Mini bake-off: DPP vs. DxO

Some time back, I posted a poll question on RAW processing software - one reason I posed the question was that I was curious about DxO Optics Pro but surprisingly (to me, anyway), no one indicated that they used DxO.

I was specifically interested in DxO because of the lens corrections it offers, which I think is a real benefit of DPP (in addition to the cost benefit!). LR3 now offers lens corrections as well, but I don't think LR3's corrections are specific to the camera used, whereas DxO's are specific. Another reportedly good DxO feature is better noise reduction.

So, I downloaded the trial version and gave it a test. It's pretty intuitive to use, IMO, and I was up and running quickly without tutorials or the manual.


I'll give a brief pro and con summary, then some general impressions and some specific examples. The comparisons are all done using default options, with no adjustments to the histogram (except a significant EC adjustment in one case, mentioned below).

Pros of DxO compared to DPP:

• Faster/easier image editing workflow
• Customizable interface
• Better image corrections (noise, distortion, sharpness,
  highlight recovery, etc.)
• Can rescue images DPP cannot

Cons of DxO compared to DPP:

• Not free
• Less flexible rating system
• No clone/stamp tool
• Default color is 'cooler' and less saturated (a con for me,
  but maybe not for everyone)
• Slower RAW conversions

The workflow for DxO is reasonable, although I don't like that fact that you need to add images to a project before you can apply a rating (edit - no longer necessary). DPP allows what I found to be a more efficient triage of incoming images. But I wasn't used to DPP at first either, so this is something that should work itself out quickly.

DxO applies corrections automatically based on a preset, and makes it easy to see the effects of those corrections. They can be altered at will, and the interface is very customizable, allowing you to design a workspace with only those corrections you'll use frequently.

I started by comparing a 'good'; image - a daytime shot with good lighting, well-exposed straight from the camera, reasonably low ISO, etc.

<not shown because of the limit of 5 images per post>

In this case, there's not much difference between the two programs, although the color may be a little better with DxO.

Next, I looked at white balance. The WB results with DxO are different than DPP, particularly where flash is used. I normally shoot with Auto WB and select the best option in post (sometimes best = most pleasing, and I frequently use Cloudy for a little boost in warmth). With a Canon flash and a recent body, the flash passes color temperature data to the body which is used in setting white balance. When Flash WB is chosen in DPP, those color temperature data are used, whereas DxO's Flash WB
setting is unaware of the additional data and uses a constant 6000K. Here's the result for an Auto WB shot set to Flash WB in DPP vs. Flash WB in DxO, where DxO is cooler:

Attachment 1243

Leaving DxO on As Shot produces results identical to DPP, and DxO does make it very easy to tweak the WB, since a temperature slider is
available alongside all of the preset options (it's also nice that DxO showsyou the color temperature of each of those presets). So, it's something to be aware of but something that's easy to correct with a slight modification to the normal workflow.

Color also appears a little cooler and saturation a little lower with DxO. I think this results from Canon's Standard Picture Style being more warm and saturated, as
many users find that more pleasing (I am one of them). Here' an example:

Attachment 1244

Like the white balance issue, this is something that's easy to correct in DxO.

Next, I looked at sharpness and distortion correction. I chose an architectural image shot with the 24-105mm at 24mm, where there is substantial barrel distortion on FF (photozone.de calls it 'massive'). The top row are the full image, and the bottom row are near-100% crops of the planter at the lower right of the steps. Going from left to right are the DPP image without distortion correction, the DPP image with distortion correction, the DxO image, and finally an optically-corrected image (shot with the TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II with a +8 shift).

