DxO PhotoLab 9 is a powerful photo-editing application with the focus firmly on image quality. It starts with DxO’s bespoke lens correction profiles, which are applied automatically as you browse your images and it continues with its DeepPRIME XD3 noise reduction, which can achieve near-miraculous results with high-ISO images. For quality-conscious RAW photographers at least, this has to be considered one of the best photo-editing software applications on the market.

You also get extremely powerful global and local adjustment tools for enhancing your images, and these now include Lightroom-style AI masking tools. These did cause early issues with graphics drivers on some Windows machines, but that’s been addressed with free updates, and hopefully these technical issues are over (I am actually reviewing the Mac version, which worked fine from the start).

AI masking is a real time-saver, but not without its issues. As Adobe Lightroom users will know, the masks are typically hard-edged and don’t always blend well with surrounding parts of the image as you increase the strength of the adjustments. DxO is on the case, adding diffusion and feathering controls for AI masks, which I think might be a first.

The new AI masks can be used alongside DxO’s regular mask types, including Control Points and Control Lines, which are unique to DxO and extremely fast and effective once you understand the principles.

There’s another change under the hood which might not sound exciting but has profound practical benefits. You can now save your images as part-processed ‘High Fidelity’ Linear DNG files up to four times smaller than before, and often smaller than the original RAW file. This means you can export a DNG RAW file with DxO’s lens corrections and DeepPrime denoising applied, which can be opened and edited just like a regular RAW file in other programs.

DxO PhotoLab actually comes in two versions: Elite (reviewed here) and Essential. The Essential edition offers DxO’s lens corrections, but not the DeepPRIME processing and sundry other features, so really it’s the Elite edition that’s the better buy, even if it is more expensive.

DxO PhotoLab 9: Specifications

DxO PhotoLab 9: Price

PhotoLab 9 costs $239.99/£219.99 (about AU$342) for a new license or $119.99/£109.99 (about AU$171) to upgrade. This makes it a similar price to a year’s subscription to the Adobe Photography Plan, though cheaper than a perpetual license to the pro-oriented Capture One.

PhotoLab 9 is certainly not cheap, then, but it’s not the most expensive ‘serious’ photo editor on the market either. You can elect to buy DxO’s separate FilmPack analog simulation and ViewPoint perspective control tools, too, and these will then be integrated into PhotoLab’s non-destructive workflow – though of course this does push up the price.

DxO PhotoLab 9: Design & Handling

The PhotoLab 9 interface comes in two parts, or windows. The PhotoLibrary panel is where you do all your large-scale photo browsing, organizing and searching. The PhotoLibrary is essentially a folder browsing tool, with star ratings, flags and keywording to help with organizing.

There is also a Projects panel, where you can create a nested hierarchy of projects (albums, in other words) for organizing images ‘virtually’ by theme or subject, even when they are stored in different locations on your hard drive. (One of the changes in the latest version is to make these projects visible in the Customize (editing) view, just as you can view Collections in Lightroom Classic’s Develop module.

There’s a search box at the top of the left sidebar of the PhotoLibrary. This is clever and odd at the same time. As soon as you start typing, it will try to match what you’re typing with image filenames, EXIF data and keywords, but it appears to draw on an index built automatically from folders you visit, which isn’t under your control.

The PhotoLibrary panel is effective in a slightly crude and scatty kind of way that’s fine for basic organizing but will be irritating to anyone used to more powerful cataloguing options. The main editing work, though, is done in the Customize panel.

Here, you get a stack of editing tools organized into tabs for Light, Color, Detail, Geometry and FX, though what you see in the last two will depend on whether you also have DxO ViewPoint and FilmPack installed. There are quite a few different adjustment panels and you may not always remember where to find them, so DxO has included a little search box for finding specific tools and you can also ‘favorite’ the ones you use most often. You do still have to remember which tools are in which tabs, though.

There’s a separate tab for local adjustments, and this is where you find the new AI masking tools. You can select areas using an eyedropper, a marquee or choosing a named subject type from a menu. This includes skies, though PhotoLab struggled to pick out more than a couple of straggly clouds in the images I tried it on, which is odd, and the eyedropper approach worked a lot better.

DxO’s Control Points work around a circular mask that targets the tones in the center, and Control Lines are like gradient masks with an eyedropper for more selective adjustments – great for darkening skies in outdoor shots without darkening your subjects at the same time.

You can combine masks to add, subtract and intersect your mask selections, and given that the masks themselves can be adjusted for sensitivity and diffusion, this can all get quite complicated – but this kind of control is there if you need it.

The DeepPRIME XD3 denoising is highly effective but also hardware-intensive – it can take a few seconds even on a fast computer – so this means previewing the effect as you work is not straightforward. DxO does offer a loupe panel that floats over the image to optimize a small area in real time as you work, and there’s also a full-screen live update option for machines that are quick enough.

Remember that PhotoLab is a non-destructive editor, so all your adjustments exist only within the software. If you want to produce a version to share, you will need to use the Export button to produce a processed JPEG or TIFF file.

DxO PhotoLab 9: Performance

In terms of quality of results, PhotoLab 9 is about as good as it gets. DxO’s lens corrections don’t just tackle the usual suspects – chromatic aberration, vignetting and distortion – but also apply lens-specific global sharpness and edge softness corrections. There’s nothing you need to do. PhotoLab will find matching profiles automatically and, if they’re not installed yet, will download them for you – it only takes a few seconds.

DxO’s DeepPRIME XD3 processing is pretty remarkable, too, and it now handles both regular Bayer sensor RAW files and X-Trans images, too. I can’t say I see much difference in the results between this and the previous DeepPRIME version, but I’ve yet to see a rival denoising tool that can match DxO’s combination of denoising effectiveness and fine detail recovery. You won’t always see a huge difference with the latest and best camera gear, but older models, smaller sensors and cheaper lenses get a whole new lease of life.

I’m less convinced about the AI masking. Quite apart from the strange sky masking issues in my tests, I’m not sure DxO’s AI masking is quite as quick as Lightroom’s, for example, or Capture One’s.

DxO PhotoLab 9: Verdict

PhotoLab 9 is for the image quality purist who is unfazed by technical processes and who simply wants the best possible output from their RAW files. It’s not Photoshop, so you can’t produce layered composites, and it doesn’t do one-click effects like the Nik Collection or ON1 Photo RAW. It’s an image editor in the truest, most traditional sense. It’s probably not ideal for a busy, high-volume professional workflow, but perfect for fine-art photographers, print makers and exhibitors.

Alternatives

My favorite plug-in suite is back and supposedly bigger than ever before! DxO claims that Nik Collection 9 is the photo editing software’s “most ambitious” and “biggest ever update” with AI-powered masking, overhauled color grading and new creative filters all headlining the new features.

The big change is the introduction of DxO’s AI-powered Depth Masks. This tool uses local artificial intelligence to analyze the image in question to then generate a bespoke depth map. This not enables users to target adjustments based on distance or depth, but also allows the tweaking of depth masks via various sliders.

Nik Collection 9 also brings DxO’s more traditional AI Masks tool into the suite, enabling the one-click selection of subjects or by drawing a bounding box around a subject, for the AI to then select that subject. And these tools are accessible throughout Nik Collection 9 to be used in conjunction with your favorite plug-in.

The next big update is an overhaul to Color Efex’s color grading, which interestingly comes just days after Adobe announced a brand-new way to color grade in Adobe Premiere. Nik Collection 9 seeks to simplify grading by introducing a single color wheel via the all-new Color Grading tool.

This allows you to plot points for shadows, midtones and highlights, independently, on the same color wheel. But these points can also be locked for synchronized changes, meaning you can adjust each tonal range as a whole, while maintaining the relationship between each point. The Color Grading tool can also be used with various Blending Modes, and ‘looks’ can be saved as presets.

Nik Color Efex and Nik Analog Efex also grant access to three new creative filters: Halation, Chromatic Shift and Glass Effect. The former is designed to recreate the glowing halation effect present in analog film, allowing users to control the brightness, radius, intensity, hue, saturation and opacity.

Chromatic Shift can be used to create a stylized chromatic aberration effect by misaligning colored layers (adjusting the angle, offset strength and scale) with three different color palettes to choose from. Finally, Glass Effect introduces a range of glass-like distortion effects in the same vein as Nik Collection 8’s Paper Texture feature.

That’s not all. Both Nik Color Efex and Nik Analog Efex now include Blending Modes, providing access to 18 different modes including Darken, Multiply and Color. Nik Collection 9 also includes a range of quality-of-life upgrades.

Nik Collection 9 is available now as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity or as standalone software. The perpetual license is priced at US$179.99 / £149.99 for new users or US$99.99 / £79.99 as an upgrade from Nik Collection 7 or 8 for existing users.

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DxO PureRAW 6 has dropped, and it’s laden with a plethora of new features. The most notable inclusion is DeepPRIME XD3 for Bayer sensors, while the software is also said to boast “next-level” DNG compression, AI-sensor dust removal, and faster batch processing.

Paris-based DxO is known for its vast array of photo-editing software applications including Photolab 9 and Nik Collection 8. PureRAW is designed to be the first port of call within its extensive ecosystem, used to maximize RAW image quality by producing sharper, cleaner, and more detail-rich imagery.

DeepPRIME XD3 for Bayer sensors

DeepPRIME XD3 was launched via PureRAW 5 for X-Trans sensors exclusively, but PureRAW 6 extends its compatibility to the more commonly used Bayer sensors. The AI-powered denoising tool is one of the very best on the market, so opening up the XD ‘eXtra Detail’ variant to the Bayer crowd is welcome news indeed. This technology is said to use a more complex neural network to get the job done, turning out results that DxO refers to as “perfect for the most demanding RAW files”.

“Next-level” DNG compression

DNG compression might not seem like a particularly riveting subject, but in a world where even compact cameras are touting high-resolution 40-MP sensors, “breakthrough” high-fidelity compression is an attractive prospect. According to DxO, PureRAW 6 can deliver DNG files that are up to four times smaller, with no loss in image quality. The upshot is said to be fully preserved dynamic range and editing pliability.

“Unmatched" AI-sensor dust removal

AI dust removal is nothing new, but I’ll certainly be looking forward to seeing how well PureRAW 6’s new AI-powered tool fares against other examples on the market. DxO says it finds and removes dust spots with “unmatched precision”, while also claiming that it can clean entire batches in seconds. While the removal process is handled by AI, the tool allows the user to control the extent of the dust removal via a ‘Selectivity’ slider.

Faster batch processing

And finally, it wouldn’t be a comprehensive update without improved performance. PureRAW 6’s ‘batch parallelization’ function is said to speed up performance by preparing the next image simultaneously, resulting in “dramatically faster throughput and smoother handling of large sets of files”.

DxO PureRAW 6 is available now. A new perpetual license is priced at $139.99 / £119.99, but those upgrading from PureRAW 4 and 5 can enjoy an upgrade discount, with software priced at $89.99 / £74.99.

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Everyone’s favorite Paris-based photo editing software outfit, DxO Labs, has just bolstered its already coveted optical corrections across some of its biggest programs by releasing 326 new camera and lens Modules. This brings the grand total of supported cameras and lens combinations to a whopping 110,230.

Better yet, all Modules can be downloaded for free via the latest versions of DxO PhotoLab, DxO PureRAW, DxO ViewPoint, and DxO FilmPack.

You’ll find a list of the new inclusions below, including the ever-popular medium-format behemoth that is the Hasselblad X2D II 100C, Nikon’s latest DX lens pairing in the form of the Z DX 16-50mm f/2.8 VR and Z DX MC 35mm f/1.7, Canon’s affordable RF 45mm f/1.2 STM, the mighty medium-format Fujifilm GF 500mm f/5.6 R LM OIS WR, a range of classic Leica lenses, as well as Sony lens, Pentax lens inclusions and more.

You can find a full list of DxO’s supported cameras and lenses here.

DxO Modules: New additions

• Hasselblad X2D II 100C
• Canon RF 45mm f/1.2 STM
• Fujifilm GF 500mm f/5.6 R LM OIS WR
• Fujifilm GF 500mm f/5.6 R LM OIS WR with GF1.4x
• Hasselblad XCD 35-100mm f/2.8-4 E
• Leica APO-Summicron-R 180mm f/2
• Leica Elmarit-M 24mm f/2.8 ASPH.
• Leica Elmar-M 28mm f/2 ASPH.
• Leica Elmar-M 50mm f/2.8
• Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH. II
• Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2
• Leica Summilux-M 75mm f/1.4
• Meike AF 85mm f/1.8 Pro (Sony FE mount)
• Nikon Z DX 16-50mm f/2.8 VR
• Nikon Z DX MC 35mm f/1.7
• Pentax HD-DA fisheye 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED
• Sony FE 100mm f/2.8 Macro GM OSS

DxO's Modules are used to create bespoke optical corrections for sharper and cleaner imagery. DxO says that “each Module is a unique mathematical profile that characterizes a specific camera-lens pairing.” The photo-editing software developer also cites its "unmatched body of optical research" during a two-decade period, resulting in over 110,000 camera-lens combinations.

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DxO has launched a raft of updates for a trio of its latest photo editing software suites: PhotoLab 9, PureRAW 5, and Nik Collection 8. The Parisian outfit’s had a busy few months, what with the release of both PhotoLab 9 and FilmPack 8 in September, and now, users of DxO’s mainline trio of software can benefit from a range of updates and tweaks, including enhanced AI Masks in PhotoLab 9, a new non-destructive PureRAW workflow in Adobe Photoshop, and a range of new paper textures in the Nik Collection 8’s Analog Efex. Scroll down to find a more detailed breakdown of all that and more.

PhotoLab 9.2 updates

PhotoLab 9 enjoys the biggest raft of updates, chief of which is “significant improvements” to the software’s AI-powered masking tools. AI Masks allows users to form automatic AI masking selections almost instantly. PhotoLab 9.2 is said to improve on this process further, thanks to “improved matting and an upgraded sensibility threshold for cleaner, more accurate edges around complex subjects.” All this amounts to masks that DxO is calling “smarter, faster, and more intuitive than ever.”

That’s not all. PhotoLab 9.2 also provides users with the ability to reorder masks and sub-masks, while also adding sequential numbers to mask duplicates, in a bid to make edits with complex masking structures easier to organize and navigate.

Three new PhotoLibrary filters have also been added in a bid to improve file management and image curation. Users can now filter libraries via Unedited Images, Edited Images, and Edited Images featuring Local Corrections. Finally, PhotoLab 9.2 for Windows gets an improved History panel, which is already available on macOS. This allows the panel to remember each step of an edit, even after PhotoLab is closed and reopened.

DxO PureRAW 5.5 updates

DxO is calling PureRAW 5’s new smart filter integration a “minor” update, but as somebody who often uses a combination of masks and the Camera Raw Filter within Photoshop to produce non-destructive edits, it certainly has the potential to redefine my workflow.

Smart filter integration allows the user to edit an image in PureRAW 5, then open that image in Photoshop as a smart filter. By clicking on the smart filter, the user is transported back into PureRAW 5, whereby they can apply any further edits, which will then be applied to the smart filter in Photoshop. If you’ve ever made use of the Camera Raw Filter within Photoshop, this is a similar workflow.

Nik Collection 8.2 updates

The Nik Collection 8 update concerns the software’s Analog Efex plug-in, which is used to apply vintage film effects to digital imagery. In version 8.2, DxO has added 30 paper surface textures, from fine-art matte to watercolor finishes, inspired by traditional photographic, artistic, and antique papers.

According to DxO, these textures provide photographs with “unique depth, tactility, and character.” While also letting “users add subtle atmosphere or bold artistic style with just a few clicks.” The software also allows users to tweak each paper effect via different blend modes, altering the intensity and tonal integration.

All three updates are available on compatible Windows and macOS machines now, with each software also offering a free trial so you can try before you buy.

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The Nik Collection plug-ins are sold as a single unit. You can’t buy them separately, but you do use them separately. And although they are typically used as plug-ins for programs like Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, they also work as standalone programs and external editors for other programs, like Capture One. If you like to shoot raw, though, you will need a ‘host’ program to do your raw conversions before sending processed images to the Nik plug-ins for editing.

So even though Nik Collection is usually described as a plug-in suite, it actually offers a wide variety of workflows. This, and its huge creative range, make it one of the best photo-editing software applications for photographers.

Taking them alphabetically, Analog Efex is perhaps the most interesting for anyone trying to recreate the look of old cameras, primitive lenses, and lo-fi film stocks. It can create bokeh effects, light leaks, borders, dust and scratches, even ‘accidental’ multiple exposure effects, and multi-camera images where photos are chopped up into panels. It’s like a wild analog playground and a world apart from DxO’s rather more sober FilmPack film emulation software. It’s weird and sometimes over the top, but brilliant.

