DxO Labs have released the
version 9 of DxO Optics Pro today, as some of you may have heard. This version contains a new noise reduction algorithm which DxO calls PRIME. I have installed the software and processed some very noisy raw files of mine using the PRIME engine. The preliminary results are just extraordinary. Not only the noise gets reduced while keeping the details, also the usual problem of reduced saturation and color shifts in the noisy areas is mostly gone. Previously I would have to give Topaz Denoise a good run for it's money to achieve similar results and even then it wasn't as good as what I'm seeing from DxO9 now. It is early days and I will keep on testing and report back with more findings and hopefully samples later.
Hi Cem,
Sounds interesting. From what I've read it is a bit difficult to judge the PRIME effect until one actually makes a conversion to output because the effect doesn't show in the standard preview, although there seems to be a Loupe or Magnifier for judging the effect. The full image is then denoised in a background process (which may take several minutes, depending on image size and available processing power).
IMHO, one of the general drawbacks of DxO, which seems to be a good rawconverter otherwise (especially for lens corrections), remains the
limitation to the Adobe RGB workingspace for Raw conversions. That is mainly an issue for handling saturated color image content, which will be output to a wide gamut output device. The program does allow to output files with ProPhoto RGB, but it actually is not supporting any wider gamut than AdobeRGB, it just converts that to PPRGB. Other than Raw files, JPEG and TIFF input seems to be internally converted to having an sRGB gamut, according to some who have compared gamut volumes.
If only there would be one perfect Raw conversion tool. We apparently need several for specific tasks. On the upside, it does generate competition, and thus progress.
'm looking forward to any examples of the noise reduction quality if you can find the time for creating some (I know it takes more than just posting stuff like that). Thanks for bringing this new feature to our attention. Actual user feedback is always more meaningful than only having marketing speak to base a decision on.
Cheers,
Bart
