[P]articularly with kit zooms, there's going to be sample to sample variation.</em></p>

<p>I suppose that's possible, and if we were talking a lens that added $100 to the price of a body-only to get the kit, I'd think it plausible. But just as the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 USM L IS can be bought in a kit with the EOS 5D Mk. III, but is a high-quality, expensive lens on its own, the Sony DT 16-50mm f/2.8 SSM likewise can be bought in a kit with what was at one time Sony's top camera (the A77), and is also sold on its own for $800. So this is not a cheap, low-build-quality lens. Also, if one assumes that sample variation plays a large part in my less-than-stellar DxO Optics Pro chromatic aberration correction results, then you have to assume that the sample David Kilpatrick reviewed has virtually the same type/direction of sample variation (or else his Lightroom profile would not work so well for me). So on the whole, I'm more inclined to think that DxO's profile is not very good, than that my lens is atypical.</p>

<p>That's silly Dave. Look at Kilpatrick's adjustment and you'll see lots of differences beyond CA, particularly when you look at the levels in the shadows. Why would anyone buy a software and assume they're going to use the Defaults, when every setting has an adjustment slider.</p>

<p>Even Canon's L-series lenses have sample to sample variation.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>So on the whole, I'm more inclined to think that DxO's profile is not very good</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>That's very unlikely, Dave - DxO's reputation here is second to none.</p>

<p>Thanks, I really do appreciate all the input. Now specifically:</p>

<p><em>Look at Kilpatrick's adjustment and you'll see lots of differences beyond CA ....</em></p>

<p>No doubt that's true. Kilpatrick used Adobe's lens profile creator tool--his account of that appears at:<br /> http://www.photoclubalpha.com/2012/02/14/sony-dt-16-50mm-f2-8-ssm/<br /> --which as I understand analyzes and attempts to generate corrections for not only chromatic aberrations, but also geometric distortions and vignetting. The differences in color and density--the LR version is notably different there--may be due to differences in the degree of vignetting correction applied. My sample 100% crops are from near the extreme edge, which is where both chromatic aberrations and vignetting are usually worst, and were chosen specifically for that reason, to test performance on a worst-case scenario.</p>

<p><em>Why would anyone buy a software and assume they're going to use the Defaults, when every setting has an adjustment slider.</em></p>

<p>My intent was to test the degree to which the programs successfully corrected various lens flaws automatically / with their default settings for whatever lens profiles are available. There are tons of programs, including several free ones, where I can do this stuff manually, but that takes more time and effort and in some cases (particularly geometric distortions) can be difficult to do very precisely. If I'm going to mess with correcting chromatic aberrations manually, then I don't need LR or OP to do it. If I'm going to buy a program with the intent to have it perform lens corrections well, as a part of raw processing, then I want it to at least get very close a high percent of the time. Other than lens corrections, I could get along fine with Sony's free / included Image Data Converter 95%+ of the time.</p>

<p><em>DxO's reputation here [profiles] is second to none.</em></p>

<p>That's also my impression, which is why the seemingly inferior (and indeed, arguably inadequate) performance of DxO OP surprised me. I need to do some additional tests, and make some comparisons using other lenses, especially the Tamron SP 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di USD and the Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7.</p>

<p>People trying to evaluate DxO, or any of these programs, should look not only at the default settings, but also consider additional adjustment that can be easily added. You can see from the screen print provided for DxO that there's tons more adjustment. </p>

<p>If this is a corner shot, the vignetting should be dialed in first, adjust shadows, lens softness and then look to fine tune the CA.</p>