Color Efex is perhaps the central tool in the Nik lineup. It offers more than 50 filters, which can be used individually or in combination, each with powerful adjustments and masking tools. In Nik Collection 8, Color Efex gets preset effects for each filter, so there are even more ready-made starting points for your experiments. It’s aimed at more mainstream photographic effects than Analog Efex but has its own share of striking looks alongside regular tools like levels and curves.

Dfine is the Nik Collection’s noise-reduction plug-in, but it only works on JPEGs or images already converted from raw files, rather than directly on raw files, unlike more modern AI noise-reduction tools. It’s effective in an old-fashioned kind of way, with a good deal of control over noise reduction via ‘noise profiles’ and local enhancements, but these days it’s much more effective to tackle noise during the raw-processing phase. It would be great if DxO could find a way to bring its DeepPRIME AI noise reduction to Dfine, but it’s hard to see how it could fit into the editing workflow if your regular ‘host’ program is doing the raw conversion.

HDR Efex has had relatively little attention in recent Nik Collection updates but remains a very effective HDR tool that can be used to merge bracketed exposures or just to add HDR-style shadow and highlight adjustments to single files. Some of the preset effects are throwbacks to the worst excesses of the HDR craze, though it’s possible to produce strong-but-natural-looking results too.

Nik Sharpener comes in two forms: a ‘presharpener’ to crisp up soft-looking images and an ‘output’ sharpener to optimize sharpening for different output devices and print sizes. The screen sharpening is effective if you publish your images digitally, but for this and the print sharpening to be effective, you really need to resize your images for your output device before you send them to Sharpener. I suspect most photographers will just stick to the sharpening tools in their regular host software.

Silver Efex is one of the stars of the Nik Collection and is perhaps the best-known black-and-white software tool of all. It produces remarkable richness, depth, and tonal subtlety in monochrome images, with a powerful set of adjustment tools, preset effects, and local adjustments for ‘dodging and burning’. You can also produce striking black-and-white images in Analog Efex and Color Efex, but Silver Efex is probably the ultimate digital darkroom for monochrome work.

Viveza is harder to categorize. It’s designed for detailed color adjustments, via both global adjustments and local adjustments, but it does seem to be a bit of a one-trick pony, and three of its key adjustments are now incorporated into Color Efex. No doubt Viveza has its fans, but it does seem much more limited than the Nik Collection’s other creative plug-ins.

DxO Nik Collection 8 system requirements

DxO Nik Collection 8: price

DxO Nik Collection 8 sells for $169.99 / £144.99 (about AU$260) for new users, or for $99.99 / £79.99 (about AU$150) as an upgrade from Nik Collection 6 or 7. Note that DxO’s upgrade offer covers the last two versions, so although the Nik Collection is on an annual update cycle, you can afford to skip a version without losing your upgrade entitlement. If you already have Nik Collection 7, for example, and you don’t need the Photoshop workflow enhancements that feature so heavily in Nik Collection 8, you might want to hang on for next year’s Nik Collection 9 release.

Either way, while the Nik Collection is not exactly cheap, you do get an awful lot for your money. Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and perhaps even HDR Efex are easily good enough and different enough to be sold as standalone products, and here you’re getting all the plug-ins for a single price.

DxO Nik Collection 8: interface and usability

They have different jobs, but all the Nik creative plug-ins share the same basic design. The left sidebar displays preset effects and individual filters for building your own effects, while the right sidebar displays panels for each filter so that you can make further adjustments. This right sidebar can get a little busy once you start combining effects, but the panels can be collapsed to save space.

You can also apply a wide range of highly customizable local adjustment masks via DxO’s trademark Control Points, Control Lines, and – now – Polygon masks. These work in a unique way, targeting only specific tones and colors within the mask area, so they are highly selective. The Nik Collection does not offer AI object masking, but this system is equally effective in a different way.

If you want to, you can dive very deep indeed into the Nik Collection’s filters, masks, and controls to create some stunning effects. Or, if that’s just too much to take in initially, you can pick from a long list of excellent preset effects and work back from there.

Improved Photoshop integration is a key feature of this Nik Collection 8 update. It comes with a new-and-improved Nik Collection palette displayed directly within the Photoshop interface, including the ability to save interim edits in Nik plug-ins and return them to Photoshop as layers when you’re done.

Silver Efex gets some updates too, including a color reference image display, interface improvements and local adjustments for ClearView (a bit like Lightroom Dehaze) and Selective Tone adjustments. Also, each filter now comes with pre-defined presets.

Overall, the Nik Collection workflow has been refined to a point where it’s as quick and seamless to use as possible, and you can just click a preset if you don’t want to get bogged down in tools and settings. It also has special features and options for Photoshop users.

DxO Nik Collection 8: performance

The Nik Collection plug-ins offer such a huge variety of image-editing effects, tools, and inspiration that it’s hard to know where to start. If you like a lo-fi analog look, then Analog Efex does it spectacularly well. Color Efex is like a photo editor and effects generator rolled into one, and is like a giant box of filters with endless permutations. Silver Efex Pro is capable of wonderful black-and-white imagery with comparatively little effort – though you can dig as deep as you want with the adjustment and masking tools. HDR Efex does look a little dated in parts, but is still very good at creating classic HDR Effects.

Dfine is less impressive because it’s starting from images that have already been processed once. It can reduce noise very effectively, but you can easily lose detail at the same time, so it’s some way behind the latest AI noise-reduction tools. Sharpener is interesting but perhaps a little specialized for the average user – it’s handy if you want to optimize detail carefully for screen or print, perhaps. It’s also hard to warm to Viveza, as it doesn’t do much that programs like Lightroom or Photoshop can’t, though its masking tools are effective in a different way.

DxO Nik Collection 8: verdict

You probably won’t get equal value out of all the Nik Collection plug-ins, since Dfine is somewhat dated, Sharpener is quite specialized, and Viveza’s color adjustment capabilities are neither unique nor particularly valuable for Lightroom or Photoshop users.

So, does the Nik Collection still deserve a 5-star rating? I think so, because Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and HDR Efex offer such a rich and varied set of image effects that, in my opinion, they easily justify the cost of the Nik Collection on their own.

It’s not just a unique set of photo effects that you’re getting here, but a practically bottomless source of inspiration and ideas. If you’re getting stuck in a rut with your current photo editor – and we all do from time to time – the Nik Collection will bust you out of that rut in a big way. We all need fresh ideas now and again, and that’s exactly what the Nik Collection delivers.

Alternatives

DxO has released a new version of its popular film photography emulation software for macOS and Windows, DxO FilmPack 8. Alongside a plethora of new features and tweaks, the photo editing software boasts two headline changes: Time Warp Mode and full Photoshop integration.

The former introduces a pair of new sliders, the first being Time Travel, which is said to take users through “all of the eras, film stocks, and cameras spanning 200 years of photographic history”. So, if you’ve ever wondered what your photograph of the Empire State Building would have looked like, circa 1930, now you can.

According to DxO, this slider can transport imagery right back to the photography pioneers of the early 1800s, all the way through to the peak of 35mm film in the late 20th century. This slider adds “period-authentic looks” including film grain, color shifts, and realistic degradation. The second Time Warp Mode slider is the Ageify slider, which allows users to progressively age and distress their imagery. Photography relicing, if you will.

From a workflow standpoint, the big news concerning DxO FilmPack 8 is full Adobe Photoshop integration. That means the entire rendering library can be accessed as an integrated palette within Photoshop. And that’s before you consider the software’s existing compatibility with DxO PhotoLab and Adobe Lightroom Classic. On the subject of rendering, FilmPack 8 comes with 15 new film renderings, including CineStill 800T, Harman Phoenix 200, Lady Grey B&W 120 ISO 400, and Kodak TMAX Pro 3200. These new editions boost FilmPack’s grand total of film renderings to 153.

Anyone who scans their own film will be interested in the new Scanned Film Optimization tool. This allows FilmPack 8 to restore and enhance home-scanned film. In a single click, the software can invert the tonal values of color or black-and-white negatives, using more than 10 dedicated Tone Curve Presets to apply “precise” corrections, which can fix problems such as color shifts and density issues.

The software also comes with 17 new historical images to expand its Time Machine digital museum, whereby users can journey through two centuries of photographic history. And while FilmPack 8 is designed to replicate analog photography, first and foremost, four new renderings inspired by the color science of popular Fujifilm and Sony cameras have also been included.

And finally, the France-based editing software outfit says that all of its creative effects have been updated and re-rendered in high resolution, to meet the needs of modern high-res cameras.

DxO FilmPack 8 is available now for Windows and macOS. New licenses are priced at $149,99 / £129,99, while existing FilmPack 7 users can benefit from a reduced upgrade fee of $89,99 / £69,99. And if you want to try it out for yourself, you can, via a 30-day free trial.

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DxO PhotoLab 9 has just gone live and brings with it a smorgasbord of RAW photo editing additions and upgrades, in what DxO Labs is calling “a new era of editing”. And the Paris-based company certainly stands by that statement; VP of product strategy, Jean-Marc Alexia, calls it: “probably our biggest upgrade to our flagship editing software of the last 20 years.”

The headline new feature is DxO AI Masks, which uses artificial intelligence to create “precise selections in an instant.” And indeed, from the product demo I was able to view, this does look mighty impressive. There are three ways to make use of DxO AI Masks.

First, the Object Selector will create mask previews as you hover the cursor over an object, and you then simply click to create the mask.

Area Selection enables you to draw a rectangular box over your intended subject, which the AI will then mask. Finally, you can access a list of predefined objects with options – “Sky”, “Subject” and “Background” – as well as more specialist selections, such as “Animals”, “Hair” and “Faces”. Tonal adjustments to these predefined objects can also be copied and pasted between images or saved as a preset.

DxO PhotoLab 9 also enables you to combine DxO AI Masks with the software’s existing U Point Technology. This means you can combine AI Masks, Control Points, Control Lines, Graduated Filters and the Brush tool to “create highly complex masks that would otherwise be too sophisticated for even the most advanced AI.”

DxO PureRAW 5 recently debuted the latest in the software developer’s coveted AI-powered noise-reduction and demosaicing tool, DeepPrime XD3. Well, in PhotoLab 9, both DeepPrime and DxO’s Lens Sharpening Optimization can be applied locally with existing local adjustment tools and new AI Masks.

On the subject of DeepPrime, DxO has now announced that DeepPrime XD3 is no longer in beta and can process RAW files from all Fujifilm X-Trans cameras.

In addition to all the above, DxO has included a variety of lifestyle adjustments in a bid to create “a smarter, faster workflow”. Upgrades include image stacking, a Favorites system for folders and projects, and direct access to the Project palette from Customize mode.

The software also includes a new batch renaming tool. Filenames can be automatically generated via EXIF and metadata, as well as custom text. You can also create and save your own presets, said to make it “easy to apply consistent naming conventions across entire projects or workflows.”

Finally, iPhone photographers can make use of this powerful RAW editing software, with support for HEIC / HEIF and ProRAW.

DxO PhotoLab 9 is available right now, for macOS and Windows. A new license is priced at $239.99 / £219.99 while DxO PhotoLab 7 or 8 users can benefit from a reduced upgrade fee of $119.99 / £109.99. If you want to try the software out, there’s also a 30-day free trial.

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Tecno, a brand known primarily for its camera phones, has teamed up with imaging experts DxO to launch the world's first fully automated imaging lab. The TECNO DXOMARK Joint Imaging Laboratory is located in Chongqing, China, and has been designed to establish "a new scientific benchmark for smartphone imaging and accelerates the global shift towards more inclusive, precise and standardized camera technology through automation".

The new Joint Imaging Laboratory incorporates technologies like robotic arms for micron-level positioning accuracy, fully automated chart switching, and AI-controlled environmental simulation to perform complete testing workflows without human intervention. The system has been designed to work with camera phones, enabling Tecno to better develop its camera image quality with a more controlled testing procedure.

The laboratory features imaging evaluation that includes multidimensional skin tone adaptation, along with 3D head model and scientifically calibrated 2D color charts representing global skin tone diversity. This in turn is said to enable "precise calibration of color science and texture reproduction across the full spectrum of human complexions". Consequently, Tecno is able to tailor its camera phones to offer "localized algorithm optimization" - examples include customized exposure calibration specifically for African markets, where users are said to prefer brighter images, as well as the development of noise reduction algorithms for the Southeast Asian market, where Tecno wants night shot clarity to be of high importance.

DxO Nik Collection 8 is finally here and, as a Nik Collection 7 user, I’m pretty excited about the raft of new features.

At the top of the pile is how DxO's latest plugin suite seeks to improve its relationship with Adobe Photoshop. I’m an Adobe user and what I’ve always loved about the Nik Collection is that it’s predominantly designed as a plugin to work alongside Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, as well as DxO Photolab 8 (it can be used as standalone software, too).

According to product director, Boris Oliviero, DxO has "reimagined the Photoshop workflow, making it easier than ever to apply powerful effects, refine local adjustments, and move seamlessly between plugins."

At the heart of this reimagined workflow is the ability to work on masks seamlessly between Photoshop and your chosen plugin. This means you can import masks into a plug-in and then work between another plugin or Photoshop, non-destructively.

Moving from your chosen plugin back into Photoshop enables you to convert your edits into a Smart Object, apply changes to the current layer, create a new layer or generate a new layer with a mask.

This functionality is built around a new Photoshop panel. Gone is the old Nik Palette in favor of a customizable and dockable Photoshop panel. If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t regularly use all seven Nik Collection plug-ins, so the new panel allows you to choose which plug-ins are displayed for a more streamlined experience.

This is why DxO has made the wise choice of redesigning each of the plugin logos. The old, origami-style logos weren’t particularly clear, so the new hexagonal logos featuring the first letter of the corresponding plugin will surely be a welcome change.

Click on a plugin, and the panel will change to a dedicated palette, providing even more functionality such as layer and mask management, as well as the option to directly open the plugin itself.

When moving across to your chosen plugin, a drop-down box gives you the option to open all visible layers or just the active layer, with another drop-down box enabling you to send all masks, selected masks or no masks at all.

As DxO puts it, “your masks remain accessible at every step of the workflow, whether they originate from Photoshop or a Nik Collection plugin.”

Silver Efex is one of, if not the most popular Nik Collection plugins of all – and in Nik Collection 8 it boasts a variety of changes.

What intrigues me most is what DxO is calling Color Reference Image. This is a small preview box in the bottom-right of the UI called ‘Original Image’, which enables you to view the original color image for reference.

This looks to be an extremely useful feature when altering a black-and-white conversion’s color sensitivity. Previously, I’d simply drag sliders around to see how they’d affect my image, but the color preview provides a visual aid for the color channel being altered.

The UI has changed, too, bringing Nik Silver Efex more in line with Nik Color Efex and Nik Analog Efex. You also get two new local adjustments in ClearView and Selective Tones, while each filter now includes "pre-configured Filter Looks for faster edits".

Nik Color Efex’s local adjustments have also been given a boost with Color Masks: “Simply click on the desired color, tweak the handles as required, and then start making adjustments.” Finally, Quick Export has been tweaked to make it more streamlined, providing a quality-of-life upgrade.

DxO Nik Collection 8 is available now for macOS and Windows. You can try the software for yourself via a free 30-day trial or buy it outright for $159.99 / £145.99 (Australian pricing to be confirmed). And if you’re an existing user with Nik Collection 6 or 7, you can take advantage of a reduced upgrade fee of $89.99 / £79.99.

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DxO PureRAW 5 is here, with a list of improvements and enhancements over the previous version. If you already have PureRAW 4, is it worth upgrading? And if you don’t even know what PureRAW is, then keep on reading to discover a tool that could completely change your idea about what your cameras and lenses are capable of.

DxO is well known in the photographic community for DxO PhotoLab, its flagship photo editor, its FilmPack 7 analog film simulation software, ViewPoint 5 perspective correction tool and the near-legendary Nik Collection. DxO’s key innovations are its precise lab-developed lens correction profiles and its AI-powered DeepPRIME noise reduction, and these are at the heart of PureRAW 5. It's a bit too specialized to be considered one of the best photo editing software applications, but it's designed instead to be used alongside them.

PureRAW 5 is essentially for photographers who already have a software workflow that they are happy with, but also want to make use of DxO’s powerful raw processing, lens correction and denoising technologies to tune up their raw files ahead of editing. You can use it as a standalone batch processing tool for converting raw files into fully-corrected JPEGs for use straight away, or as corrected Linear DNG files which can be used just like regular raw files in Lightroom, Capture One and other photo editors, but using DxO’s own processing not the software’s.

PureRAW 5 can also be used from within Lightroom. You can export unprocessed raw files from Lightroom, have PureRAW’s corrections and denoising applied and have the processed image returned to your Lightroom catalog in a single automated process.

