Loved the show. I use Nikon's NX-Studio for pre-processing my raw files and it does a great job at giving pretty clean images, I expect DPP does the same for Canon files. Since these programs don't use AI, but simply do a proper job converting the raw file, they don't introduce artificial sharpness (or even texture) in unsharp areas. The main downside I can think of in my workflow is that NX-Studio is relatively slow, but so is removing AI artefacts. If there is still unacceptable noise remaining, I can usually fix it using the texture slider in Lightroom (for the background) or Topaz Denoise's Low Light filter if the noise is in an area on the subject. You seem to prefer using DXO over the native converters, what are the benefits?
This is the best photo show ever. Giving us hobby photogs context to WHY professionals make the editing decisions they do is so incredibly valuable. And to hear a conversation around these decisions is such a bonus.
Doing this much post to achieve your desired or required results makes me appreciate how easy sports photography is. I’d give up photography if I had to do this.
I use DxO PureRAW 3, Topaz DeNoise AI and Topaz Photo AI. I will often try all three on an image and pick the best result. DeNoise AI wins 3 out of four times. I find that, in areas of a noisy image where the detail is subtle, with low contrast, both DxO PureRAW and Photo AI smooth out the area with significant loss of detail. I can reduce the amount of global processing, or change the Denoise or Sharpen model in PhotoAI and that sometimes fixes the issue. DxO PureRAW also changes the color grading and brightens reflection areas, which I don’t care for. The best for me, by far, is DeNoise AI. I can progressively mask out localized areas, where there are artifacts, to reduce the amount of processing, generating the best result. I do like the way PureRAW does lens corrections, though.
Great video again guys! I just upgraded from DXO Pure Raw 1 to version 2 so I will stick to that for a while. I have Topaz as well but for me Pure Raw works much better!
Thank you for picking my Green-crowned Plovercrest! I agree the image was darker than anticipated. This was done while I was in Brazil working on my laptop and the brightness was missed. I love your suggestions and revision! Thanks again guys so happy right now!
We have come to the point that you can bypass many of the downsides of less expensive gear through software. It doesn't change the physical aspects of a lens like AF speed and depth of field. But a maximum aperture of f/5.6, f/6.3 or f/8 isn't as much of a hinderance anymore. 130 bucks for a piece of software is pretty harsh but it beats paying over 10.000 bucks for telephoto prime. Which, let's be honest, will remain nothing but a dream for most of us. With PureRAW 3 the shots I get out of my Z50 together with my 200-500/5.6E look great! I used version 2 before but it was worth the upgrade :)
Both informative and entertaining, as always - thanks! Regarding DXO PureRaw 3, I agree it does a better, more consistent job than PureRaw 2, and it also has better batch-mode options too, so you can set up a set of images, each with its own choice of options, then walk away. Or even adjust the batch sequence while it's working. Given the extra number crunching (i.e. processing time) this may be quite helpful for some folks. Last point: this software has convinced me to put off upgrading from M43 to full frame - at least for a little while. A huge savings (for now)!
For me DxO and Topaz were the reasons i „downgraded“ from FF to APS-C. But its hard to call it a downgrade going from absolute entry level full frame to pretty high end APS-C I personally love that 1.4, 1.8 and 2.8 zooms are on APS-C noticable cheaper and smaller and in combination with the same „good“ ISO handling its even better than FF
It’s what we use every day, so I fully believe in it. since the new version came out we thought it would be good to compare. I do get some commission if someone buys it through the link in the description.
Just wondering if you always turn off optical corrections in DXO PureRaw 3 . Lens softness, Vignetting, Chromatic abberation and Lens distortion. Great show btw.
PureRaw 2 and 3 is love for my camera (ISO 3200 is a maximum and I avoid this sometimes…). And yeah with this cool tool I really go to m43 in one day x D
Another great episode guys! Perfect timing as I was about to go searching for a comparison video for PR2 and PR3. Time to download the trial and give it a go.
