DxO Optics Pro 8 review: is this the perfect Photoshop alternative?

jmeyer | Accessories | Reviews | 11/02/2013 11:00am

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In our DxO Optics Pro 8 review we weigh the pros and cons of this photo editing software to determine if it’s the perfect Photoshop alternative for photographers.

DxO Optics Pro 8 Review: what’s new

DxO Optics Pro is more of an image-enhancer than an image-manipulator.  It’s designed to take the imperfect images captured by your camera and your lenses, correct their faults and make them as technically perfect as possible.

It’s all based on hard science, using custom-made correction profiles for thousands of camera-lens combinations.

These are tested by parent company DxO Labs, which also makes its testing processes and equipment available to other companies – Digital Camera World uses DxO equipment for its camera and lens tests, for example.

DxO Optics Pro identifies the camera and lens using the EXIF shooting information embedded in the file, then loads the appropriate correction profile automatically, or prompts you to download one.

It doesn’t support every possible camera and lens combination, but it’s rare to find a mainstream camera-lens combination that’s not on the list.

The software then automatically corrects a range of lens faults, including chromatic aberration (colour fringing), distortion (barrel and pincushion), corner shading (vignetting) and edge softness.

You can also manually correct perspective distortion and anamorphous distortion, where objects are distorted at the edges of wide-angle shots.

PAGE 1: DxO Optics Pro 8 Review – what’s new
PAGE 2: DxO Optics Pro 8 Review – performance
PAGE 3: DxO Optics Pro 8 Review – the interface in detail
PAGE 4: DxO Optics Pro 8 Review – how it scores