Attachment 1245

DPP does a decent job of correcting the distortion, but not quite as good as DxO, which gets closer to the 'ideal' image from the TS-E lens. Looking at the crop of the
planter, you can see that there is still some distortion in both software-corrected images. The DPP correction results in a softer image (some detail on the planter and flowers is lost), whereas DxO actually improves the sharpness in the corner, bringing out more detail in the planter and the stairs, as well as improving the color and contrast. As you'd expect, the TS-E offers the best sharpness and contrast, and the least distortion (which is why it's better to 'get it right in-camera'). The WB is set to daylight throughout, so in addition to the lack of distortion, you can see that the TS-E lens also has better color and contrast

Next I looked at noise reduction. This set of shots is from a PowerShot S95, where ISO noise is a bigger problem. This was shot at ISO 640 (the crop factor for the S95 is 4.6, so this is approximately equivalent to ISO 3200 on FF or ISO 2000 on a crop sensor).

Attachment 1246

The improvement in noise is detectable even when looking at the whole image, and pretty evident when looking at the 100% crop of my
daughter making friends with a Madagascar hissing cockroach. Sharpness is better with DxO, too. You can start to see the striations on the cockroach's antenna that are not evident in the DPP image.

Finally, I wanted to see how DxO would do at 'image rescue'. Over the summer, a red-tailed hawk spent some time right next to our house, from late afternoon to
after sunset. At one point after sunset, he flew across our yard and landed on a branch underneath some trees behind our house. I had my 7D on manual with Auto ISO and a fast shutter speed (1/800) to catch him in flight, resulting in an ISO 3200 shot that was very underexposed. He perched on the branch for only a second or two, and was gone before I could change the settings to a slower shutter and bring down the ISO. So what I was left with was a noisy, underexposed shot which was unusable. The image on the left is pushed to +2 EC in DPP, with strong NR. The image on the right was processed in DxO using the High ISO Noise Reduction preset and was pushed to +2.5 EC (DxO allows up to 4 stops, vs. 2 stops with DPP).

Attachment 1247

The DxO result is far from perfect, but is much, much better than with DPP - the DxO version would probably be usable as a small print.

At the back end, there's a noticeable difference in the time it takes to convert the edited images from RAW to JPG - DxO is quite a bit slower. However, this is not a big
deal to me since that's unattended time (I can let it run while I'm busy during the day, or even overnight). The actual hands-on editing is faster with DxO (I think DPP applies more 'on-the-fly' which slows it down, or it's just not coded as cleanly). I suspect the total time from start to JPG is similar, but with DxO less of that time is attended.

DxO is an image correction program only - there's no clone/stamp/heal tool, etc., although for simple image artifacts the dust tool does a decent job. ersonally, I only rarely do selective editing like that and will just Photoshop the JPG prior to printing when I need to remove a blemish, etc.

So, overall I'm quite pleased with DxO, and I think I'll be using that instead of DPP going forward.

Hope this helps anyone interested in DxO or wondering where to go from DPP. DxO offers a free 30-day trial, and right now the software is on sale (through December 25th) for 33-40% off - $99 for the Standard version and $199 for the Elite version (same features, but the Elite license is required for use with 1-series and 5D/5DII bodies).


--John

John, nicely done. This is the kind of thing I like: comparative examples, not just theory.


I thought Daniel had DxO? Maybe I am wrong on this.


Did you ever consider Photoshop? Lots of money, but I'm guessing it would do as good a job as DxO.

Hi John -


You have done a fantastic job here with showing the benefits of DxO! I have been thru the trial version of 6.2 and purchased 6.5 last week.


I just want to add that when I had Vista, DxO 6.5 was pretty much unusable but is working flawlessly with Windows 7. Also, from my experience this week and numerous emails sent to them, customer support is pretty much nonexistent with DxO but now that I got it working without their help...I think the program itself is great!


Denise

John, great analysis. I just downloaded the DxO trial because of your observations. My PS CS5 trial is about to expire and it will give me a chance to try something else before I belly up to the cost of PS upgrade.


Thanks,


Paul

That is truly impressive effort on your part, John. I wish all reviews/comparisons were at least this comprehensive.


About three years ago, when I tried to decide what was best for me to own: Aperture, DxO or Lightroom, I have downloaded and installed a trial version of DxO Optics, but my experience with it has been less than pleasant.