Great timing! I was looking at upgrading to DxO v3 but I've only recently updated to v2. I also noticed that the USA update price is $79 but the European prices are about 22% higher, and no, it's not due to VAT. It kind of makes me want to stay with v2 for the moment. Yesterday I discovered a TV documentary "Wild Birds of Australia" so I immediately selected it. What a disappointment! They included some sequences of the Rifelbird, but oh dear, they were really poor in comparison to Jan's. It's only when you see a documentary like that, that you realise how good your footage really is!
@@jan_wegener I live in Switzerland so I only see the price in Swiss Francs directly (as you know we're in Europe but our Taxes are significantly less than those of EU countries). I got the US price from other reviews, and I just found the price in Germany is 79€ including VAT. Currently the Frank and Euro are exactly equal so it looks like we've been singled out! Exchanging currency is always associated with additional costs but as DxO is a French company the US price should also reflect this (less VAT). I contacted DxO about the difference and they weren't interested. The pricing is just the way it is... Basically they can charge what they like. What's the price down-under? OK, this ain't gonna break the Bank (we have experts much more capable of that 🤐) but I'd honestly prefer to be left with a little noise rather than banding. I can handle noise, but banding is a pain. My money is better invested in other equipment.
Thanks guys. I use DXO PR2 and sometimes I add back some little noise to make the image look more "natural", when I feel it is too "clean" artificially (kind of smartphone-look). So, I'd like to see some sliders for more control. Reg. your question, I'd wold leave the 2nd hummingbird in the background. It's defocused enough not to steal the show but adds a pinch of "wildlife". All the best!
@@christianl4832 yeah that's kinda what I've been doing. Small, and just enough to notice and no more. In darker scenes I tend to make the grains a little bigger but that's it.
With two amplification levels in the photosites being more or less standard today, it helps to know the base noise curve of our cameras. Mine starts with very low noise at 64 ISO and this increases towards 399 ISO (or so). Then at 400 ISO noise drops to 100 ISO level due to the switch to higher amplification. At 1,600 ISO noise is at 399 ISO level again.
That's why I set ISO1600 when birding. I can then close down the lens one aperture from maximum which sees me shooting a lot at f7.1 so I can hit elevated shutter speeds for crisp imagery.
@@seawildearth - let me add my recurring rant wrt Adobe. Also note that what we call "noise" generally is not "noise" in the way we think. Noise at the sensor level would be in the darkest exposure zone where there's uncertainty about the exposure value measured by individual photosites. So most of what we then call "noise" is luminance noise or colour noise caused by deBayerisation and demosaicking. In simple terms: most noise we see in the less detailed and slightly darker than average areas of our frames follows from our raw processing software. As we generally may feel we need Photoshop (Ps) and in the subscription also get Lightroom Classic (LrC), we use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) for raw processing in all cases. To begin with. In Ps, ACR runs visibly as plug-in, in LrC it also runs as plug-in but this is camouflaged by the UI. And IMO ACR is not very good at raw processing. Up to A3 size it's OK, but beyond you want to either help it or use a completely different tool. I bought the Topaz 3 musketeers (now with a 4th added) and these work really very well. DxO with Deepest PRIME - fine too. Each case where we use a plug-in to get better results from LrC or Ps we actually acknowledge that ACR is not good enough.
The constant debate about removing distractions has no answer in my mind. I think every situation is different. I normally try to darken or desaturate first, and only remove if it's really needed.
Great episode! I personally really like the slight noise the Pureraw 2 leaves behind, also helps with background banding as you mentioned. My first year of editing some of my images had slight banding in the background and it was because I used 'save as' in photoshop, somehow this created banding but now I use 'export as' for my final jpeg which prevents this. No idea what's wrong with that save as button haha!
@@harrison00xXx it's a real thing! I recently used save as and it actually took colour away from the background in patches so it basically causes artefacts as well.
I use the Topaz software and I recently started using Photo AI from Topaz. Since I'm just a hobbyist, my workflow is completely different. I crop first, edit using a few presets that I've created for myself and once all that is done, I run it through either denoise or Photo AI (these days) and I get really good results.