DxO PureRAW 5: Price and availability

DxO PureRAW 5 is available now and costs $119.99 / £109.99 for a new license, and $79.99 / £69.99 as an upgrade from PureRAW 4. That might sound quite expensive for a tool that simply applies correction profiles and denoising, but the quality of the results compared to regular raw processors speaks for itself. There is a free 14-day trial – not as long as the 30-day trials of some other DxO products, but plenty of time to see if PureRAW 5 is right for you.

DxO PureRAW 5: Interface and usability

PureRAW 5 has had an interface overhaul designed to make it simpler and more efficient to use – though it was hardly difficult before. Let’s see what else is new in PureRAW 5 that might tempt existing users to upgrade and new users to take the plunge.

First off, PureRAW 5 comes with DxO’s latest DeepPRIME XD3 process, which DxO says yields even better noise reduction and detail rendering, tackles ‘residual chromatic shifts at a pixel level’ and processes images faster than before.

For owners of Fujifilm cameras, the news is even better. PureRAW 5 now offers DeepPRIME XD3 processing. Note that this is currently in beta form (there’s a feedback button) and it does not support the latest X-Trans 5 sensors, reverting instead to the DeepPRIME XD2 process for these..

Fujifilm’s unique X-Trans color filter array has posed problems for some raw processing tools – Lightroom can struggle from time to time and doesn’t always give the sharpest results with X-Trans images – and it’s been an issue for DxO in the past too. DxO’s X-Trans support has arrived comparatively recently and is very welcome, especially since it seems to be catching up with the latest DeepPRIME processing.

PureRAW 5 also brings local adjustments, for those who want maximum control over the processing parameters. You use a simple brush tool to mark out subjects and areas where you want to apply different sharpening and detail rendering settings, and you can create multiple masks for different areas. The masking tool is quite basic, but since it’s only for varying the processing, not tones or colors, it doesn’t need to be complicated.

Used as a standalone application, PureRAW 5 is really easy to operate. All you have to do is add images to the Lightbox and start processing. PureRAW will automatically find the matching lens correction profiles. You can process images automatically ‘unseen’ or use the ‘Process with Preview’ option. Here, you do get to see what your processed images look like, and you can zoom in to check the details. The DeepPRIME processing is not instantaneous, so it might take a second or so to redraw the image as you pan around, and exporting a processed image does take maybe 10 seconds or more, depending on the resolution of the file and the speed of your computer.

Over in the right sidebar you can choose the DeepPRIME process you want to use – the older DeepPRIME XD2 is here too, and DxO has said in the past that earlier versions will give you different results that you may prefer for some images. You can also choose whether to export Linear DNG raw files or JPEGs – and if you export JPEGs you can opt to apply DxO’s Smart Lighting feature to even up the exposure and maximize the dynamic range.

Another new feature in PureRAW 5 is the ability to create and apply processing presets. It’s a small workflow change but a useful one, because you can now quickly swap between processing recipes without having to check half a dozen individual settings.

Used as a Lightroom add-on, PureRAW 5 is just as easy to use. You have to wait for it to export the image, process it and return it, but once it’s back in Lightroom it’s ready for editing. What’s especially neat is that if you’ve already done some editing work in Lightroom, your edits are automatically applied to DxO’s DNG raw file.

DxO PureRAW 5: Performance

I did run into an issue with this when testing PureRAW 5.0.0. Sometimes, after painting on a mask it would shift to the right when the mouse button was released. The amount of the displacement seemed to depend on the degree of lens distortion correction applied, and it only happened with some camera/lens pairings and not others. It did make it difficult to mask areas over on the right side of the image. I’m sure this will be corrected with a future update, but I mention it just in case any early adopters are seeing the same thing.

But what are the results like? Well, Lightroom already has its own Enhance option for noise reduction and detail enhancement, but when you compare Adobe’s results and DxO’s side by side, it’s clear that although the noise reduction capabilities are similar, PureRAW’s detail rendering is way ahead.

Put simply, PureRAW’s results are stellar. DxO’s regular raw processing and noise reduction is very good, but the DeepPRIME processing takes it to a whole new level. You can feed it images shot at ISO 6400 and get back images that look like they were taken at ISO 200 – and that’s no exaggeration. There’s none of the smudging and smoothing of old-school noise reduction tools. What you get here is crystal-clear detail at a level you probably never suspected your raw files actually had. Admittedly, the AI is probably making some educated guesses at what it thinks ought to be there, but it’s done so well that you just can’t tell. I did occasionally get some odd-looking human faces when they were small in the frame, but that was with older, lower-resolution cameras at high ISOs where the DeepPRIME process was clearly having to work very hard indeed.

The only thing is… DxO’s Linear DNG files are very large, sometimes 3-4 times larger than the original raw file. Adobe’s own ‘Enhanced’ Linear DNGs are altogether smaller, sometimes not even double the original file size, so it’s something to consider. If you’re going to run all your raw files through PureRAW 5, you’re probably going to need some bigger drives.

So is DeepPRIME XD3 visibly better than the XD2 process in PureRAW 4? Probably, but it’s close. On the images I tested I occasionally thought I could see the difference in fine detail, but mostly I just couldn’t see any difference at all. The X-Trans processing has, however, taken a big leap forward, so I don’t think Fujifilm shooters will be disappointed.

And with all the talk about DeepPRIME XD3, let’s not forget to talk about DxO’s lens correction profiles. The company has recently announced a milestone 100,000 camera-lens combination profiles, each one derived from lab testing and scientific measurement.

Lots of photo editors now offer lens correction profiles, of course, so you may not notice much difference between Lightroom’s distortion correction, corner shading correction and chromatic aberration correction and DxO’s – but DxO’s profiles also apply edge softness correction, so if you do have some lenses which are a little weak at the edges, PureRAW 5 will make them look a whole lot crisper.

DxO PureRAW 5: Verdict

DxO PureRAW 5 is a remarkable tool. It can extract a level of image quality from your camera and your lenses that could make you completely rethink your equipment’s potential, especially at high ISO settings. It’s that good.

It’s also quite expensive, so it’s not a purchase to be undertaken lightly. And while its Linear DNG files offer remarkable image quality, they can be 3-4 times larger than your original raw files, so that’s a storage overhead that can quickly build into a problem. (Though you can also export JPEGs with the same lens corrections and denoising.)

Nevertheless, if you haven’t used DxO PureRAW before, PureRAW 5 is the most compelling version yet, not least because of its X-Trans sensor support (still in beta, but seems to work fine), but also because of its workflow improvements.

If you’re already using PureRAW 4, though, it’s not so easy to make a case for upgrading, particularly if you have a non-Fujifilm camera. The new DeepPRIME XD3 processing may be better than the previous DeepPRIME XD2, but the differences are subtle and you may decide it’s not worth it. I’m also not convinced that the new local adjustments are really all that necessary or useful – but others may disagree.

DxO PureRAW 5: Alternatives

The DxO PureRAW 5 beta is now available for download as a perpetual license or a 14-day free trial. New users pay $119.99 / £109.99 (about AU$189), while those who already own DxO PureRAW 3 or DxO PureRAW 4 can pay the discounted upgrade fee of $79.99 / £69.99 (around AU$125).

Returning users will notice DxO’s latest bid for the best photo editing software boasts a redesigned interface, while the headline upgrade is the implementation of DxO’s DeepPRIME3 denoising and demosaicing technology. While the presence of local adjustments allows users to create masks to precisely target specific areas of the image when applying noise reduction, demosaicing, and sharpness.

I’m particularly excited about DeepPRIME3, given that Digital Camera World’s Rod Lawton declared the DeepPRIME XD2s denoising process “unmatched” in his review of DxO PhotoLab 8. And of course, DxO PureRAW 5 provides more support for Fujifilm’s X-Trans sensors via the DeepPRIME XD3 X-Trans Beta, following calls from Fujifilm photographers to implement X-Trans compatibility in DeepPRIME XD2s.

DxO PureRAW 5 isn’t an all-in-one editing suite, but a tool in which to optimize RAW files, making them sharper, cleaner, and more detail-rich. It can be used standalone or as a plug-in with Adobe Lightroom Classic and is compatible with macOS and Windows. Look out for the Digital Camera World DxO PureRAW 5 review coming very soon.

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Normally, it’s hard to get overly excited about a rain cover, but when I heard the Photo Storm Cape is set to become the French editing software company, DxO Labs’, first physical product, it certainly caught my attention. It supposedly offers “uncompromising protection, premium high-tech materials, exclusive innovations, and exceptional comfort and style,” and was unveiled at the opening of the CP+ 2025 Camera and Photo Imaging Show in Tokyo, which is happening right now.

The Photo Storm Cape certainly is something different from the best rain covers in that it's a wearable rain cover. You heard that right. Think poncho and hood but with extra provision for your camera. The beauty of this is that it's designed to keep your camera sheltered even when swapping lenses. Pretty neat!

DxO tells me it has "two combined protective envelopes shielding upper and lower body of the photographer and gear". A clear PVC window and viewfinder access. A "fast-securing lens attachment," presumably to attach the lens to the rain cover. Two protected lens pockets, so you don't have to keep reaching into your camera bag to access lenses. Wrist attachments, so that the protective material remains over your hands and thus the camera. A "zipped abdominal pocket". And "zipped pant access," I imagine so you can access your trouser pockets, which might be housing your phone or memory cards.

It's a Kickstarter, so I’m not expecting to keep my camera (and myself) stylishly dry anytime soon. However, what makes this announcement slightly more enticing is the accessory’s link to the launch of the DxO Photographers Club, which has been dubbed: “a community-driven initiative dedicated to crafting innovative solutions for passionate photographers.” I don’t have much more information than that, but this does suggest that club members might have a say in future products. If that’s the case, I think this has the potential to be a cool idea.

DxO says that the Photo Storm Cape owes its existence to a chat around the coffee machine, so it seems likely that the DxO Photographers Club will encourage similar discourse.

DxO states that joining the DxO Photographers Club will allow you to “stay updated and be among the first to brave the elements like never before.” DxO also mentions that there's more to come, with the company, "already working on a range of innovative products and services designed for photography enthusiasts."

I doubt the Photo Storm Cape is going to win any fashion awards, but as somebody who's wrestled with plenty of camera rain covers in my time, if this wearable cover makes operating the camera and switching lenses easier, DxO could be on to something...

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DxO PureRAW 5 will launch on April 15 and boasts a raft of new features including local adjustments, a brand-new interface, and its AI-powered DeepPRIME 3. Fujifilm photographers will be pleased to learn of both Bayer and X-Trans support, and if you cannot wait until the release date, all PureRAW 5 preorders will receive a complimentary copy of DxO PureRAW 4.

There's no doubting DxO's ability to produce some of the best photo editing software on the market. But if you're wondering whether or not this latest incarnation of its RAW processor is worth the upgrade, here’s what to expect…

What is DxO PureRAW 5?

I like to think of PureRAW as a more powerful version of Adobe Camera Raw but without the tonal adjustments. It’s the first stop on your editing journey, where you perform lens corrections, denoising and demosaicing. It’s not designed to deliver the final product and is therefore intended to be used in conjunction with Adobe Lightroom Classic as a plug-in or as standalone software alongside another editing suite. If you want all the power of PureRAW, as well as the ability to edit and finalize your images without leaving the DxO ecosystem, then DxO PhotoLab 8 offers PureRAW functionality as well as a wider DxO editing suite.

What’s new in DxO PureRAW 5?

The most immediate change to DxO PureRAW 5 is the new interface, which DxO says will provide “a smoother, more streamlined workflow, reducing friction and enhancing usability.” But the headline change is the integration of Local Adjustments, allowing users to draw multiple masks, and access Force Details and Luminance sliders to precisely target areas of denoising and detail enhancement, as well as tailor sharpening levels.

But what I’m most interested in is the next generation of DxO’s AI-powered, noise-reduction and demosaicing tool, DeepPRIME 3, for use with Bayer and X-Trans sensors. Digital Camera World called DeepPRIME XD2s “unrivaled”, so I’m looking forward to trying out this latest advancement. Beyond the software developer’s stated: “significant boost in image quality,” DeepPRIME is now able to resolve what DxO Labs Product Director, Fabrizio Dei Tos Navalesi calls “residual chromatic aberration,” which is essentially a byproduct of the demosaicing process.

Existing DxO PureRAW and PhotoLab users will know that there are two flavors of DeepPRIME, the latter being DeepPRIME 'eXtra Detail'. And PureRAW 5 debuts DeepPRIME XD3 X-Trans Beta. This is big news for Fujifilm photographers who have been waiting very patiently for DeepPRIME XD2s support, with DxO stating that it's designed to give, "X-Trans photographers early access to the next generation of noise reduction and detail extraction." The new software will also introduce custom presets, so you can apply frequently used settings in a single click.

It’s also worth noting that the Paris-based software developer has now created over 100,000 DxO Modules. DxO was the first developer to create combined camera-and-lens profiles, with the information used to precisely optimize images and in DxO's own words, push them, “beyond the laws of physics.”

DxO PureRAW 5 will be available on macOS and Windows on April 15. Anyone who loathes subscription models will be pleased to know that the software is available as a perpetual license for $119.99 / £109.99. DxO PureRAW 3 or 4 users can purchase a discounted upgrade for $79.99 / £69.99. A 14-day trial of DxO PureRAW 4 is available now, with users able to access a DxO PureRAW 5 trial from the software’s release date.

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The best Black Friday camera deals might take center stage, but the annual event is the prime time to search out stellar deals when it comes to the best photo editing software. One of the biggest photo-editing developers is, of course, DxO Labs. The Paris-based software company is known for its suite of photo editing applications, including RAW image editor, Photo Labs, and the legendary Nik Collection.

I’m personally a big fan of the Nik Collection’s Silver Efex plugin, which quite simply boasts one of the best black-and-white converters in the business. DxO Labs certainly hasn’t pulled any punches when it comes to Black Friday, with up to 50% off its entire editing portfolio. So, if you’re interested in picking up some quality photo editing software that you can buy outright (no subscriptions) check out the list of deals I've compiled below...

DxO Labs' extensive photo-editing software suite features everything you need to turn out beautiful-looking edits. From adding advanced lens corrections in DxO PureRAW 4, fixing perspective-based distortions in DxO ViewPoint 5, making use of Nik Collection 7's hugely popular Silver Efex plugin, performing standard tonal edits via the incredibly powerful DxO PhotoLab 8, and converting digital images into realistic, film-era photos with DxO FilmPack 7.

Without a doubt, DxO PhotoLab 8's powerful tonal feature set and Nik Collection 7's quality, seven-strong roster of plugins are highlights, earning five stars in their respective Digital Camera World reviews. If you're looking to complement your Adobe Creative Cloud license or find a suitable alternative, DxO Labs software comes highly recommended.

Many photo editors have perspective correction tools, but DxO ViewPoint 5 takes things to a whole new level, fixing wide-angle lens issues that other software doesn’t and bringing local perspective control for images that don’t respond to a one-size-fits-all approach.

ViewPoint 5 works as a standalone application or external editor, or as a plug-in for Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. It really comes into its own if you have DxO PhotoLab 8 installed, because ViewPoint’s perspective control tools will integrate into PhotoLab’s non-destructive raw workflow.

This latest version update concentrates on DxO’s local perspective adjustment tools. The previous version introduce a mesh-based ReShape tool for correction specific areas of an image, but ViewPoint 5 brings ReShape Fusion, with the ability to move, rotate and reshape areas of the image with the added power of a Propagation slider and Sticky Borders to control how the reshaping is blended with the rest of the image and to prevent unwanted cropping at the edges of the frame.

If you’ve used Photoshop’s Liquify tool in the past, then imagine that with precise mesh control with adjustable nodes and easy scaling, rotating and moving options.

ViewPoint 5 offers automatic and manual global perspective adjustments too – and it has a special ‘volumetric distortion’ correction feature you won’t find anywhere else. This corrects the optical ‘stretching’ effect of wide-angle lenses, so that people near the edges of the frame, for example, have normal proportions and aren’t stretched out horizontally.

ViewPoint 5 has another trick. It can create a tilt-shift ‘miniature’ effect with controllable blur either side of a sharp strip in the middle of the photo. This isn’t just a ‘quick-fix’ effect – you can create non-symmetrical blur effects with a lot of precise control.

DxO ViewPoint 5 is available now at a price of $109 / £99 (about AU$162) for new users or $69 / £59 (about AU$103) for existing users of ViewPoint 3 or ViewPoint 4. It’s subscription free, with a perpetual license, and there’s an unrestricted 30-day free trial too.

DxO also offers ViewPoint 5 in two PhotoLab bundles. You can get a ViewPoint 5 and DxO PhotoLab 8 bundle for $269 / £249 (about AU$400), or a ViewPoint 5, DxO PhotoLab 8 and DxO FilmPack 7 bundle for $349 / £329 (about AU$519).