DxO uses the PACE anti-piracy software which "allows for the activation code for Optics Pro to activate the program and make it so that the Program is only good for two activations on two computers as stated in the End-User Agreement".


Because of myna&iuml;vet&eacute;, I allowed the PACE anti-piracy program to install its extensions into my system. That resulted in my entire startup volume to get messed up to such an extent that it didn't mount on the desktop anymore. I tried to use several utility programs to repair my startup volume. None of them could repair that mess. I even bought an emergency startup device (TechTool Pro "Prot&eacute;g&eacute;"), which costed me $260. That thing did not help either. Now, I had a useless drive with the volume I could not even reformat, not to mention hundreds of gigabytes of lost data and applications (at that time I had very liberal approach to backups, which bit me in the butt). Fortunately, my photos were safe, since I never kept them on my startup disk.


Anyway, I ended up replacing my hd. No need to tell you, that after that I was less interested in DxO...


I hope, my experience has been isolated to my particular case and nobody else will have to jump through hoops like I had to. But in case you are as unfortunate as I was, do not count on DxO's tech support too much (unless that has changed since).

Thanks for the feedback!
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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alan

Did you ever consider Photoshop? Lots of money, but I'm guessing it would do as good a job as DxO.

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Now that ACR offers lens corrections, it probably would. I have Elements on my Mac, and that's been fine - it's what I used to make the composite images above, for example.On occasion I've missed Curves, but that was before I started shooting RAW and editing with DPP, and sometimes batch automation would have been handy, too. Also, I've got CS on my work computer(s), so if there's something I really need it for I can just move the image(s) over. But for degree of 'photoshopping' that I usually perform on my images, CS is overkill (actually, it's more than overkill for my 'work' images, since scientific images should really be minimally processed, unless they're being turned into cover art - but if my company can spend $1.5MM on my microscopes, they can certainly afford a few hundred for CS...).





Denise and Firestarter, thanks for the info about lack of live support for DxO - I don't think that will matter to me (barring something like Firestarter's experience, which I hope was not the norm!!), but it's good to know as that is important for some folks.


Firestarter - since you clearly did not end up with DxO ( [:(] ), did you end up with Aperture or Lightroom, or something else entirely? I had considered Aperture as well, but it doesn't offer lens corrections, something I'm not willing to trade even for the Apple UI. Personally, I do use iPhoto for organizing my library (of jpgs, following RAW conversion - the RAW files are stored on external drives).

John


Very thourough, when I get more time I am going to re read it.


I tried DXO trial a year and half ago. I tried it when I bought the 14mm L II to see how it would correct the lens distortions.


I was disapointed to find it did not support all lens, at that time the 14mm L II being one of them.


The other disapointment was the Raw Converter. I have tried CS5 &amp;4 converter. I tried DXO as well. I batched processed large amounts of pictures without any other post proccesing to compare results and I was more pleased with what DPP produced. I have read that there are certain things in CR2 files that only DPP can read, I wouldn't know if this is true or not.


Do you think that DXO has improved the Raw converter over the last year and half?

Hi Neuro,


This is really an informative post, thanks for taking the time to share this.
Just form observing your samples (the building), it seems that the lens
correction feature does help a little with straightening the building slightly,
but it doesn't help with the rearward tilt, like your TS-E Lens does. That is
certainly expected.


As far as the photo samples of the bird and the 2 photos of your daughter, I do see a
difference. Are these your own edits or are they presets?


It seems that the program is adding contrast, sharpness, saturation, vibrancy while removing some
noise. Although the changes are different I think it goes a bit too far for my taste, and I'm not
sure if these same changes are your personal choicesvs. presets, orif they also could have been achieved in DPP, Aperture or
Lightroom. I would likemy post-processing changes to be somewhere in the middle of the 2 examples for each photo.


Rich

DxO does come with many presets to suit individual tastes. Here's a like to what there is to choose from ...