You two are great! Always enjoy the show and information. I’m using a canon R5 with Lightroom and the Topaz suite. I’ll give DXO a try. I liked and agree with your clean up suggestions on those photos. I need to upgrade my Mac and trying to decide what specs to get. Any comments in helping to choose would be appreciated. Angelo. London Ontario
I have an M1 max with 32 GB and otherwise fully spec’ed. i wanted 64, but the wait was 6 months. If money isn’t an issue I’d get the same with the new chip
DxO PureRAW with Deep Prime in version 2 worked really well and fast on my M1 Max, 11 seconds for R5 RAW files. Version 3 with XD enabled takes significantly longer but no big deal. I was curious about the sharpening settings and used a file that was not perfectly sharp and XD with sharpening enabled made it actually usable, nice surprise.
I use DXO Photo Lab6. It's new Deep Prime EX denoise does a great job! It takes a bit longer to process an image. It's worth the effort to make my images look great! Love your video contents!
Informative episode as usual guys. Always enjoy your content. I personally use ON1 Raw and have been experimenting with their AI NoNoise, which does a great job but does need some tweaking. I am interested to know if you have had experience with ON1 and how do you rate it against the Pure Raw ?
I see DXO hasn't changed. I used to use DXO processing software several years ago but when I bought a new camera (I think it was the 5DIV at the time) it wouldn't support it without upgrading. This to me was a reason to drop DXO. They still do this according to what you said in this video.
Great review, very informative and well explained. Thank you for sharing and helping all of us. Short time ago Adobe has improveed Lightroom's noise reduction. I wonder if it is better than Topaz or DXO PureRaw, it it is.... That would make everything easier and shorter (ans cheaper)
Hi guys, another interesting video. I recently upgraded my main camera from a 1DX to a 1DX mark ii and with DXO pure RAW 2 as part of my workflow I find I can really crank up the shutter speed and also stop down the aperture and let the auto iso go really high. Even iso 25,600 looks fine if the image is properly exposed. I have quite an old macbook though and find even Prime takes a long time to process and Deep Prime is far too slow and the pure RAW Prime XD is unusable unless I upgraded my computer. Cheers Noel
I was on a recent trip to Az and NM by necessity I had to shoot a vast majority of my images with high ISO. My preprocess workflow began with DXO pure raw.2.5 and like Glenn I had a layer with topaz Denise AI. If I didn't use this reflow workflow I would not have had any decent images. I'm going to check out DXO 3.0 to see if I can make my images even better. When I open up the preprocessed images in Photoshop I use one of your prosets. These save time in getting to a great starting point in the photoshop editing. I use Jan's masterclass to creaet a good workflow and great images. I'm going to check out your processing ebooks Glenn so I can create the best images possible
Fantastic video guys! Looking forward to downloading PR3! My workflow is typically the same as yours Glenn. DXO to start and sometimes some extra sharpening in Topaz. Glad to see you feel the same about the sharpening in pure raw. I’ve always found it a bit weird too. Great work!
Some cameras can't handle high iso. No amount of denoising will help because it can't really repair what has been harmed when the quality seriously degrades. The image may also be unduly smoothed.
Absolutely fantastic! One question: in the past I used DxO PureRAW2, then postprocessed and then used Topaz AI Sharpen. I felt that looked oversharpened. For a while now I did not use DxO but only Topaz. What do you think. Thanks michael
I‘m using PureRAW 2 since 8 month for Wildlife and Icehockey. 12.800 ISO for Icehockey in dark environmet isn‘t any longer a problem. I‘m shooting this with a 7D MakrII and the results are more than „usable“.
People still don't get it about Adobe's raw converter. You see all this "extra noise" because in their wisdom Adobe with their latest process versions have decided to heavily cook the raw files. There's all this background contrast, colour and sharpening going on. And its hidden so you can't see it. You look at the curves panel and it shows no adjustment, when there actually is a fairly aggressive contrast curve being applied. If you change back to process version 2, THEN YOU WILL SEE THE ADJUSTMENTS ON THE CURVES PANEL. So then we can zero these adjustments and then take the image back to the current process version. And like magic, you are now looking at the raw file and not something that's half cooked already. It will look much flatter and desaturated like a raw file is meant to. So what we do is make a pre set called "process version swap" which can be applied automatically on import. When I do this, the quality is exactly the same as if I used DPP, Canon's own converter. The detailed tutorial for this is on Andy Astbury's channel. Andy is on a completely other level with the depth of knowledge when it comes to all things photographic , compared to anyone I've ever seen. Hope it's OK to mention another channel on here, but if you watch a lot of his videos you'll get the idea.