The DxO Nik Collection now consists of seven different plug-ins, five of which are designed to offer creative inspiration and effects, while two are more ‘corrective’ image enhancement tools. We call them plug-ins, and they can indeed be used from within Lightroom Classic, Adobe Photoshop, Capture One, DxO PhotoLab, and Affinity Photo, but they can also be used on their own as standalone applications.

We've long considered the Nik Collection to be one of the best photo editing software suites on the market, so what exactly do you get?

The creative plug-ins include Nik Color Efex, Silver Efex, Analog Efex, Viveza, and HDR Efex, and while there is a degree of crossover for black and white photography and color adjustments, each one is aimed at a particular style or genre of photography.

With Nik Collection 7, Color Efex becomes the principal photo editing tool, with its ability to apply over 50 different filter effects, combine them as presets, and mask each one with DxO’s fast and effective control point adjustments.

Color Efex 7 gets the lion’s share of updates in this version, with new preset management options, ‘dynamic’ filters which now include (improved) HSL controls, grain effects, and DxO’s own contrast-enhancing ClearView effect. It also has three new filters taken from the Viveza plug-in to extend its potential for image enhancement and effects.

The other plug-ins benefit from new control point options too, including the ability to reshape circular control points as ellipses and a new polygonal control point tool. It’s now possible to switch images to a different Nik plug-in while you work and to export a version of an image straight from the plug-in without having to return to the host program first.

Nik Silver Efex 7 specializes in black and white photography, with powerful tools and controls that reproduce the depth and richness of analog black and white photography, while Analog Efex 7 replicates the flawed, faded, and distressed look of old analog photos and adds in camera effects like double exposures, lens blur and bokeh.

HDR Efex 7 is little changed from previous versions but is a very effective tool for merging bracketed images into high dynamic range composites with a range of preset effects and manual adjustments. Viveza is a simpler tool aimed at color control and enhancement using both global adjustments and DxO control points for local adjustments.

Nik Dfine 7 and Nik Sharpener 7 are different and perhaps a little dated in their appeal. Dfine is a noise reduction plug-in that’s effective enough in a modest way but outclassed by today’s AI-drive raw denoising tools. Sharpener 7 is very good at ‘output’ sharpening for specific devices, but you can almost certainly do this in your host software too.

The plug-in missing from this release is Perspective Efex. This makes sense because there was always a rather confusing crossover (duplication, even) with DxO’s standalone ViewPoint software. Besides, most host programs like Lightroom Classic and Capture One have perfectly effective perspective correction tools of their own, which you can apply before or after sending images to the Nik plug-ins.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Price

DxO Nik Collection 7 is available to download now. The full version costs $159 / £145 (about AU$243), but existing users can upgrade for $89 / £79 (about AU$136). Alternatively, if you just want to see what it can do, there’s a 30-day free trial.

You do get a lot for your money. A new license will cost a little more than an annual Adobe Photography Plan subscription, but it’s cheaper than a Capture One license and in the same ballpark as other software tools. It’s also a perpetual license, so if you don’t need any of the new features in subsequent editions, you can use this one indefinitely. It doesn’t work directly with raw files, so it won’t be made obsolete by new cameras and lenses.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Interface and usability

Typically, the Nik plug-ins follow a standard modern layout, with presets in the left sidebar and manual controls, including local adjustments, on the right. There are differences in the details, though. Nik Color Efex 7 offers both individual filters and presets (combinations of filters) in its left sidebar, and the ability to change the stacking order of filters in the right sidebar – changing the order the filters are applied will change the appearance of the image.

Silver Efex 7 is slightly different in that the left sidebar has presets, but there are no filters as such, just adjustments you can apply in the right sidebar, and you can’t change the order – though that really doesn’t matter very much.

Analog Efex 7 has presets too, but not filters as such. Instead, it has different tools and effects under a ‘Camera Kit’ heading which you can select manually, and they then appear in the right sidebar where you can make detailed adjustments.

HDR Efex 7 is different again. In Lightroom, this has to be launched via the ‘Export’ menu rather than the ‘Edit in’ menu, and the interface layout is similar to Silver Efex, with presets on the left sidebar and manual tools on the right.

So while all the Nik plug-ins share the same family resemblance, they do operate slightly differently. It’s not a problem and you very quickly get used to it and think no more about it, but it’s worth pointing out that they are not identical.

If you’re launching them from Photoshop, you have another potential workflow. The Nik Collection installer adds a Nik Collection 7 palette which you can use to launch the plug-ins directly. There’s also a section for ‘Meta presets’, which are automated combinations of plug-ins and settings you can apply with a single click – though it’s a relatively small selection and you can’t create your own.

The Photoshop workflow is interesting because you can apply the Nik filters to Smart Objects, which means you can go back and change the filter settings later – it’s a non-destructive workflow.

But you can also achieve a non-destructive workflow from Lightroom and other host applications, or even when launching the Nik tools as standalone apps. There’s a non-destructive TIFF file option that does double the file size, but stores both the original image, the edited version, and the processing instructions needed to achieve it.

This non-destructive route is not new, but the plug-in switcher and quick export options are. These are genuinely useful additions to Nik Collection 7. They don’t change any of the creative options available, but they do make it possible to swap to another of the plug-ins if you realize you didn’t launch the best one for the job or to export one or more versions of your image while you’re still in the plug-in.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Quality of results

Nik Silver Efex enjoys a near-legendary reputation amongst black and white photographers for its ability to produce rich, dense, and dramatic black-and-white images. It also offers a set of tools that properly reflect the way photographers see and manipulate black-and-white images.

For me, though, Color Efex has always been the star of the show. Its filters are powerful, inventive, and genuinely useful day to day, and the range of permutations and presets you can create are practically infinite. The improvements in Nik Collection 7 make it better still.

I also love Analog Efex, though its presets can be a little heavy-handed and its sometimes odd photography jargon firmly rooted in the Google era – this is the one plug-in added by Google during its tenure before DxO took over. But what other tool gives you multiple-exposure effects, lens distortion, motion blur, and multi-lens effects like these?

I also like HDR Efex 7, though its HDR presets can look a little over the top by today’s standards. If you want naturalistic high dynamic range imaging, you are better off in a program like Lightroom, Capture One or Affinity Photo, where the HDR tone mapping is designed to be invisible, not exaggerated.

Viveza seems, to me, less valuable. It offers global and local color adjustments you can apply just as easily in Color Efex. Indeed, Color Efex 7 now includes three core components of Viveza as new dynamic filters.

Dfine seems a rather old-fashioned approach to removing noise in images that have already been processed. It can do a useful job on noisy old JPEGs, but if you shoot raw you would be better off with one of today’s raw denoising tools. Nik Sharpener 7, meanwhile, can apply subtle sharpening enhancements for printed output, but again seems a bit of a throwback to older ways of working.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Verdict

This review points out some inconsistencies in the Nik Collection 7 plug-ins and perhaps some areas for improvement. This might make it sound like a rather average sort of product. It isn’t.

The fact is, Color Efex 7, Silver Efex 7, Analog Efex 7 and even HDR Efex 7 are just so spectacularly good you could forgive the Nik Collection 7 anything. Viveza seems less useful and Dfine and Sharpener are distinctly old fashioned and limited. But who cares? Those first four plug-ins are so good they easily carry the rest.

These Nik Collection plug-ins are classic photo editing tools that have stood the test of time and then some. DxO has constantly updated them without ruining them, enhancing and developing them with a care and sometimes an ingenuity that’s kept them right at the cutting edge of photographic creativity. AI? Who needs it, when you have software that so perfectly releases the photographer’s own human intelligence?

Nik Collection 7 is not perfect and perhaps never will be, but it’s so good that it hardly matters.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Alternatives

DxO describes this as the Nik Collection’s biggest update ever, as the Color Efex plug-in takes center stage, DxO’s U-point masking technology becomes massively more powerful and one plug-in is dropped from the line-up completely.

It's a substantial upgrade to what is already one of the best photo editing software tools on the market, as DxO both rationalizes the Nik Collection line-up and improves its features and workflow.

Color Efex is one of the oldest Nik plug-ins and has perhaps been under-appreciated in the past, but with the Nik Collection 7 update it suddenly takes on a lot more importance. It now incorporates three Nik Viveza filters that previously formed the heart of the separate Viveza plug-in. This seems a logical home for these tools since Viveza did seem like a rather narrow and specialized outlier in the Nik suite.

Color Efex also gets a change to some core tools. The HSL, ClearView and Grain tools which were previously global adjustments now become dynamic filters that can be used multiple times and with local adjustments.

Some of the biggest changes are to the masking tools, though, which apply across the suite, and the biggest upgrade is to control points. Previously, these were circular, but they can now be reshaped as ellipses or you can use a brand new polygon tool for precise masking shapes. The ‘self-masking’ capability remains, but you can now move the target point for the adjustments within the masked area so it no longer needs to be in the center.

There are workflow enhancements too. DxO claims images now load 30% faster and has introduced a new plug-in switcher to go from one plug-in to another without having to go back to the host software, and an Export button to output a processed image straight from the plug-in – again, without having to go back to the host. Preset management has been given an overhaul too, and it’s now possible to search for presets and create your own presets category.

DxO has dropped Perspective Efex from the suite, however. This does make some sense as there was a lot of crossover between this and DxO’s ViewPoint software. Besides, host programs like Lightroom, Capture One, Affinity and others have perfectly effective perspective control tools of their own which you can apply before or after launching the Nik plug-ins. DxO does say that any Perspective Efex fans can still use the older Nik Collection 6 plug-in alongside a new Nik Collection 7 installation.

DxO Nik Collection 7 price and availability

DxO Nik Collection 7 is available now. The full version costs $159 / £145 (about AU$243), but existing users can upgrade for $89 / £79 (about AU$136).

If you have an older camera and you can’t afford pro lenses, don’t worry – PureRAW 4 can harness the power of AI to transform your images, delivering the kind of image quality you didn’t know your gear could even achieve.

PureRAW 4 can be used as a batch processing tool, taking a folder full of regular raw files and outputting new DNG versions with DxO’s remarkable DeepPRIME XD2 noise reduction, new and improved in PureRAW 4, and with advanced lens corrections that can compensate for the edge softness visible with almost all camera lenses. Sometimes even the best photo editing software needs a little outside help, and that's s where PureRAW 4 fits in.

It can also be used as an Adobe Lightroom Classic plug-in, so that if you decide one of your images needs the PureRAW treatment, you can simply ‘round-trip’ it to DxO’s processing tool within Lightroom – and any edits you’ve already applied will be added  to the new version automatically.

What’s new in DxO PureRAW 4

PureRAW 4 brings a new and improved version of DxO’s DeepPRIME XD raw denoising process – ‘XD’ stands for ‘eXtra Detail’. DeepPRIME XD2 is said to offer crisper and cleaner fine detail for “unprecedented” clarity and detail. 

It includes improved edge softness correction based around DxO’s own detailed lens testing procedures, which list tens of thousands of camera and lens combinations and measures softness across a range of focal lengths and aperture settings for a specifically tailored approach that simple global sharpening tools don’t provide.

The other key part of the PureRAW 4 proposition – advanced noise reduction – has been given increased control with optional ‘Luminance’ and ‘Force Details’ sliders for balancing noise and detail  rendition more precisely.

There are also some workflow upgrades in this version, with a preview window to check adjustments prior to processing, plus automatic memory card ingesting and advanced batch renaming for photographers who want to use PureRAW 4 right at the start of their editing workflow.

DxO PureRAW 4 price and availability

PureRAW 4 is available now. It costs $119 / £109 (about AU$182) for new users and $79 / $69 (about AU$121) as an upgrade for existing owners.

If you use Lightroom, Capture One or some other software to view and process your raw files, you’ll have formed a good idea of the quality you can get from your images. If you try DxO PureRAW 4, you might just have to change your mind.

Almost all image editing tools can now process raw files. They do this using the software’s own proprietary ‘demosaicing’ process to turn the red, green and blue sensor data into full colour images. Some do this raw processing better than others, however, and if you use Adobe Lightroom, for example, you might end up with a completely different idea of your camera’s image quality than if you use Capture One. Even the best photo editing software can have weaknesses, and sometimes it's the raw processing quality and noise handling.

Now normally this is somewhat academic because you’re at the mercy of your photo editor’s own raw processing, but PureRAW 4 changes all that. It generates part-processed ‘Linear DNG’ files, with all of DxO’s demosaicing, DeepPRIME noise reduction and lens corrections baked in, but still with all the extended color depth, dynamic range and editability as regular raw files. 

PureRAW 4 can be used as a standalone batch processing tool for converting folders full of raw files into processed Linear DNGS. It can also generate regular JPEG or TIFF images for photos that don’t require any further editing.

But it can also be used as an export plug-in with Lightroom Classic, so that if you decide a raw file you’re working on in Lightroom needs the DxO treatment, you can export it to PureRAW 4 for processing, after which it’s automatically re-imported back into your Lightroom catalog. And if you’ve already done some editing on the original in Lightroom, these edits are automatically applied to the imported Linear DNG.

Effectively, then, PureRAW 4 can either be used as a standalone batch processing tool at the start of your workflow, or from within Lightroom on an image by image basis.

DxO PureRAW 4: price

PureRAW 4 is available now from the DxO website. It costs $119 / £109 (about AU$182) for new users and $79 / $69 (about AU$121) as an upgrade for existing owners. That's not far short of the cost of a full year's Adobe Photography Plan or a full-blown photo-editing suite like ON1 Photo RAW, so is it worth it? Bear in mind too that Lightroom users already have access to Adobe's own noise reducing Enhance tool, which does some of the same work.

It depends on whether you shoot raw files, how highly you value outright image quality and, ultimately, how much of a pixel-peeper you are. There is a fully featured 30-day trial, so you have plenty of time to decide for yourself if the improvements to your raw files are worth it.

DxO PureRAW 4: design and usability

For an application that does so much, PureRAW 4 is exceptionally simple to use. In both standalone and Lightroom plug-in modes, it will automatically identify the camera and lens profile pairing that it needs and download it if it’s not already installed. From there you simply need to choose your processing parameters and start processing.

These parameters aren’t complicated. You simply need to choose the processing settings and the output options. It’s in the processing settings that you find some of the new features in PureRAW 4. For a start, it has a new DeepPRIME XD2 process which DxO says gives even better edge correction with fewer artefacts – this does not yet support Fujifilm X-Trans sensors, however. With these cameras it will fall back on its older (but still highly effective) DeepPRIME XD process.

DeepRIME XD2 now has additional controls. These include a Luminance slider for further noise control and a Force Details slider for controlling the amount of detail recovery. PureRAW 4 is so effective at its default settings, however, that you might not bother with these at all.

Below this are switches for enabling Lens Softness correction, Vignetting, Chromatic Aberration and Lens Distortion correction – you would only disable any of these if you had issues with any specific camera and lens combinations.

The drop-down menu under the Lens Distortion switch deserves a closer look. If you’ve ever applied lens corrections in other software, you may have noticed that some programs can reveal extra image area outside the default crop. If you set this menu to ‘Maximum Rectangle’, PureRAW 4 will crop the images to include this extra image area – it’s most often found with wide-angle lens corrections.

The output options are pretty straightforward. You can choose the file format to export in – you choose DNG if you want Linear DNG files – and where you want the processed images to be stored. New in PureRAW 4 is a powerful token-based renaming system where you can choose how your processed files are named.

The regular batch processing workflow doesn’t give you any idea about what your processed images will look like, but PureRAW 4 has a new Process with Preview mode which shows a split-screen preview of your image – though you do have to keep updating the preview manually with a button at the base as you move around the image. It’s also hard to see much difference when changing the processing settings.

The Lightroom Classic plug-in is just as straightforward. It takes no longer to export an image to PureRAW 4 than it does to use Lightroom’s own noise-reducing Enhance option, and both produce a processed Linear DNG file that’s automatically imported into the catalog when processing is complete.

The results, however, are somewhat different.

DxO PureRAW 4: performance

It’s hard to describe PureRAW 4’s performance without lapsing into superlatives. Its ability to produce clean, sharp results at high ISOs is quite uncanny – you’re left checking the EXIF data to make sure you’re definitely looking at the same image. 

Improvements in image quality will vary from one camera to another, and with low-ISO shots on the best full frame cameras, you may not see much difference. But as the ISOs go up, and especially with crop sensor cameras, the difference between what PureRAW can do and what Lightroom’s default raw processing can do is just embarrassing – for Adobe, at least.

Lightroom’s issue is that it’s not very good at fine detail and noise. Even at base ISO settings, you can often see a faint patina of noise over even-toned areas, and if you use any kind of sharpening, that quickly becomes prominent. At higher ISO settings, Lightroom seems to struggle even more. Very often, the camera’s own JPEGs are sharper and smoother.

But what about Lightroom’s Enhance feature? It’s true that this can do a remarkable job of reducing noise, but it really can’t match PureRAW 4’s detail enhancement at high ISOs or its improvement in edge sharpness at pretty much any ISO setting. The better the lens, the less you will notice – but we don’t all have the best lenses.

