DxO Optics Pro vs. Camera RAW

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Originally Posted by crisscross

I have found DxO good for modest light recovery as one might do later on with shadow recovery; have not tried huge shifts, but have one or two 'suitable subjects for treatment' and will try later and report back

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Yes I stick with that, just use it for the minimum RAW conversion and 1st stage, then 'proof' ie convert to tif and do main edit in a prog that allows different light corrections for different zones of the image.

I normally only use DxO for preparation of images from the year I had a canon 350D before continuing with Nikon Capture NX2. I have just tried DxO from NEF on a couple of poor light pics (http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/imag...4/original.jpg and the next one), but DxO can't begin to compete with NX2 on NEFs

NB there sometimes seems to be confusion between progs that are designed primarily as RAW converters and continuation or main edit programs, where IMO it is ESSENTIAL to be able to have full control by masking (or selection) so as to be able to do different things to different zones of an image. Because only PS, NX2 & maybe Paintshop are the only progs properly in the latter category, there is a tendency for software houses to do cheaper bastard progs like Lightroom & Aperture, and if it was sold seperately, which it isn't, ACR that include a bit of dodge and burn but NOT full zonal control

I've been a long time user of DxO and apart from the lack of support for importing/processing DNG files, and the fairly awful interface, I think it is very effective. The automaic correction of geometric distortion based on the body/lens/focal length is superb, the lighting/colour and noise reduction processes are also very good.

Personally I would say that DxO does a better job on the more challenging/marginal images than ACR and I would put this down to their greater experience in creating profiles, though it may be down to my greater experience of using DxO over ACR. However I am finding that for most of my images Lightroom 3 (which I belive uses the same engine as ACR) is more than adequate and that I am using DxO less and less, however I would like to think this is down to me taking fewer marginal shots to begin with.

To sum up I would say that while I use DxO less than I used to I still consider it to be a useful tool that I like to have to hand and that I keep up to date.

Cheers,
Adrian

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Originally Posted by Colin Southern

(a) As far as I know DxO STILL doesn't support DNG as an input file format

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DNG isn't a standard yet and still in the developing stage.
I prefer keeping the original RAW.
DxO supports linear DNG as output.

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Originally Posted by Colin Southern

(b) The latest versions or ACR and Photoshop have camera / lens correction data, along with some VERY powerful manipulation tools

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That kind of correction is poor and the (self made) corrections can't correct for focus distances.
PTlens does a better job.

For me DxO stands out in noise reduction, lens and perspective correction.
The pseudo one shot HDR is amazing.

I have CS5, but my takes are DXO, C1 and SilkyPix and almost never ACR...