@jan_wegener Yes and obviously things don't Have to be done this way, but I think it's still tremendously helpful that serious photographers at least know what's going on in the background. Adobe are like other tech giants in that they like to push us into doing things their way! Good to see you healthy again and thanks for the response.
Great show guys, as far a processing i do what’s pleasing to my eye, I will remove distractions but I like to keep it as near to natural as possible, would like to see some, how do I say this, less exotic birds. Don’t know what that would be but I don’t get to travel or shoot exotics here in Alabama,. Ruby throated hummer is as exotic as it gets here. They were all great photos and enjoyed the edits you would do. Love your prosets and am still watching editing and workflow vid.Thanks again👀👀
Thanks for the input. I guess we just picked what stood out the most which is probably birds we don’t get to see every day. We shall make sure to pick some LBBs too 😁
My style is more photojournalistic, so although I will crop, sharpen and adjust levels, I don't remove extraneous elements in the image. Chacun à son goût.
Great video guys. I love your presets. They have enhanced my photo editing capabilities. Can you share the stepson your photo editing. I know you talked about them during the video
Great to hear. It’s dxo, acr, then photoshop. In there it’s a mix of curves, saturation, levels, selective colour and maybe some cloning. I teach all the steps I do in my Masterclass. Is there something specific you wanna know?
DxO ProRaw3 has made my newest system nearly as viable as my R5 setup. That is, it has made my OM Systems OM-1 with the M43 sensor a worthy contender noise wise. That coupled with the M.Zuiko 150-400mm f/4.5 lens is a bang on combo for wildlife. However I am not selling my R5.
ps: the 150-400 f/4.5 is a 300-800 FF f/4.5 equivalent and with the built-in 1.25TC gets me to 1000mm f/5.6 FF equivalent. DOF issues are easy dealt with in PS.
Hi! I'm looking into buying Pure Raw 3. I was wondering if it's possible to combine that with your Prosets or are those only compatible with the native RAW editor in Photoshop?
I have tried Pure Raw 2 and have decent results with high ISO R5 but I also have Topaz Photo AI which was free as I also have other Topaz products. To my, possibly less discerning, eye there is little to choose between them so I am sticking with that for now. It also has the option of sharpening like PR3 if needed. Regular updates seem to continually improve its performance.
@@GlennBartley Absolutely, I use that as an alternative. Photo AI contains modules of Denoise AI and Sharpen AI whether that will become the Topaz standard choice remains to be seen!
@@jan_wegener I usually use DPP to preselect the photos and may do some preliminary adjustment of exposure and contrast then into Topaz as a standalone. I use Affinity instead of Photoshop so sometimes I will go to Affinity and use the plugin Photo AI. To be fair my workflow is still work in progress!
Hello Jan and Glenn I am about to purchase your value pack but notice that the Adobe logos are for Photoshop and Lightroom .... I use Lightron Classic which is a different logo (LrC) ... will your presets and Proset work in Lightroom Classic please? Best Regards Robbey TC
Very timely video. Love DXO, but I have an issue. I used version 1 for a year, and loved it. Then, a month ago when I got my R7, I found that it did not work with it, and I had to "upgrade" to version 2. I was a bit thrown off, but I had used version 1 for a year, I was excited about my new R7, and I was sitting there with the first 1000 shots out of it, and no way to process them, so reluctantly, I bit the bullet. However, IMPO, paying full price for the new version is not an "upgrade", but just paying for a new program. Now, only one month later, they come out with version 3, and apparently they want me to pay full price again ! How about at least a big discount, like other software programs I've owned in the past ? I've actually messaged DXO and waiting for their response. BTW, your viewers photos were all spectacular ! I keep wanting to send one in.... But its going to take my very best to even get close !