So while Lightroom Enhance is built into Lightroom and PureRAW 4 is a paid-for extra, it does deliver a clear step up in quality.

PureRAW 4 is not quite faultless. Its ‘Standard’ detail enhancement can be just a bit too ‘crunchy’ for camera and lenses which are quite good already, and the ‘Soft’ option looks more natural. It can’t fully correct poor quality lenses which are just blurry at the edges – its real strength is in enhancing the edge detail of those countless ‘average’ lenses on the market which are not bad, but not great either. It doesn’t simply apply a global sharpening effect but uses tailored edge correction calibrated for each lens, each focal length and each aperture, using profiles developed in DxO’s own labs.

There is a processing overhead. The DeepPRIME XD2 process can’t be displayed in real-time and can only be seen in exported files. DxO says, though, that the latest version is faster than ever, helped by GPU acceleration. I found it typically took 8-12 seconds to process a 24MP raw file on my Mac Studio, while the older DeepPRIME XD process took around 50% longer. That’s a lot faster than the old days, when images could take a couple of minutes each – though back then I was using less powerful hardware.

In my tests I found it just a little faster than Lightroom Enhance. Both tools, however, produce large DNG files which does, alas, go with the territory. It’s because the original raw data is demosaiced during this process so that the new files have full color data for each pixel rather than the red, green or blue raw data. It’s no worse than saving your images as 16-bit TIFFs, though, and rather more flexible for further editing work.

One thing you might need to check in Lightroom and other programs is that sharpening and lens corrections are disabled for the new PureRAW DNG file. These have already been applied, so don’t let your software do it twice! If PureRAW’s DNG files are accidentally double-sharpened in this way, they will look horribly over-processed.

DxO PureRAW 4: verdict

PureRAW 4 has an improved workflow and improved DeepPRIME XD2 processing which are both welcome but perhaps only a small gain for existing users. In fact, if you have PureRAW 3 and a Fujifilm X-Trans sensor, you might just as well stay with the old software until PureRAW 4 adds X-Trans support to its DeepPRIME XD2 process. The best Fujifilm cameras in the X-mount range use a unique color filter array on the sensor which has to be handled differently to regular 'bayer' sensor data.

If you already have an older version of PureRAW you won’t need any convincing about its spectacular transformative properties. New users might need some convincing, but for this there is a 30-day trial which will be more than long enough to see what this software can do with your raw files. 

You might not see too much difference with good quality cameras and lenses at low ISOs, but the higher the ISO, the smaller the sensor and the more ‘average’ the lens, the more spectacular the transformation becomes.

If you’ve been thinking the performance of your old cameras and lenses just isn’t up to scratch any more, don’t do anything until you’ve tried PureRAW 4. DxO’s raw processing software could and probably will change your mind about what you think your camera is capable of.

DxO PureRAW already works as an export plug-in for Lightroom Classic, where raw files are processed using DxO’s proprietary lens correction and denoising technologies and ingested automatically back into your Lightroom catalog.

With version 3.7, though, DxO says that you can place processed images into any Lightroom Collection, within any Collection Set, or create a new Collection that you can view and rename as required in Lightroom Classic. This is a free update for existing PureRAW 3 users.

DxO PureRAW offers automated lens corrections and DxO’s DeepPRIME/DeepPRIME XD noise reduction which it can apply directly to raw files and then deliver a new, corrected Linear DNG file back to Lightroom Classic. Linear DNG files behave just like regular raw files in Lightroom, but with DxO’s own raw processing applied rather than Adobe’s.

DxO makes some of the best photo editing software on the market, including DxO PhotoLab and the Nik Collection.

Why use DxO PureRAW 3.7 with Lightroom Classic?

Lightroom does of course have its own automated lens corrections and, thanks to its latest Enhance options, it can offer AI-powered noise reduction just as DxO PureRAW does.

However, DxO is keen to point out that its custom lab-developed lens profiles offer the best precision and correction features available. PureRAW uses the image EXIF data to find and apply the correct camera+lens correction profile from the tens of thousands in its database, and covers everything from entry-level camera equipment to professional gear. 

DxO says the result from its processing are like getting a sharper lens and an upgraded sensor, and that its DeepPRIME noise reduction offers over 2.5 stops of noise compensation, so that an image shot at ISO 4000 can look like one taken at ISO 800.

The lens correction profiles applied are highly sophisticated. They don’t simply apply the same level of sharpening across the frame but are especially tailored to compensate for additional edge softness, lens by lens. 

DxO’s optical corrections often yield a larger image area than regular lens profiles, especially with wider angle lenses and focal lengths. The chromatic aberration correction tackles not just lateral chromatic aberration but longitudinal fringing too, and DxO’s vignetting correction uses the power of its denoising and raw processing tech to deliver a wider dynamic range and better tones and colors in corrected areas.

DxO PureRAW 3.7 is offered as a better-quality alternative to Lightroom Classic’s own processing, and the differences are readily apparent when you inspect high ISO images and edge detail.

DxO PureRAW 3.7 is a free update for existing PureRAW 3 users. It costs $129/£115 for new users and £$79/£69 as an upgrade from PureRAW 1 or 2.

DxO FilmPack 7 was recently released alongside DxO PhotoLab 7 (see our review). PhotoLab 7 is a tool-packed digital darkroom designed to let you manually organize and process your pictures to perfection. 

In essence, FilmPack 7 features a comprehensive collection of filters that emulate a wide range of old film stocks. In some ways, DxO FilmPack 7 does for photography what vinyl does for music. It lets you travel back in time by taking the crisp clean pixels of your digital photos and giving them an analogue look. This retro look evokes images captured on decades-old cameras using a wide range of darkroom techniques. Analog artifacts such as vignetted edges and film grain also help your retro images stand out from the social media crowd’s artefact-free digital images as well as enabling you to produce striking and frame-able classic prints to hang on your wall.

DxO FilmPack 7: Specifications

DxO FilmPack 7: Key Features

After two decades of research, DxO has enabled FilmPack 7 to work its magic by digitizing classic film stocks. This research has enabled FilmPack 7 to create convincing analog prints that feature a wide range of analog artifacts such as film grain from a range of positive and negative film formats.  

FilmPack 7’s 280 presets are gathered into themed collections such as Negative Films and Slide Films.  There’s also a Time Machine mode that lets you browse back through the decades to view 104 presets that emulate film stocks - from the dawn of photography to the present day. Time Machine is also an educational tool that explores the work of pioneering photographers and lets you imitate the look of their photography in a click.  

DxO FilmPack 7: Interface & Usability

FilmPack 7’s interface is reminiscent of apps designed in the noughties, with a bar at the top containing large white circles that feature chunky icons (such as crop or rotate). When you’ve finished adjusting a shot the Apply or Save buttons have a beveled 3D edge that evokes the skeuomorphism of noughties apps that felt the need to emulate 3D buttons on 2D screens. Given that DxO FilmPack 7 is all about emulating the past we can forgive (and even embrace) this retro look to its workspace.

Once you’ve explored and applied a preset analog look to a photo in the Presets workspace you can click the Customize tab to access a wide range of tools to fine-tune the look. Here you can pick and mix different film rendering options and then add a custom grain effect. There’s also the option to add other filmic artifacts such as light leakage effects and blurred vignetted edges. 

The new Luminosity Masks panel enables you to sample and isolate specific areas based on color or tone and tweak a wide range of properties with precision.  The Customize workspace also contains a collection of classic digital darkroom tools - such as Curves and a Histogram - that enable you to adjust colors and tones, though this darkroom is not as comprehensive as the one in DxO PhotoLab 7.

DxO FilmPack 7: Results

To get assets for this review I hired a model and snapped her on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. It must be noted that DxO doesn’t support .dng files from an iPhone (on FilmPack 7 or PhotoLab 7), so if you shoot in Apple ProRAW then you’ll need to export the images as .jpg files first. 

Despite this lack of .dng support I enjoyed exploring how FilmPack 7’s one-click presets gave my digital photos a retro analogue makeover. By adding artefacts such as film grain to portraits I was able to send my Eli my model back in time to earlier decades. This visual variety motivated me to populate my Instagram feed with many more images than I usually do after a shoot. 

I also enjoyed the ability to customize a preset’s look by adding extra analog artifacts such as light leakage effects (which add patches of color and fogged tones to parts of the frame). You can also add textured paper and a range of framed edges which is an effective way of making a modern shot look like a retro snap that has been weathered by time. This technique worked particularly well on retro subjects such as the vintage engine I snapped on the iPhone 15 Pro Max at Nene Valley Railway. 

DxO FilmPack 7: Verdict

If you own DxO PhotoLab 7 then I don’t think FilmPack 7 is an essential purchase.  The more expensive PhotoLab 7 also has hundreds of analog-imitating presets  (including Time Machine), plus it’s packed full of a wider suite of digital darkroom tools. However, if you use another app as your main photo editor (such as Apple Photos or Adobe Photoshop) then DxO FilmPack 7 is well worth a punt as it enables you to produce a wide range of nostalgia-inducing looks in seconds (and it's considerably cheaper than PhotoLab 7).

Read more: check out our top picks for the best photo editing software. Or if you want to create real film photos then you can find out more in our guide for the best film.

The newly released PhotoLab 7 is the latest incarnation of DxO’s powerful digital asset manager and photo editor.  Like most Digital Asset Management (DAM) apps (see our buying guide) PhotoLab 7 enables you to organize your digital images by assigning color labels, ratings, and keywords to them that you can filter through later to find specific files more quickly. 

You can also pick or reject shots in a click. You can even filter files via information in their metadata, such as choosing to display images according to their ISO speed which helps you find the ‘noisiest’ photos to fix for example (and PhotoLab7 is particularly good at smoothing out noise while preserving detail). 

PhotoLab7 is packed full of powerful digital darkroom tools. It uses a comprehensive collection of optics modules to quickly and effectively counteract lens artifacts such as distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberration (color fringing). These optic modules are particularly useful if you’ve been shooting in RAW formats for years because thanks to the ongoing advancement in AI you can give decades-old RAW files a new lease of life as we’ll explain in this review.

DxO PhotoLab 7: Specifications

DxO PhotoLab 7: Key Features

A key feature that’s on top of the PhotoLab 7 features list is optics modules. Basically, these are thousands of camera and lens profiles that can counteract common artifacts such as barreling or pin cushioning lens distortion automatically. If you open an old Raw file in PhotoLab 7 you’ll automatically be invited to download the appropriate optics module for that photo’s specific camera and lens set-up. 

Another powerful key feature is denoising. Thanks to being exposed to huge libraries of images PhotoLab 7’s AI-powered noise reduction tools can smooth out high ISO-induced luminance and chrominance noise very effectively. If you’ve used Lightroom Classic to reduce noise on a decade-old shot try working on the same image in PhotoLab 7. You’ll create a smoother noise-free shot while revealing more detail than you could in Lightroom Classic. 

This will encourage you to use PhotoLab 7 to re-visit and re-process old favorites and see them in a new way.  Whatever old camera/lens combination you used to snap a Raw shot it should have a downloadable optics module. 

However, I must point out now (before you get too excited) that as with its previous incarnations, PhotoLab 7 doesn’t support .dng files captured on an iPhone Pro.  These days I shoot exclusively on an iPhone 15 Pro Max and mostly in Raw, so my new Raw .dng images tend to go through Lightroom or Lightroom Classic. However, I can still enjoy processing old Canon.CR2 and Nikon.NEF files in PhotoLab 7 due to the extra power of its Raw editing tools. 

Another key feature  is an automatically installed plug-in that enables you to export edited files from PhotoLab 7 to Lightroom Classic, so you can apply the superior Raw processing tools in PhotoLab 7 while finishing your edit in Lightroom Classic if you desire.

DxO PhotoLab 7: Interface & Usability

Like Adobe Lightroom Classic you use PhotoLab 7 to browse photos that are stored in folders on your PC (or on an attached external hard drive). This means you don’t create extra space-hogging files by importing them into the app.

PhotoLab 7 has a clean grey and black interface that looks familiar to contemporary DAM and digital darkroom apps such as Lightroom. The interface is organized into two main tabbed workspaces. PhotoLibrary is where you browse images and organize them using classic DAM tools such as ratings, color labels, and keywords.

Click on the Customise tab and you have access to a suite of photo fixing tools to help you perform a range of darkroom techniques such as removing noise artifacts, correcting color, and retouching a model to remove spots and blemishes. Popular tools such as the Healing brush can be quickly accessed using a toolbar at the top and you can swipe a slider to compare your edited image with the original.

Other tools are accessible in a panel on the right and this changes content by clicking on icons for Light, Color, Detail, Geometry, and Local Adjustments. What makes PhotoLab 7 really useful is the handy help boxes that pop up when you roll over a panel or tool icon. You can click on these for more information on using a particular tool. 

DxO PhotoLab 7: Results

PhotoLab7 continues to excel when it comes to using its AI DeepPrime tools to smooth out noise in old RAW files while revealing details that you’d not be able to see using Lightroom Classic’s tools. This will encourage you to re-visit decades-old favorites and reprocess them to make them look better than they’ve ever looked. 

Selective adjustment tools are now easier to access thanks to a dedicated local adjustments palette. Here you can use the Graduated Filter to darken over-exposed skies without under-exposing a landscape or deploy the U-point tool to sample and adjust a specific area’s colours and tones. 

The Luminosity Mask tool lets you sample a specific tonal range (such as shadows) and then selectively adjust the exposure of the sampled tones throughout the image. 

The Smart Lighting panel helps you reveal missing tonal detail, especially thanks to the Spot Weighted tool which lets you define the areas to prioritize in relation to exposure. This enables you to overcome camera setting mistakes you may have made when shooting the image on location (such as using an inappropriate metering mode).

As well as ‘fixing’ problems with color, tone, noise, and composition PhotoLab7 provides plenty of ways to produce creative looks. 17 new LUTs (Lookup Tables) provide a range of creative cinematic looks including Bleach Bypass. This LUT simulates a film-developing technique that blows out highlights and crushes the shadows to detail-free black - a look that was popular in the late 90’s to early Noughties (see the movie Pitch Black for an example).  

For a retro look, you can access a wide collection of film emulator effects by browsing through categories such as Color Negative or Color Positive film. For more creative looks it’s worth considering DxO’s newly released FilmPack 7 (review to come).

Another area in which PhotoLab7 excels is in color management. The new DxO Wide Gamut color space is a combination of the popular Adobe RGB color space and the wider Display P3 color space used on newer Apple devices. 

This ensures you can display (and therefore work with) more color information than in earlier versions of PhotoLab. If black and white is your thing then you’ll enjoy using the new 6 Channel Mixer tool to selectively lighten or darken tones in a mini conversion based on the original color in the shot. 

DxO PhotoLab 7: Verdict

If you shoot in RAW then PhotoLab 7 is well worth considering, especially due to its DeepPrime-powered denoising tool. This does an amazing job of smoothing out color and luminance noise while keeping delicate details looking nice and sharp. As well as photo fixing you can enjoy emulating a wide range of classic film stocks to give your Raw files a creative makeover. 

My only gripe is the lack of support given to iPhone Pro sourced .DNG files, but at least I have thousands of compatible Canon Raw files waiting to enjoy a trip through PhotoLab 7’s amazing DeepPrime denoising and optical module correction process.

Read more: check out our top choices for the best photo editing software.

It's a double celebration for DxO as it releases updated versions of the Nik Sharpener and HDR Efex plug-ins, the last two to be modernised from the days when the Nik Collection was owned by Google.

DxO acquired the Nik Collection from Google in 2017, just when it looked as if one of the best photo editing software suites might be lost for ever, and has spent the last six years re-authoring "millions" of lines of code, much of it undocumented, to make it fully compatible with modern hardware and systems, including Windows, MacOS and Apple Silicon, which is now used for many of the best MacBooks for photo editing, for example. The update also adds support for the best 4K monitors and beyond as high-DPI monitors become the norm.

Nik Sharpener is a two-part tool which offers a 'presharpener' for general detail enhancement and an 'output sharpener' to optimise sharpening for specific print sizes and output devices. This is actually an important technical process that's often overlooked but is key to the best print quality.

Nik Sharpener now has the latest interface design shared by the other Nik Collection plug-ins, with a "clearer, cleaner" look and the option of using DxO's local adjustments via sliders attached to control points in the traditional manner or via sliders in the sidebar.

The same update has been applied to Nik HDR Efex, another older Nik plug-in that was due some attention. HDR Efex can merge separate bracketed exposures into high dynamic range images, and it can also apply its HDR effects to single images too.

Both plug-ins get DxO's latest Control Line local adjustment tool, which works rather like a gradient mask but with an eyedropper to select the tones to be affected by the adjustment.