<span style="color: #0000ff;"]http://www.dxo.com/intl/photo/dxo_optics_pro/the_presets/presets_available#differents

What a fantastic post, Neuro. Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neuroanatomist

LR3 now offers
lens corrections as well, but I don&rsquo;t think LR3&rsquo;s corrections are specific to
the camera used, whereas DxO&rsquo;s are specific.<span>

---

They are specific to the camera, but there are several important differences. First is that the LR3 corrections are all based on simple calibrations anyone can do in their home by printing out a target and taking a few simple photos of it. DXO, on the other hand, uses expensive, industrial grade calibration tools. The LR3 modules are mostly contributed by manufacturers and users, so the correction can be incorrect (at least until it is fixed in a future release), whereas DXO does all the calibration themselves, so the quality is consistently good. Finally, LR3 only does vignetting, distortion, and lateral CA correction, while DXO does a lot more, including lens-specific deconvolution sharpening (based on measuring actual point spread, IIRC). Overall, DXO has a significant advantage in this area, as long as the user's bodies/lenses are covered.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

DxO does come with many presets to suit individual tastes...
<p style="CLEAR: both"]

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Thanks Denise!


It looksnice for lens correction and noise reduction, and as long as it has customizable sliders, then one can certainly tailor the photo to suit their needs.


Rich

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Richard Lane

Are these your own edits or are they presets?...It seems that the program is adding contrast, sharpness, saturation, vibrancy while removing somenoise.

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For both DPP and DxO, I used 'default' settings. For DPP, that included the Standard picture style (which increases contrast and saturation relative to Neutral or Faithful, for example). For DxO, I used the Default v2 preset. Although I didn't use them for the test shots I included, DxO has sliders for everything - the 'presets' just pre-populate those sliders with a set of values, but everything can be adjusted to taste (and saved as a custom preset, if desired).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daniel Browning

They are specific to the camera, but there are several important differences...Overall, DXO has a significant advantage in this area, as long as the user's bodies/lenses are covered.

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Thanks for the clarification, Daniel!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neuroanatomist

Firestarter - since you clearly did not end up with DxO ( [img]/emoticons/emotion-6.gif[/img] ), did you end up with Aperture or Lightroom, or something else entirely? I had considered Aperture as well, but it doesn't offer lens corrections, something I'm not willing to trade even for the Apple UI. Personally, I do use iPhoto for organizing my library (of jpgs, following RAW conversion - the RAW files are stored on external drives).

---

At the time Aperture was in version2 and Lightroom just freshly released version1, I have bought and tried both of them because I knew right from the beginning that that kind of application will be paramount for my photographic work and I wanted to be sure that I get the best program I could get. After a short while, I decided to stick with Lightroom and abandon Aperture. Main reason for me was that Lightroom was designed more logically, with clearer GUI and supported a workflow that suited me in every way. However, that was basedcompletelyon my personal preferences. Both programs basically do same things in similar ways, though, so Aperture may be a better choice for any number of people.


Besides Lightroom 2.7, I use Photoshop CS3 (yes, I know they are dinosaurs, but I will have to upgrade my computer first, which is 6-years-old PowerMac G5, working flawlessly all that time and I am heartbroken when I have to decide to scrap it). Nowadays, probably close to 95% of my editing is done in Lightroom. I use Photoshop only for compositing and whenever I need to get into layers, selections, masks, channels and that sort of things.


I do not have any use whatsover for iPhoto. When I need JPEGs for internet, I export them from Lightroom, keep them filed on my hard drive for a while and then I just delete them.

Great review, John.


Does the trial 30-day trial work with the 5D II? It is not real clear on the website, or at least I did not find it.


Thanks,


Chris

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chris White

Does the trial 30-day trial work with the 5D II?

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Yes, it does.

Nice topic. I like the side-by-side visual comparisons. It would be nice to see a variety of software programs like this done up - TOP 5.


I will have to give this software package a try now.

For anyone interested, DxO Optics Pro is currently on sale (through June 14th) for 33-40% off - $99 for the Standard version and $199 for the Elite version (same features, but the Elite license is required for use with 1-series and 5D/5DII bodies).
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