@@jan_wegener I did get the $79 offer, but I thought that was the full regular price ? That might make me feel a little bit better :) TY :) Edit: Maybe if they raised the price to $259 for everyone else, I'd feel like I was getting a fantastic deal 😀 lol
If you bought version 2 one month ago and then they came out with version 3 now, did you try emailing sales and see if you would be able to upgrade for free? If the full price for version 2 is the same as the full price of version 3, I do not see why they would not upgrade it for you. I did this with another program and got the new version free. I think it was Corel Painter; but, I had to contact them. It would be in their best interest to satisfy their customers.
I was a bit surprised that you guys use noise reduction in the beginning of workflow because editing itself can cause noise sometimes. I usually use it as one of the last steps of editing. I have used only Topaz products, mostly Sharpen AI, but if you don't turn down the sharpening part there, birds do look like they are made of plastic :D
@@jan_wegener How do you feel about Photoshop's unsharp mask under filters menu? Good choice for sharpening? I usually use amount 50-100 and radius 0.5-1 on birds, however it is a noise-costly sharpening method.
they will never be able to do what you can do, because they don't know what you actually want to achieve, sure they can edit it nicely, but only you can create the look you truly want :)
Nice video content :) I have 2 questions though - you changed some of the photos that people added on insta and they look fantastic here did you ask them to send the original file or how kanthan possible since the quality on insta is very poor and second is your voice Jan in this video from your ear buds or from a hidden professional microphone. I use apple AirPods latest version and the sound is really awful 🥴 cheers
Hi Jan. Great video as ever. Do you have any idea why when I use PR3 in Lightroom, the dng file that comes back in to Lightroom is really bright. Approximately 1 stop exposure brighter than the original raw file? Many thanks
Another question. Have you tried any of your prosets with the OM-1 files? OM color science is a bit different than the Canon look. (I prefer the Canon look)
Great Work guys very informative and based on this video I downloaded DXO pare raw 3.. I'm still learning but in DXO pureraw 3 if I select deep prime xd the images are corrupted and come back black or with some red bands in the black.. yet deep prime seems to work fine.. I'm using trial version. It is good but it might be that I need to look at the other camp.. and see if it does the same on those images.. I have tried.
So I'm using DxO Pureraw 3 and while I agree that it does a great job coming out of Lightroom I'm more than a little annoyed by three things it refuses to do. One, it does not have an option to export the DNG to the original folder. They explain in the FAQ that this is to avoid conflicts with original files, and I get that, but to not have it as an option is a pain (plus you can't turn off the option to create a collection so I have a ton of cleanup). Two, it does not retain any of the Lightroom metadata that may have been applied during import or review, so flags, ratings, colors, they are all gone and need to be reapplied. Three, it applies the horrible Adobe Standard color profile by default. Now I know you guys want me to use your prosets, but I'm fine with the Camera Standard that's been applied to my Canon RAW files. Am I missing anything or are those things truly not setable?
@@jan_wegener you can set in on import, and it sets the Canon raw file appropriately. But after sending it to DxO PR3 it (re)sets it to Adobe Color and I've yet to find a way to override that.
As the majority of the time we have to crop quite a bit with bird photos, so do you not crop first before using DxO PureRaw ? The workflow within LIghtroom seems different with DXO compared to Topaz in as much as Topaz will honour Lightroom settings, unless I am missing something ? I crop, make some setting changes, then I use Topaz Denoise to tidy it up. But with DxO I have to let it clean up the whole uncropped / unchanged RAW (CR3) file which seems quite a waste of time if you are only going to use a small part of the photo.
@@GlennBartley Thanks Glenn. Yes, I have been doing that and just wonder why DxO can't take a RAW file with Lightroom settings, even if it is a simple crop, to avoid de-noising areas that will not be used. Maybe in future releases ?
I think there is a danger of Images becoming Characterless . In which the strive to eliminate noise Most of thee most iconic images was taken before the Digital age . In which Noise wasn't an issue .