There are some workflow improvements for Photoshop users too, so that it's now possible to turn an image into a Photoshop Smart Object even after you've started editing it, and the ability to apply any of your last 15 Nik Collection edits with a single click.

Also, the Nik Collection now automatically detects Affinity Photo during the installation, so that you can easily launch the Nik plug-ins from this program too.

For existing Nik Collection 6 owners it's an easy decision, as Nik Collection 6.3 is a free update. Otherwise, it costs $149 / £135 (about AU$229) for new users and $79 / £69 (about AU$121) for owners upgrading from Nik Collection versions 4 or 5.

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It's true that AI AF can now recognize and track our subjects probably even before we've decided what we want them to be, and stacked sensors and high-speed processors allow massive burst speeds and ultra-fast electronic shutters. But the basics: resolution, ISO performance and dynamic range, don't seem to have moved on for years.

I would make a terrible camera salesperson. I would tell customers that the camera they've got is actually quite good, or that the new model they're considering does what the old one does but for a lot more money.

I have a drawer full of cameras, some brand new, some a few years old and the oldest is 12 years old. They are all good, or I wouldn't keep them. I have sold many newer cameras and kept many older ones.

This isn't just me saying this. Figures from DxOmark and our own historical lab testing data prove it – new cameras are not getting any better. Some of the best DSLRs and best mirrorless cameras for stills photography were made years ago.

I will concede that ISO performance has improved. Faster readouts and better processors have certainly made a difference. 

But it's dynamic range that I care about, and this has gone absolutely nowhere. Ten years ago we thought we were doing pretty well to find a camera that could hit over 12EV of dynamic range. Today we still do, and many new cameras fall short.

Much of my photography is shot in dramatic high contrast lighting, and I spend much of my time editing raw files to try to bring up shadow detail or recover blown highlight detail. And I still lose shots where one or the other has been clipped and is unrecoverable even from the raw data.

Why dynamic range is difficult for sensors

Dynamic range is limited by the photosite 'wells' on the sensor. With very high light levels these fill completely and become 'saturated'. They can't record any more highlight detail beyond that, so your highlights are clipped.

At the other end of the scale, the photosite may record such low light levels that they become indistinguishable from the random electronic noise, or 'noise floor' generated by the sensor itself. This means you get areas of solid black with no detail, or detail so faint and noisy that it looks terrible if you try to bring it out and doesn't really count as detail at all.

There doesn't seem to be any way round the basic physics of photosites, and the old-school method of merging multiple exposures HDR-style is just too clunky for everyday use.

Do video cameras already have the answer?

Many hybrid/cinema cameras have dual gain circuitry. They use one amplification circuit for one native ISO setting, and another circuit for higher gain in lower light levels. The idea is that having two different gain circuits for different ISO ranges produces better results – especially at high ISOs – than the single gain circuit in most cameras.

So what? We're talking about dynamic range, not ISO, right?

But a couple of makers have done something rather clever. Arri introduced this idea years ago in its Alexa movie cameras, but it's since been taken up by Canon with the movie-orientated C70 model. What if the camera used both gain circuits simultaneously to capture both a high-gain and low-gain image and then merged them into a single image with wider dynamic range?

Canon calls this a 'DGO' (Dual Gain Output) sensor and reckons it gets an expanded dynamic range of 16+ stops. It all happens in camera, with no penalties in processing speed or frame rates.

Brilliant. So if this can be done in a movie camera in real-time, why don't we get this in stills cameras? 

It seems to me that this is not just technically possible, but probably very easy to do in any camera with dual-gain circuitry. But I'm not sure there's enough interest from camera makers in stills photography for even a modest technical advance like this.

And if this is how it's going to be, I suspect there will be a lot of photographers out there who, like me, will continue to use 10-year-old cameras alongside new ones. Or just not buy new ones.

More opinion pieces by Rod Lawton:

• My 12 best and worst bits of camera gear ever
• Don't throw money at the 'best' lenses. Get the right ones instead
• I can't understand how taking photos got so complicated!
• I finally accepted camera metering systems are past their use-by-date
• I'm told the optical viewfinder is dead. We did that. It's our fault

Micro Four Thirds sensors, as used in the Olympus/OM System and Panasonic Lumix G cameras, are about half the size, in area, of APS-C which is, in turn, half the size of full frame. The Micro four Thirds sensor therefore has about one-quarter the area of a full frame sensor. This brings a clear theoretical shortfall in noise control, dynamic range and resolution. It's all down to the smaller sensor area, smaller photosites and generally lower resolution. 

But the mistake made by so many is to assume that this immediately plunges the whole MFT setup below some threshold of acceptable quality, whatever that might be. In fact, it's just a question of degree, and not always as simple as it first appears. 

Micro Four Thirds cameras are often among the best cameras for beginners, the best cameras for enthusiasts and even the best cameras for professionals. Depending on what you shoot, any shortfall in image quality might not matter, but size, weight, cost and stabilization could prove crucial.

I approach this from the perspective of someone who uses both MFT cameras and full frame, and sometimes APS-C and medium format too. I don't have any axe to grind, I don't belong to any brand 'tribes', I just choose cameras for their capabilities and their results. Here's my take on the traditional MFT arguments.

1. Noise
It's true that MFT sensors produce more noise at high ISOs and in very deep shadow areas recovered during raw processing. It's not a lot more. I've shot handheld night scenes at ISO 6400 with modern MFT cameras and got unexpectedly good results. However, I will say that this depends on your raw processor. Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom will make Olympus .ORF files look a lot noisier than the in-camera JPEGs or images processed by Capture One or DxO. Don't base your opinions of MFT image quality based on editing raw files in Lightroom.

2. Resolution
Even the best OlympusOM System cameras like the OM-1 and OM-5 still top out at 20 megapixels, though Panasonic has used a new 25MP sensor in the Lumix GH6, which may or may not find its way into future MFT models. So MFT cameras are a few megapixels down on the 24MP sensors used in many of the best full frame cameras. Is that a significant difference? I don't think it is, especially since for my work I usually end up downsampling 20MP files for web use anyway. If you need more resolution for big prints, it's unlikely even a 24MP full frame camera will make much difference to you, and maybe you should be looking at 40-60MP instead.

3. Dynamic range
In principle, the smaller photosites of MFT sensors should deliver lower dynamic range. In fact, Digital Camera World's lab tests reveal time and time again that the dynamic range is comparable to that of APS-C and full frame cameras. No, we don't know why either.

4. Depth of field
It's perfectly true that the smaller MFT format cannot recreate the shallow depth of field of larger-format cameras. This is because it uses shorter focal lengths to achieve the same angles of view, and shorter focal lengths increase depth of field. A 50mm equivalent (25mm actual) f/1.2 lens on MFT is roughly equivalent in depth of field terms to an f/1.8 on APS-C or f/2.5 on full frame. It is harder to get shallow depth of field. On the other hand, it's much easier to get deep depth of field even with fairly wide apertures, and for street/travel/landscape photographers that could actually prove a lot more useful.

It's also important to realize some of the things MFT is very good at:

5. Price
MFT cameras are not in themselves especially cheap, but the lenses are. Even Pro M.Zuiko and Lumix G lenses are around half the price of equivalents in larger formats. And these are very good lenses. I would put any of my M.Zuiko Pro lenses up against larger format pro equivalents and fully expect the same aberration control and edge to edge sharpness – or better.

6. Weight and balance
Some people don't mind massive, heavy lenses. I don't mind them myself if they're attached to massive, heavy cameras. With the demise of DSLRs, however, that rarely happens. Mirrorless lenses are as big as ever, maybe bigger, but mirrorless cameras are smaller, creating an imbalance I don't like. For me, the combination of MFT bodies and lenses usually gives a better balance. Not only that, like-for-like MFT systems are a lot lighter and more compact than full frame equivalents.

7. Lenses
There are some spectacularly good, spectacularly small and spectacularly useful MFT lenses. One of my favorites is the M.Zuiko 8-25mm f/4 Pro (16-50mm equivalent), one of only a handful of ultra-wide-standard walkaround lenses on the market. Another is the remarkable Laowa 6mm f/2 (12mm equivalent). How I'd love to get an optically perfect 12mm f/2 for my full frame cameras and at this price! I also have an M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/4 Pro (80-300mm equivalent) that's shorter than the length of my hand and still sharp wide open at full stretch.

8. Stabilization
The stabilization in the latest Lumix G cameras is excellent, while the stabilization in OM System cameras verges on the uncanny. I've not used an APS-C or a full-frame IBIS system that comes close. 

The reason I rate my MFT gear so highly ALONGSIDE (not instead of) my full frame gear is that it will get me a sharp, high-quality shot every time, in any light. It's my ultimate 'banker' system for when I need to be certain of getting the shot when there's often no time to fuss over camera settings, depth of field and focus modes.

In short, I think MFT systems should be judged by what they achieve in the real world, not according to idealized ivory-tower notions of technical quality. 

• Best Micro Four Thirds cameras
• The best Micro Four Thirds lenses

The Honor 90 launches in the wake of a string of solid camera phones from the once-Huawei brand. Specifically, over the last couple of years, the flagship Magic 4 Pro and Magic 5 Pro performed very well in our reviews, while the midrange Honor 70 packed strong performance for the price. 

For 2023, Honor's skipping the Honor 80 and jumping straight to the Honor 90, a 200MP camera phone with a DxOmark best-in-class-rated screen, and the first phone we've tested to seemingly take design inspiration from a napkin – at least in its Diamond Silver color option.

Launching in the UK and across Europe, the Honor 90 starts at £449 (around $570), making it one of the lowest-cost options around to sport Samsung's 200MP ISOCELL HP3 sensor. 

Measuring 1/1.4-inch, it's larger than most sensors in the phone's price bracket – and that high pixel count is matched with a wide f/1.9 aperture and PDAF.

As for the secondary cameras, the 12MP auto-focusing ultra-wide is also a macro camera, and there's a 2MP depth camera. Also of note: a 50MP front camera and Honor's introducing a new "Ultra-Clear Portrait Mode".

As for what makes the Honor 90 DxOmark-winning, the 6.7-inch quad-curved screen is a 1.07 billion color display with 100% DCI-P3 coverage. For anyone who's concerned about eye fatigue, Honor's leading the charge with 3840Hz Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Dimming, and the screen's also smooth with a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate.

Honor's also loading the phone up with all the right certifications, from TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free, to HDR10+, as well as Amazon Prime Video HDR and Netflix HDR Certification – excellent for streaming fans.

While we got our hands on the Diamond Silver version, which has a pattern on the back that looks like nothing but a dinner napkin to us, you can also pick it up in Emerald Green, Midnight Black, and Peacock Blue.

For the price, the Honor 90 looks rich with its curved glass back (despite our napkin quip), and while its frame is plastic, the phone looks and feels premium.

As for the Honor 90's internals, a midrange Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated Edition keeps things chugging, and the phone runs Android with MagicOS 7.1, Honor's own UI, which is very similar to Huawei's EMUI. Unlike Huawei phones, though, Honor devices run with full access to the Google Play Store, so you can expect excellent app support.

While the Honor 90 misses out on wireless charging, it does pack a large 5000mAh battery and fast 66W charging, as well as loads of storage and RAM, starting at 256GB/8GB for £449, and capping out at 512GB/8GB for £499.

If you like the look of the Honor 90, you can order it right now in the UK and across Europe.

Photo editing just got a whole lot easier with the launch of the DxO Nik Collection 6, bringing with it a whole host of new features and updates. 

While most other software updates are making use of AI, DxO's Nik Collection keeps things simple and brings updates to the slick new user interfaces for several of its plug-ins. 

• See our picks of the best photo editing software

Never heard of the Nik Collection? It's been around for years – and is essentially a series of plugins that you can install on your computer (Mac or Windows) that offer advanced editing tools to be used either standalone or integrated with your own primary editing software of choice. It is compatible with Lightroom, Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Capture One, or DxO's own PhotoLab 6 RAW editing software and works with the non-destructive workflow of those applications.

The popular suite includes eight separate plug-ins that each have a different purpose, these are: Nik Color Efex, Nik Silver Efex, Nik Analog Efex, Nik Viveza, Nik Dfine, Nik Sharpener, Nik HDR Efex, and Nik Perspective. 

Nik Collection 6 offers some pretty impressive new features, including the ability to apply any of your last 15 edits to a new image with a single click. New Control Selectivity sliders have been added to elevate specific areas of your image, and the new Control Lines tool incorporates linear gradient filters into your workflow. 

With the new collection, you can now also search for presets within all plugins (excluding Nik Dfine), and rename local adjustments while saving them as part of presets, making it easy to apply quick changes to your gallery. The Nik Perspective plug-in has a new ReShape tool, and the Nik Color Efex has been equipped with a newly added Hue/Saturation/Luminance slider.

The Nik Dfine preset has been rebuilt from the ground up, in what the company describes as a "Complete visual overhaul" for a refined editing experience. It's also been given an upgraded user interface (along with Nik Sharpener and Nik HDR Efex) and the ability to save denoising profiles and return to them later. 

In terms of integration improvements, the Nik Collection 6 will auto-detect the presence of Affinity Photo during software installation. Users of newer Macs will appreciate that it now supports Apple Silicon natively. 

Want to try it out? You can take the Nik Collection 6 for a spin with the  30-day free trial of the full unlimited version, with no payment options required to test it out, and it can also be installed and reverted back to an existing version of Nik Collection after testing – now that's confidence! There are also helpful onboarding tutorials included with the trial to show you how to navigate the plugins and user interfaces. Head to the DxO website for details. 

• You might also be interested in the best photo editing tools and accessories, and require one of the best computers for photo editing . If Nik has piqued your interest, check our review of the DxO Nik Collection 4 plug-in.

The Huawei P60 Pro has been announced outside China for a punchy price of £1,199 (approximately $1,500), and it's the latest phone to take the DxOMark top spot for its camera performance. Far from the first phone to win gold from DxOMark in 2023, it bests past winners like the Honor Magic 5 Pro and Oppo Find X6 Pro. 

The P60 Pro brings back the variable aperture main camera we saw on the Mate 50 Pro, upgrading the computational photography to take instant night mode photos. 

Going further still, Huawei's also introduced a first-of-its-kind periscope system that packs the most versatile telephoto camera we've ever used on a mobile. With a near focus distance of just 10cm matched with an optical reach of 90mm (3.5x zoom equivalent), it's an incredible macro photography tool, even if it isn't as far-reaching as the Galaxy S23 Ultra's 10x telephoto.

Going into a bit more detail, we should start with specs, and the main camera combines a 48MP sensor with a wide 25mm focal length and a variable aperture. This starts at a super-wide f/1.4, climbing all the way to f/4. That makes the P60 Pro, arguably, the most powerful camera phone around for long-exposure photography and possibly even lowlight capture.

On the subject of aperture, the Huawei P60 Pro's telephoto camera has the widest lens of any periscope camera we've seen on a smartphone, combining a fixed f/2.1 aperture with a 90mm focal length, and a 48MP resolution. With both a stabilized lens and a shifting sensor, we've been floored by how well the P60 Pro holds zoomed-in scenes together, turning off-the-cuff handheld shots into crisp stills, even in middling light. 

The least impressive camera around the back of the Huawei P60 Pro is its 13MP ultra-wide, which packs autofocus and an f/2.2 lens. Despite missing out on new fandangle party tricks like the primary and telephoto, it still captures super-close-up shots as near as 4cm for a more fisheye-like style of macro photography.

It isn't just hardware that helps the Huawei P60 Pro's camera edge ahead of the competition. The phone's software also takes computational photography to another level. Huawei's figured out a way to instantly bracket shots, and create night mode-grade photos without the long-exposure waiting we've come to expect from competitors like Apple's iPhone, Samsung's Galaxy and Google's Pixel lines.

We're guessing it's the same super-bracketing computational magic that helps the periscope camera capture crisp snaps in not-ideal conditions, but can't say for sure. You can see some examples of the periscope camera's macro performance below.

We can't cover Huawei without caveating that the firm's phones are hamstrung by sanctions. The P60 Pro doesn't support any Google apps, and it also misses out on 5G despite its sky-high price. 

As a photography showcase, though, the Huawei P60 Pro is a superb demonstration of exactly what's possible when a company invests big in camera R&D.

After the excellent Xiaomi 13 Ultra launched just a few weeks prior, which packs a massive 1-inch sensor and a two-stage variable aperture as well as a suite of other cameras, Chinese smartphones are clearly where it's at from a camera phone point of view. In fact, we'd go so far as to say the 13 Ultra and P60 Pro are the best camera phones we've ever tested.

If you're reading this in the UK, though, while the Xiaomi 13 Ultra won't be hitting British shores, Huawei's flagship will. So are you prepared to sacrifice on 5G and Google apps in order to get the best camera phone available where you live? That's a question only you can answer.

Huawei's Google-free experience might have limited appeal outside China, but there are still plenty of amazing camera phones to choose from, find out more in our guides to the best camera phone and the best Android phone.

