
Also, Lightroom has more cataloging features, like more colors to tag your pictures. For instance, I use the "white" slider a lot on LR and can't seem to find it on DXO. I have been using DXO PhotoLabs for a few days and I realize Lightroom has way more features. I'd like to know if some of you went that route, and if yes, if you miss something from Lightroom.
#Dxo photolab vs lightroom software
I'm happy with it but Adobe's photography plan is starting to be a little expensive, and I'd rather buy a software once and for all than pay a monthly subscription. I'd like to see if this software can replace Lightroom, which I currently use to edit my pictures. It is frustrating that the world’s most popular/convenient raw processing software should be such a middling performer, but most people shoot raw to get the best possible quality, and Adobe Camera Raw just doesn’t reliably deliver it.I am currently trying DXO PhotoLab 4. We recently reported on a survey that suggested Lightroom is the most popular editing software (opens in new tab). And it’s not just a case of adjusting the noise reduction and sharpening sliders. With some camera brands and models, and when shooting at low ISOs, you may not see much difference, but with others, you will see a lot.

But you might change your mind completely when you see how they look in Capture One, DxO PhotoLab or even when you look again at the camera JPEGs.Īdobe’s raw processing may be by far the most widely used on the market, but it’s definitely not the best.
#Dxo photolab vs lightroom iso
You might decide not to use your EOS past ISO 1600, say, based on what the raw files look like in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. This can be especially noticeable with high ISO Canon images, which we’ve used for our comparisons. But if you do, you might find that the camera is actually doing a much better job of rendering detail without noise than Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. You might assume that you’ll always get the best quality with raw and not bother checking your JPEGs. The DxO version is a bit of a cheat because we used DxO's DeepPRIME process which takes a little longer – but this does illustrate the huge gulf between what this camera is capable of delivering (with help) and Adobe's frankly horrible attempt. (Image credit: Rod Lawton) (opens in new tab) Lightroom's version is painful – it clearly has no idea what's going on by this point. Shot at ISO 25,600, it's right at the outer limits of the EOS 800D's capabilities but, even so, the camera JPEG is actually not too bad and the Capture One version does a good job of noise control while keeping the detail crisp. Here's another comparison that really brings this home. A better camera will simply make it less obvious.

Newer cameras are better, but Lightroom still shows the same characteristics – noticeably increased textured noise at lower ISO settings and poor noise/sharpness balancing at higher ISOs. The EOS 800D is a few years old, but many people are still using cameras of this age. Note that these are 200% enlargements of much larger photos. The Lightroom version has good detail but way more noise than the others, and you're not always going to be able to get very close to what they achieve with Lightroom's noise reduction tools either. You can see this in the ISO 1600 comparison at the top of this article.

You can chase your tail trying to play one off against the other and make no real progress at all.Īdobe Camera Raw’s noticeably ‘gritty’ look can give a very distorted view of your camera’s performance. You can reduce the noise and accept less sharpness, or increase the sharpness and worsen the noise again. The trouble with Adobe Camera Raw is that it starts off so noisy, you’ve got much less room for maneuver. Normally you might expect to trade off some sharpness to get less noise or accept a little more noise to get more sharpness. Lightroom uses the same raw processing engine as Adobe Camera Raw, and the problem for both is noise control and sharpening – and balancing both to give satisfying detail rendition.