I’ve heard this argument many times. But the way I see it, my eyes do not see any noise. So I don’t want there to be any noise in my photos. A “natural” shot is completely noise free 🙂
@@jan_wegener Food for thought . Imagine if ethier was incorporated in a camera like what Microsoft did with it's windows program . Whereby it's done auto thus saving you endless hours correcting .
Did you guys ever figure out a workaround for DxO PureRAW oversharpening when using RF 100-500mm + 2x teleconverter, even with all the sharpening options disabled? The DxO results are usually unusable for me when using the 2x teleconverter. The issue persists in PureRAW v3. Works great with the 1.4x teleconverter or the lens alone.
Personally I would not recommend using that combo at all. Not sure if Jan might have some insight as I think he's played around with TCs on the 100-500.
@@GlennBartley The IQ is pretty good even with the 2x. I don't use it often but sometimes it's just what I need. I just need DxO to work properly with it.
Personally I do not like the workflow of DxO PureRaw 3 in combination with Capture One. Upon save, to re-import a file and then drag it into a catalogue folder is absolute nonsense. The workflow of Topaz Photo is much better, right click, process in Topaz, do your adjustments and on Save to Capture One a new file appears next to your original is much better. The differences between both programs you will only notice on pixel peep having both files next to each other. Do not get me wrong, I still think DxO is in some aspects superior to de-noise but their workflow is a killer.
Yes it suits Workflows like mine through ACR better than being used form within programs since it’s meant to be used before any editing is done basically
I think this software is fantastic But is this making photographers Lazzy.. I have looked through a few wedding Photos just lately and sometimes I can tell that AI has been used and othere times you just can't tell. I am using for my out of focus photos Dx0 pure raw 3 which is hands down better than Topaz. Topaz is OTT and Dx0 is spot on 90% of the time but again spoils the on feild photography side of things... Not sure which way to go....
Interesting. I prefer not to remove or alter any features that were in the original image. I want my images to reflect what the bird actually looks like in nature. Then again, I'm more of a birder than a photographer.
I have experimented with most of these "miricle" denoising programs and have noticed (for me) they have one thing in common. They do a pretty good to very good job on noisy photos taken recently, and a poor to very poor job on noisy photos taken a decade ago! Which raises the question, is the software so much better today, or is it the cameras that are handling noise better, so that an equally noisy photo taken yesterday cleans up better than (an equally noisy) photo taken a decade ago? Probably a combination, but for me at least, those photos I have kept down through the years for compelling content, that were just too noisy to use, thinking the software would come to clean them up, are still waiting, even though they don't look any more noisy than some recent photos that have cleaned up nicely!
@@GlennBartley Better? Yes. Ready for prime time? Again, only speaking for me and my photos. No. Yet photos taken recently that appear equally noisy? Yes. Glad they work for you, though!!
The "noisy syndrom" is how I call it is mostly with the wildlife photographers for some reason thinking that grainy jmage is bad so... I guess it's about style, I intentionally put grain in my photos no matter street photography or wildlife and most of the times it looks better and it's not squished by the social media algorythms. I don't even use PC anymore and probably I'm the only one in the world shooting with z9 + z800PF and upload my photos straight to the phone. Little colour editing in InShot and all done lol
I love watching you guys but no offense - I'm not fan of this style of overediting, overcolouring, overcleaning and total lack of shadows and depth. The shadows is qhat makes the depth not the fast aperture at least in my eyes. I won't even begin with thos DXO fake stuff and I'd post any grainy photo than using this stuff. It looks way better with the noise to me 🤷♂️🥴
That's why its nice that everyone can edit their images how THEY want to. Great to be able to make your images look how you want. Cheers for the feedback!
Too much of an advertisement for your stuff. Also, I use Topaz and I am invested in Topaz. I’m not going to also spend money for DXO. Your channel is one big advertisement.
I used to use Topaz a lot. Then I started using DXO, and now, I rarely need any additional sharpening or noise removal from Topaz. In fact, if my shot is not sharp enough, or clean enough right out of DXO, I consider it kind of a personal fail.
