DXO - New user, very impressed with ease of use

[Downwind Dec]

Having been mulling DXO Photolab as a replacement for Workspace, I availed of the current Black Friday 50% offer to pick up PL5 Elite and the NIK Collection. Up to now I've been using Workspace for RAW, and PSE for occasional dodging, burning, cloning, levels, etc, and have no experience of Lightroom.

I was steeling myself for a steep learning curve, but having spent only a couple of hours on some trial edits, I am amazed by how intuitive and user friendly this software is to use. The selection and masking tools are really powerful, eg. for making local adjustments of exposure. The results look pretty good, but of course I need to play a lot more until I achieve edits that I'm happy to share.

Another pleasant surprise is the speed, both in refreshing the displayed image and exporting it.

Anyhow, very pleased with my bargain, and looking forward to my editing now.

Declan.

[Ian]

DxO know their stuff when it comes to image quality. They sell IQ test systems to camera and lens manufacturers. I used to use their gear for camera and lens review test work.

On the other hand, they don't compete against the likes of Adobe and others when it comes to creative image editing tools. So you need to decide if your workflow is best-suited to a hybrid including DxO or not.

Ian

[Downwind Dec]

Thanks Ian. I'm hopeful I can use DXO as my main editor, with PSE only as needed. Whether I get the results I envisage remains to be seen, but the workflow suits fine. I do hope to minimise the time I spend hunched before a screen, so I like how snappy and intuitive the DXO interface is.

[Wookie]

[QUOTE=Downwind Dec;n851887]Having been mulling DXO Photolab as a replacement for Workspace, I availed of the current Black Friday 50% offer to pick up PL5 Elite and the NIK Collection. Up to now I've been using Workspace for RAW, and PSE for occasional dodging, burning, cloning, levels, etc, and have no experience of Lightroom.

Just posted a similar comment on a different thread. Interesting you got the nik collection - I’ll have to look, I just went pl5. But agree with it being intuitive

[Downwind Dec]

The NIK collection was on my radar as I often see Silver Efex Pro quoted against magazine pictures. It should be fun if nothing else.

[MikeOxon]

I have an oldish DxO Optics Pro and think it's the best raw converter I've tried. Plenty of intuitive controls and very good results. I've never found much use for the Nik Collection though. I tried Corel AfterShot Pro but, although its a fast converter, I could not get results that I liked. I don't get on with Affinity's user interface either. Workspace provides a good result but is not as easy to use as DxO, in my opinion. It produces JPEGs very quickly when attached to my E-M1 as a co-processor.y - handy if I've set an incorrect white balance, for example.

[RobEW]

I use DXO almost exclusively. Chosen mainly for image quality and ease of use (and being affordable, and purchased rather than rented).

It can't do all the complex image manipulation tricks of some of the more highly specified packages, but I don't generally want to do that sort of tinkering. I prefer photos to be photos, not digital creations only loosely based on reality as seen by eye and captured by a camera.

I do also have Affinity which I purchased for the rare occasions when I want to do something clever, but those rare occasions have turned out to be almost never, and I have to relearn every time I use it.

The more complex a package, the harder it is to learn, use and remember.