The Great Concentric Circles Mystery

Some of you patiently and supportively held my hand during a crisis earlier this year that was played out in this thread. You can read all the way through it to get the grizzly details. But the Executive Summary is that I was getting these mysterious concentric circles appearing in my images.

I use DXO Optics Pro to do my RAW work and then Silver Efex Pro 2 for B & W conversions. I worked out that something was happening in the interactions taking place between the two. The problem wasn't arising if I used any other RAW Processor.

Well, to cut a long story short, NIK software (Silver Efex Pro 2) never even responded to any request for advice or guidance. The DxO Optics support team were very helpful in terms of engaging with me and trying to diagnose the problem. They acknowledged that it hd them stumped and went off to work on it.

Well, I've just had a reply, I thought I'd share it with the world so that so that if anyone ever encountered the same problem they'd have a starting point for diagnostic purposes. So, with my thanks to Andy from the DxO optics support team:-

"Bet you thought we'd forgotten about you.

Has nothing to do with DxO Optics Pro's RAW conversion. It is an extremely faint artifact left behind by Vignetting Correction.

Suspect that even when you believe you are using "No Corrections Preset" you have the Lens Corrections still turned-on.

Almost impossible to see, even with local contrast cranked up extemely high. Which I presume must be what Silver Efex Pro 2 does better than Silver Efex Pro 1.

So, if you take care to assure that you always have Vignetting Correction turned-off in DxO Optics Pro, you should no longer see these mystery "Crop Circles" in you Photos."

You're leaving us hanging. Was that the problem?

DxO Optics says it was. So I'll just have to go with that.

I have been a lot more careful with the use of some of the controls on Silver Efex Pro 2 (not being so aggressive) since the possible solutions began to emerge. I do think that they have probably found the answer with this reply.

Hi Donald,

Many, many thanks for passing this info on.

I've been a long time user of DxO (couldn't live without it and would agree that their support staff are very good) and have recently purchased Silver Efex Pro 2. So far I've found Silver Efex to be a technically competent product that produces compelling results with great ease, though I haven't had to use their support service, yet.

Fortunately (for me) I primarily use DxO for batch processing large numbers of client photographs, very few of which are used to produce monochrome images, so I haven't yet fallen foul of the issue.

But if I do run into the "The Great Concentric Circles Mystery" all your effort in resolving this issue and passing on the outcome will save me (and I suspect others) a major headache, so thanks again!

Cheers,
Ady