DxO PureRAW 3 does something rather clever. Like previous versions, it’s effectively a batch processing tool for raw files that applies DxO’s automatic lens corrections and noise reduction technologies to produce a new raw file in the DNG format that has all the extended dynamic range, color data and editability of regular raw files, but fully corrected and of a much higher quality.

If you use Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, you may not be aware that the raw processing is not the best. Adobe’s raw engine does a good job with color profiles, AI masking, tonal adjustments, and basic lens corrections, but it’s not the best noise reduction software. Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop may be amongst the best photo editing software applications you can get, but they are not perfect. (See our Lightroom vs Photoshop comparison.)

But this is PureRAW 3’s specialty. Its lens correction profiles tackle global lens sharpness issues but also edge softness, all via DxO’s correction profiles developed in-house for tens of thousands of camera-lens combinations. And with DeepPRIME XD it uses AI-powered noise reduction and detail enhancement to produce truly transformative results. The worse the original raw file, the more dramatic the transformation.

There are no editing tools. For that, you can use your regular software – Lightroom, for example. PureRAW 3 is simply a batch-processing tool for producing higher-quality raw files. DxO claims DeepPRIME XD can produce up to 2.5 stops improvement in noise control, and everything we’ve seen makes that look like a pretty conservative claim.

Key features

DxO PureRAW 3 works in a very simple way. You feed it a batch of raw files and it processes them into high-quality Linear DNG files which behave like regular raw files in your software, but with the DxO’s corrections applied.

You can use PureRAW 3 as a standalone program, adding the files or folders you want to process, launch it directly by right-clicking files in Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder, or run it from within Lightroom, where the PureRAW 3 plug-in will add a processed version of your file(s) to your catalog in a subfolder alongside your original.

The principle is the same as previous versions, but PureRAW 3 adds many new features and capabilities.

The first and most important is DeepPRIME XD (eXtreme Detail) which uses AI and a larger neural network to produce DxO’s best-yet noise reduction and detail enhancement. And with the release of this version, DeepPRIME XD now works with Fujifilm X-Trans sensors and their non-standard color filter layout.

PureRAW 3 now offers queued batch processing with the ability to move images within the queue while processing is being carried out and different processing for different batches. 

There are new crop options to reflect the original aspect ratio, the ‘maximum rectangle’ (largest crop), or full sensor area together with blank distorted areas around the edges where lens corrections have been applied – useful perhaps if you want to use content-aware fill tools.

You don’t have to output DNG files. PureRAW 3 can also generate ready-to-share corrected JPEG images and now, in version 3, TIFF files. TIFF export will give you better quality for editing without going the raw/DNG route.

Design and interface

DxO has added some new features to the PureRAW 3 interface, but it remains pretty much as simple to use as it was before. You can just start it up, drag a folder full of images onto its window (‘Lightbox’), click the ‘Process Now’ button, choose your output settings, and then leave PureRAW to get on with the processing while you do other stuff.

There’s more choice in the processing settings than before, but they are still pretty straightforward. You can now choose between JPEG, TIFF, and DNG (raw) output files, and you don’t have to accept all of DxO’s automatic corrections – you can disable those you don’t need.

Launching PureRAW 3 by right-clicking files or from within Lightroom is a little different – you still get the same choice of output settings.

Performance

There are two aspects to PureRAW 3’s performance; speed and image quality. If you use the DeepPRIME processing, each image can take a minute or more to process. If you don’t use DeepPRIME the processing is a lot quicker and you still get DxO’s excellent lens corrections.

The image quality is pretty remarkable, especially if you compare DxO’s DNGs with raw files side by side in Lightroom. With low-ISO images shot on good cameras with good lenses, the difference is small but visible nonetheless, and with higher ISOs or worse/older camera gear, the quality gap widens considerably. Often it hardly looks like the same sensor or the same lens.

PureRAW 3 does have a couple of quirks and limitations. It doesn’t support all camera-lens combinations, and our early version didn’t have a correction profile for the new-ish Sony FE 20-70mm f/4 G lens. Also, when you create DNG files, PureRAW does apply sharpening, so you have to remember to disable that in your raw editor later, or you will be sharpening images twice.

Perhaps the biggest drawback is the size of PureRAW’s DNG raw files, which are 2-3 times larger than the raw files they come from. That’s unavoidable because they are ‘demosaiced’ raw files where each pixel has full RGB color data, not the mosaic of red, green, and blue pixels in regular raw files.

Verdict

PureRAW 3 isn’t just for pixel-peepers. The improvements it offers in image quality are clearly apparent, especially with older or cheaper camera gear and especially at higher ISO settings. It’s ideal for anyone who wants to stick with their regular photo editing software but wants better-quality raw files to work from. It’s especially interesting as a Lightroom add-on, as it delivers all the advantages of raw but with a quantum leap in quality.

PureRAW 3 might not look cheap for what is essentially a batch processing and optimizing tool, but it’s a fraction of the price of upgraded camera gear and better lenses.

DxO has released PhotoLab 6.1, a free update that includes a number of feature enhancements aimed at improving color control, its image asset management and interface.

DxO PhotoLab is one of the best photo editors on the market, offering excellent raw processing and lens corrections, powerful local adjustments, and, in the Elite edition, its unrivaled DeepPRIME XD noise reduction and detail enhancement process.

Version 6 brought a new DxO Wide Gamut working space, and the 6.1 update adds a slider to the soft proofing palette and export window that protects saturated colors. Precise color control and management are one of DxO’s specialties.

PhotoLab’s PhotoLibrary now allows color tags to be applied when browsing and culling images in full-screen mode, and keyword searching has been extended to include the full keyword hierarchy, not just the keyword ‘children’. The filtering options are now in a more logical order.

Interface-wise, the ReTouch tool introduced in version 6 has been improved to make shape outlines more visible and to preserve them if mask visibility is switched on and off. 

1,701 new DxO Optics Modules

PhotoLab 6.1 brings relatively minor updates, but the bigger news is that DxO has introduced no fewer than 1,701 new Optics Modules, which are generated for individual camera and lens pairings, and go further than other lens correction profiles by compensating for edge softness to give uniform detail across the frame. 

DxO also claims its correction profiles don’t crop images in the way that some others do, and that it reveals up to 10% more image area to make sure you get the lens angle of view you paid for! It's particularly proud of the impact it can have on 'consumer' lenses like the new Canon RF 15-30mm which, it says, can perform like a pro lens after its corrections.

Three new cameras are supported: 

● Fujifilm X-H2
● Nikon D100
● Sony FX30

There’s also support for a range of new lenses – each optimized for specific camera and lens combinations. The list includes:

● Canon RF 15-30mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM
● Fujifilm GF 20-35mmF4 R WR
● Fujifilm XF 18-120mm F4 LM PZ WR
● Fujifilm XF 30mm F2.8 R LM WR
● HD Pentax- DA* 16-50mm F2.8 ED PLM AW
● M.Zuiko Digital ED 150-400 F4.5 TC1.25x IS PRO with TC x1.4 Zuiko
● M.Zuiko Digital ED 150-400 F4.5 TC1.25x IS PRO with TC x2.0 Zuiko
● Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8
● Tamron 20-40mm F2.8 Di III VXD
● Tamron 50-400mm F4.5-6.3 Di III VC VXD
● Tamron 70-300mm F4.5–6.3 Di III RXD
● Tamron 150-500mm F5-6.7 Di III VC VXD
● Zeiss Milvus 15mm F2.8 ZE
● Zeiss Milvus 15mm F2.8 ZF.2
● Zeiss Milvus 18mm F2.8 ZE
● Zeiss Milvus 18mm F2.8 ZF.2
● Zeiss Milvus 135mm F2 ZE
● Zeiss Milvus 135mm F2 ZF.2

DxO's 30% Holiday Magic offer

DxO is offering a 30% discount if you buy two or more products between now and the end of December 2022. This applies to both new purchases and upgrades, and while you need to buy two products to qualify, there is no upper limit – the 30% discount will still apply.

DxO PhotoLab 6.1 is available now, and you can see the current pricing below – but remember, if you buy a second product you will quality for a 30% discount on your purchase at the checkout.

Our article about Lightroom’s raw processing upset some people. It described Lightroom’s default raw image file settings, which do produce more noise than rivals Capture One and DxO PhotoLab.

A couple of people pointed out (yelled) that you could fix this by changing Lightroom Classic’s sharpening and noise reduction settings – and so you can. Whether this will get you to the same level as Capture One or PhotoLab is a moot point, but it can certainly get you closer.

Lightroom is one of the best photo editing software applications on the market, but it's not without its faults. And who wants to have to edit sharpening and noise reduction settings for every image?

• Lightroom Classic vs Lightroom CC – what's the difference?

So here’s a hack for Lightroom Classic that changes its default processing for your camera to the settings you prefer, then applies that automatically to new images you import. It's also available as a quick fix for ones you’ve already edited.

The technique comes in two parts. The first is making a custom preset, the second is making it the default for that camera.

1. Create a new default Lightroom preset

I shoot with a Panasonic Lumix G9 a lot of the time, and Lightroom’s default sharpening for this camera is pretty aggressive. This produces a lot of noise which is difficult to dial out with the noise reduction sliders without being equally aggressive here too, which produces a very obvious ‘processed’ look.

Here are the default settings:

Sharpening
Amount: 40
Radius: 1.0
Detail: 25
Masking: 0

Noise reduction
Luminance: 0
Detail: -
Contrast: -

There are countless permutations to play with, but here are some settings which I think give a better default look, with less detail sharpening and hence less noise that needs fixing.

Sharpening
Amount: 60 (yes, more!)
Radius: 1.0
Detail: 0 (this is where the noise was coming from)
Masking: 0

Noise reduction
Luminance: 20
Detail: 50
Contrast: 0

That done, I need to save it as a preset, making sure the preset includes ONLY the sharpening and noise reduction settings and no others. I’ll call it ‘Lumix G9 default detail’.

2. Set this as the default for that camera

For this you need to (1) open the Lightroom preferences and (2) select the Presets tab. Now (3) open the ‘Camera’ drop down and select your camera. It make take a few moments for this to populate, but if you’ve just been working on an image from that camera it should show it automatically.

The ‘Default’ menu underneath will initially show ‘Adobe Default’, but you need to (4) open this, select ‘Preset’ instead and (5) select your new preset from the pop-up menu which appears. Now (6) click the ‘Update Default’ button to add your new default to the list on the right.

How do Lightroom defaults work?

Any new Raw image you import from that camera will now have your preset’s sharpening and noise reduction settings applied. These will also be among your presets in Develop mode and, because the preset only includes sharpening and noise reduction settings, it won’t override any of your other edits for images you've already imported and worked on.

This method can’t take into account different ISO settings and noise reduction needs, and any preset will be a compromise. But if you have been finding your camera’s images look disappointingly noisy, it might be Lightroom’s fault, not your camera’s – and this is a way to fix it, or at least give yourself a much better starting point.

Love using Lightroom? Learn how to save hours of editing time with speedy presets and tame bright skies with the graduated filters.

Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom use the same raw processing engine, so you won’t see any difference in the results whichever one you use. Adobe Camera Raw (i.e. Lightroom too) is the most convenient, most powerful, and most versatile raw processor around. And it’s often the worst (if you ask me)!

That may be going a bit far, admittedly, but if we put it up against the two other serious raw processing rivals – DxO PhotoLab and Capture One – it’s definitely the worst of the three and doesn’t always stack up well against the camera JPEGs.

• In this comparison, the camera JPEGs were at the default camera settings, the Lightroom rendition was at Lightroom's default NR/sharpening setting, and the Capture One version was at Capture One's default settings. The DxO version was created using DeepPRIME XD, to show what RAW files are capable of. 

Adobe Lightroom is one of the best photo editing software applications on the market, not to mention one of the best photo organizers, we won't deny that, but it is most definitely not perfect.

Lots of other photo editors will process raw files too, with varying degrees of quality, and it seems reasonable to imagine that Adobe Lightroom will be as good as or better than most of them. But up against DxO PhotoLab and Capture One, it’s just not as good at the basics.

Lightroom uses the same raw processing engine as Adobe Camera Raw, and the problem for both is noise control and sharpening – and balancing both to give satisfying detail rendition. Normally you might expect to trade off some sharpness to get less noise or accept a little more noise to get more sharpness. The trouble with Adobe Camera Raw is that it starts off so noisy, you’ve got much less room for maneuver. 

You can reduce the noise and accept less sharpness, or increase the sharpness and worsen the noise again. You can chase your tail trying to play one off against the other and make no real progress at all.

Adobe Camera Raw’s noticeably ‘gritty’ look can give a very distorted view of your camera’s performance. You can see this in the ISO 1600 comparison at the top of this article. The Lightroom version has good detail but way more noise than the others, and you're not always going to be able to get very close to what they achieve with Lightroom's noise reduction tools either.

Note that these are 200% enlargements of much larger photos. 

The EOS 800D is a few years old, but many people are still using cameras of this age. Newer cameras are better, but Lightroom still shows the same characteristics – noticeably increased textured noise at lower ISO settings and poor noise/sharpness balancing at higher ISOs. A better camera will simply make it less obvious.

Here's another comparison that really brings this home. Shot at ISO 25,600, it's right at the outer limits of the EOS 800D's capabilities but, even so, the camera JPEG is actually not too bad and the Capture One version does a good job of noise control while keeping the detail crisp. Lightroom's version is painful – it clearly has no idea what's going on by this point.

The DxO version is a bit of a cheat because we used DxO's DeepPRIME process which takes a little longer – but this does illustrate the huge gulf between what this camera is capable of delivering (with help) and Adobe's frankly horrible attempt.

You might assume that you’ll always get the best quality with raw and not bother checking your JPEGs. But if you do, you might find that the camera is actually doing a much better job of rendering detail without noise than Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw.

This can be especially noticeable with high ISO Canon images, which we’ve used for our comparisons. You might decide not to use your EOS past ISO 1600, say, based on what the raw files look like in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. But you might change your mind completely when you see how they look in Capture One, DxO PhotoLab or even when you look again at the camera JPEGs.

Adobe’s raw processing may be by far the most widely used on the market, but it’s definitely not the best. With some camera brands and models, and when shooting at low ISOs, you may not see much difference, but with others, you will see a lot. And it’s not just a case of adjusting the noise reduction and sharpening sliders. That will help, but only to a degree.

We recently reported on a survey that suggested Lightroom is the most popular editing software. It is frustrating that the world’s most popular/convenient raw processing software should be such a middling performer, but most people shoot raw to get the best possible quality, and Adobe Camera Raw just doesn’t reliably deliver it.

It’s no surprise that the most popular photo editing software among photographers is the one almost everyone has heard of – Adobe Lightroom. For most photographers, it offers all the editing features you could ever need, it’s easy to use and can be bought either on its own or part of a creative cloud package.

In a recent survey, Shotkit asked 657 photographers about their photo editing software. 37% of the photographers asked were professionals while 63% were amateurs but regardless, Adobe Lightroom was still the most popular software, with an enormous 58% of photographers using it. 

Although most people stick with Lightroom because of its easy-to-use advanced features which now include several AI-powered tools, people also love the fact you can quickly open images from Lightroom in Photoshop, users can save their own presets but also because change is scary! The downside to Lightroom is that it’s a subscription-only software, and even though prices start at less than $10/£10 a month, some people don’t want the commitment of paying monthly. 

For those photographers that don’t use Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop is the next best thing with 24% of the votes. Photoshop is a much more in-depth editing suite than Lightroom and offers almost all the same features and more. While Lightroom is more for processing and organizing images, Photoshop is perfect for really diving in with your creativity as you can manipulate, enhance and change images a lot more. It's also much easier to use if you want to recolor your background, create a fantastical storm in a teacup or a similarly out-of-this-world image or even just remove a background entirely.

Leading behind is Luminar with 17%, Phase One’s Capture One software is in fourth place with 12% while Adobe appears once at number five with 9.9% opting to use Adobe Camera Raw.

Niche editing software such as Snapseed, DxO PhotoLab, Google Photos and Exposure all appear on the list, but only 1-2% of photographers opt to use them. 

Interestingly, if Lightroom was no longer an option, rather than jumping ship to Photoshop, many photographers would opt for Capture One and we can only imagine it’s because of the similar layout and ability to edit batches of images in one go. 

Check out these 100 Photoshop editing tips or discover the best free Photoshop plugins that'll help streamline your process.

My team of reviewers and I have played with all of the major photo editing software suites from the likes of Adobe, Affinity, DxO, and more. So, whether you’re a beginner who’s only ever heard of Photoshop, a student who’s looking for the cheapest software solution or a professional photographer who simply wants the best photo editing software money can buy, my guide has got you covered.

The best photo editing software for you isn’t necessarily the most expensive or feature-rich option. If you’re a prolific photographer, you may opt for a batch-editing program, like Adobe Lightroom Classic or Capture One. If you require the best image quality possible, you’ll want to invest in the most powerful Raw image processors, such as DxO PhotoLab. And if you spend your time retouching or compositing imagery, then traditional layer-based editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop are the way to go.

And that’s before you consider the emergence of AI-powered editing software such as Radiant Photo 2, which seeks to take the legwork out of laborious edits, or Skylum Luminar Neo, which can convincingly replace a sky at the click of a button. If you’re new to the best photo editing software, all of this can sound a bit daunting. Thankfully, there are beginner-friendly options, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, too.

Of course, price has always been a bugbear with image-editing software, but all budgets are catered for nowadays, with many companies opting for subscription-based packages that allow you to split the cost. But if you don’t want to have to commit to yet another subscription service, examples such as ON1 Photo RAW still allow you to pay outright. Many options also offer free trials so you can find out firsthand if a particular package is the right fit, and in the case of RawTherapee and Affinity the software itself is entirely free.

The Quick List

Best photo editing software in 2026

Best photo editing software overall

If you’re a prolific image editor, like me, then batch editing will dramatically reduce the time you spend in front of your computer. And in my opinion, batch editing doesn’t get much better on Mac than Lightroom Classic. Unlike Photoshop – which requires you to tackle each image more or less separately – Adobe Lightroom Classic allows you to speedily organize, edit, and print in batches. And since it’s not layer-based, it presents a more streamlined editing experience overall.

Adobe offers two versions of Lightroom: Lightroom Classic and Lightroom. Classic is the desktop-centric version (the other being cloud-centric), which means original files are stored locally on your computer, an external hard drive, or a local server. For this reason, Lightroom Classic is undoubtedly my recommendation for those working with big, high-resolution files, terabytes of data, or anyone who doesn’t have regular access to reliable and/or fast Internet.

Lightroom Classic’s file management workflow will prove confusing for newcomers, but editing images is much more intuitive than Photoshop – think a much more in-depth Camera Raw. And now, with access to a range of AI-powered tools, including state–of-the-art masking, object removal, and extremely competent denoising, I find myself having to dip into Photoshop less and less.

Another boon for Lightroom Classic is that its status as the industry standard makes it a great platform for a huge variety of plug-ins, such as DxO Nik Collection 8 and Skylum Luminar Neo.

Read our full Adobe Lightroom Classic review.

Best photo editing software for beginners

Photoshop Elements has long felt archaic when stacked alongside its competitors and despite the 2026 edition’s headline-grabbing GenAI features, it can still feel like a stick in the mud at times. A lacklustre RAW offering certainly doesn’t help, with no 16-bit support, and while basic tools are par for the course, there simply isn’t the headroom that Elements’ Advanced mode would suggest.

Much has been said about last year’s version moving from a perpetual license to a three-year license, but if you’re serious about advancing as a photographer, Photoshop Elements 2026 will likely run its course long before the end. Still, if you’re a novice photographer who is happy dabbling around with photo editing or a casual photographer who simply wants to enhance family photos and holiday snaps, Photoshop Elements is still a solid point of entry.

It’s also the complete package, thanks to its dedicated photo Organizer. Although, yet again, RAW file compatibility comes up short by not delivering full-size image previews. GenAI is certainly an exciting addition for casuals; just be aware that you only get 25 AI credits per month.

Where Elements really comes into its own is as a full creative package. If you’re a beginner content creator who takes photos and shoots video, you can purchase a money-saving bundle that also comes with Adobe Premiere Elements 2026. Together, Adobe’s entry-level editors are a more tempting prospect.

Read our full Adobe Photoshop Elements 2026 review.

Best Photoshop alternative

Affinity’s first release under the Canva banner has brought with it a fresh new look and a free-for-everyone model. That’s right, you can access the best Photoshop alternative entirely for free. Well, I say entirely, some AI tools are hidden behind a paywall. However, these are existing Canva AI tools that require a Canva subscription, so they’re an indirect purchase, and worry not, Affinity alone is more than powerful enough for most creatives.

What you’re getting for your (lack of) money is the same fully-fledged, layer-based Photoshop-alike the photography industry has come to know and love, and more, much more. You see, Affinity now combines Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher in a single application that can handle photo editing, vector design, and page layout combined. I was a little worried that this all-in-one ethos would feel a little cluttered and difficult to navigate, but tabs on the top toolbar for ‘Vector’, ‘Pixel’ (photo editing), and ‘Layout’ meant that I had no problem staying in my lane.

While Affinity remains a very faithful alternative to Photoshop’s tried-and-tested workflow, it isn’t for everyone. If you like to work in layers and on one image at a time, it’s fantastic, but if you’re searching for software that will enable you to organize your library and power through batch edits, this isn’t it. It doesn’t hold your hand, either, meaning it isn’t the most accessible software for beginners.

Ultimately, I wish I had access to this caliber of free software when I was studying photography at college. If you’re looking for a free alternative to Photoshop, Affinity is all that and more. If you don’t need (or want) to pay for Canva’s AI tools, you’re left with an old-school, layer-based editor that will either be right up your alley or not your cup of tea. In the saturated photo editing software market, that’s no bad thing.

Read the full Affinity review.

Best photo editing software for RAW processing

DxO’s photo-editing flagship is a high-quality image processor in its purest form. If you’re looking for layer-based or batch-editing software or something simple, this isn’t it. If your goal is to eke out the very best from your RAW image files then PhotoLab 9’s bespoke lens-correction profiles and DeepPRIME noise-reduction tech are sure to impress.

AI masking is a boon for those who like precise control over their edits but want to speed up the process and the ability to feather edges is a neat level of control. However, the masking itself isn’t quite up to the standard of Adobe and Capture One.

PhotoLab 9 also allows you to save files as partially processed High-Fidelity DNG files. These files aren’t only smaller, but can be opened and edited in other programs, just like a RAW file. This means you can take advantage of DxO’s coveted lens corrections and noise-reduction tech, but edit your images in a different program (should you wish).

Basic image organizing can be performed via the in-built image organizer, but if you’re used to Lightroom’s catalogs or other more advanced systems, you’ll find it lacking. Where you won’t find it lacking is in the processing department. DxO’s lens corrections are the best in the business and while DeepPRIME XD3 isn’t much different to its previous iteration, it’s still as impressive as ever and is now compatible with Bayer and Fujifilm X-Trans sensors.

For more details read our DxO PhotoLab 9 review.

Best Lightroom alternative

Capture One is a complete alternative to Lightroom Classic in that there’s very little it can’t do that the Adobe software can, and vice versa. As such, it’s become a popular alternative for serious enthusiasts and professional creatives alike, and a firm favorite among studio professionals, thanks to its unrivalled tethering workflow.

Despite the similarities to Lightroom, there are no modules. Everything is controlled via a single window, making its extensive feature set easily accessible. And while this information-heavy interface may prove daunting for beginners, that’s not Capture One’s demographic.

The software’s image organizing, searching, and filtering tools are all dead ringers for Lightroom Classic’s, but I’m a fan of Capture One’s ‘managed’ approach, where images can be imported into the catalog and ring-fenced against accidental moving or deletion.

Capture One really does excel as a RAW-image processor, and as Digital Camera World’s resident APS-C and Micro Four Thirds user, Rod Lawton, mentions in his review: “it’s much ‘kinder’ to smaller-sensor APS-C or Micro Four Thirds cameras than Adobe Camera Raw”. And I, personally, rate Capture One’s color-editing tools as some of the best in the biz.

While the software does feature some impressive AI masking and retouching tools, it doesn’t currently offer AI noise reduction, like Lightroom’s excellent AI Denoise, nor does it feature mod cons like generative object removal. It’s also more expensive than Adobe’s single-app Lightroom plan, and doesn’t boast the value of Adobe’s Photography Plan, which also includes Photoshop. However, Capture One’s pricing structure does offer the flexibility of a subscription or perpetual license.

Capture One is the best Lightroom alternative on the market. If you don’t need Adobe’s creative ecosystem and Lightroom Classic’s excellent AI Denoise, it’s definitely worth trying. If you’re a studio professional who uses tethering, it’s a no-brainer.

Read the full Capture One Pro review.

Best creative photo editing software

Ask the person on the street to name a piece of photo editing software, and they’ll undoubtedly say “Photoshop.” I’ve sunk more hours into Adobe Photoshop over the years than the rest of this list put together, and that’s because it’s the OG – the program by which all photo editing software is judged.

Nowadays, its layer-based architecture can feel a little archaic for standard photo edits in comparison to slicker applications such as Lightroom and Capture One. And that’s because Photoshop isn’t just a photo-editing tool; it’s also a design tool. That’s why the majority of my editing workflow is completed in Lightroom Classic. I only turn to Photoshop for more complex edits, such as compositing or multiple masking tasks.

While layer-based competitors like Affinity have commandeered some of its market share – and with good reason – Adobe’s flagship still reigns supreme. Despite its many hats, Photoshop’s interface remains clean and straightforward to use, although I’d stop short of calling it beginner-friendly. I’ve also found it to be better optimized than many non-Adobe applications, at least for the various Mac computers I’ve used over the years.

Photoshop’s support for selections, masks, and layers is unmatched, making it the tool of choice for complex composite image processing, but most recent advancements have centered around AI. So much so, if you don’t use it, you may begin to feel a little left out. Generative AI, in particular, is a big focus, and it’s worth pointing out that generative usage does cost credits. How many free credits you get each month will depend on your plan.

Still, regular ‘free’ updates are a huge positive of Adobe’s controversial subscription model. No, it’s not a perpetual license, but incremental updates are all part of the subscription, so you never have to worry about getting left behind.

Read the full Adobe Photoshop review.

Best AI photo editing software

Don’t confuse Radiant Photo 2’s AI-powered features with generative AI. This editing suite enhances what’s already there, it doesn’t add anything. The result is a natural edit that’s not always associated with AI editing software. Better yet, you’re free to tweak the AI-infused results how you see fit. Radiant Photo 2 does exactly what it’s intended to do, which is help speed up your editing workflow, without forcing you to relinquish control.

You can expect improved results nine times out of ten, as Radiant Photo 2 identifies the subject of an image and works its automated magic. And while it can be used standalone, Adobe users will be pleased to know that it can also be used as a plug-in for Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.

And my shots, edited with Radiant Photo 2, really did look the part. Several packages are available, so you can tailor the product to your needs, but with prices ranging from £79 / $79 to £349 / $349, things can get rather expensive. But if the AI workflow can save you time, it could work out to be a great investment. Ultimately, Radiant Photo 2 is easy to use and turns out great-looking images, without removing your creative discretion. And with the option for a 30-day free trial, you can see how the AI behaves for yourself.

Read our full Radiant Photo 2 review.

Best cheap photo editing software

While I wouldn’t recommend ON1 Photo RAW to professionals or serious enthusiasts, it’s a great choice for casual and beginner photographers on a budget. It’s a capable photo editing software solution that can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. But it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny quite as well as the examples higher on my list.

Clearly, the 2025 edition of ON1 Photo RAW has gone all in on AI. In fact, almost all of its major updates involve generative AI, such as Generative Erase, Generative Crop and AI Depth Masks. And while this feature set is impressively broad, it doesn’t always hit the mark.

As a RAW-image editor, it’s certainly capable, but doesn’t reach the heady heights of DXO PhotoLab 8, Capture One and Adobe’s flagship titles. A standout feature, though, is the Effects tab. This is a veritable goldmine of film effects, borders, light leaks and more, with the ability to tweak each effect further.

It’s worth remembering that ON1 Photo RAW is an all-in-one photo editing package – which covers you for photo organizing, editing and effects – at a very competitive price point. Simply put, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better blend of features and bang for your buck.

Read our full ON1 Photo RAW 2025 review.

Best photo editing software plug-in

DxO’s Nik Collection is a bundle of seven plug-ins that are typically used in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom Classic, and Capture One, but can also be used standalone. If you opt for the latter, be aware that it cannot process RAW files, so you’ll need a ‘host’ program to convert your RAW files to JPEGs or TIFFs.

I personally think that the meat of what’s on offer here is the excellent Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and HDR Efex. That leaves three plug-ins that I found considerably less useful: Dfine feels slightly dated, Sharpener is arguably too specialist for most users, and Viveza’s color adjustments feel somewhat redundant for those already working in Lightroom and Photoshop.

It’s a testament to the aforementioned ‘fab four’ plug-ins, then, that I deem Nik Collection 8 worthy of a perfect score. These plug-ins justify the price of admission, alone, so anything else really is a bonus. Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and HDR Efex all offer a rich and varied set of image effects that you simply cannot find anywhere else.

To find out more about each plug-in, you can check out the review, but at a glance, Analog Efex allows you to apply lo-fi effects to recreate the look of old cameras, Color Efex boasts 50 color-enhancing filters and 20 image presets, Silver Efex is perhaps the most coveted black-and-white converter on the market, and HDR Efex allows you to merge bracketed exposures or add HDR-style adjustment to single images.

A core upgrade in this year’s offering is enhanced Photoshop integration, allowing you to work on masks seamlessly between Photoshop and your chosen plug-in, as well as the introduction of a customizable and dockable Photoshop panel. Color Efex and Silver Efex – arguably the heart of the suite – have also received enhancements, resulting in quite simply the best version of Nik Collection yet.

Read the full DxO Nik Collection 8 review.

Best photo editing software for cloud editing

Adobe Lightroom (formerly Lightroom CC) is a cloud-centric editing application and not to be confused with the desktop-centric Lightroom Classic. I think it’s an excellent choice for those who like to work across multiple devices, have reliable Internet access, and don’t work predominantly with ultra-high-resolution files.

Where Lightroom Classic’s file-management system can be daunting for newcomers, Lightroom does away with multiple Catalogs, making image organization simpler and more accessible. Originally, Lightroom was purely cloud-based, but Adobe has relaxed this constraint, allowing users to access and edit images locally.

Similarly, you can now create smart albums, which makes organizing large image libraries much easier. It’s also now possible to open images from Lightroom into any external image editor, when you could previously only use Photoshop.

Performance-wise, Lightroom is everything you’d expect from an Adobe RAW image editor. Some X-Trans photographers still prefer alternative image editors, but for the vast majority, Adobe’s ecosystem is hard to beat, and Lightroom is no exception. And yes, Lightroom has Adobe’s excellent AI Denoise option and AI masking tools.

Lightroom’s cloud-based workflow also pairs seamlessly with the Lightroom app, allowing you to edit across devices with ease. Ultimately, just because Lightroom Classic tends to be the preserve of professionals doesn’t mean that Lightroom is inferior. If you use a mobile workflow and enjoy the convenience of working in the cloud, Lightroom is a great choice.

Read the full Adobe Lightroom review.

Best sky replacement

The AI photo editing pioneer is no longer the only AI kid on the block, but its intelligent tools still provide solid results (for the most part), and it still boasts the best sky replacement tool on the market. It’s versatile, too. From retouching portraits, adding sunrays to landscapes, and sharpening soft imagery, Luminar Neo’s scope is broad enough to suit most photography interests. And if you want to start tweaking sliders and learn the basics of manual photo editing, it does that, too.

I think Luminar Neo is best suited to photographers with little to no editing experience who want to achieve decent results without having to learn the complicated workflow of a more professional editing suite, or enthusiast photographers who want a no-fuss solution so they can turn around images quickly and efficiently.

The recent fall update has boosted what the software has to offer, with some significant new tools, including the ability to restore and colorize old photos in just a few clicks, and an impressive new, dimensional-lighting tool, which I personally have found very useful. In addition, Luminar Neo is now cross-platform, meaning you can start a project on Luminar Mobile and seamlessly transition to the desktop application. It’s a shame this wasn’t available before, but it’s a welcome upgrade nonetheless.

That said, Luminar Neo’s interface can still be quite intimidating for photo-editing newbies, and it could be slicker. For example, lens corrections aren’t automatically added to RAW files, and for some reason, Generative AI tools are found in the Catalog panel, as opposed to the editing panel.

All that aside, Luminar Neo’s AI tools are solid and sometimes excellent, the perpetual license (albeit with just one year of updates) will be a boon for some, and the ability to make manual edits provides room for beginners to grow. It’s also worth noting that cross-device editing between the desktop version and Luminar Mobile has (at the time of writing) just been rolled out, making this a good choice for content creators on the go.

Read the full Skylum Luminar Neo review.

Best free photo editing software

RawTherapee is free raw processing software in a similar vein to Adobe Lightroom Classic. And you know what, its jam-packed feature set and very respectable image quality means I spent most of my time forgetting it was free.

Now, it’s by no means perfect. Getting to grips with the interface takes time thanks to some curiously positioned controls and overcomplicated processes, but it’s all here, and some adjustments provide even more control than Lightroom.

The interface comprises three main sections: Editor, Queue, and File Browser. I don’t think the File Browser is as good as Lightroom’s Library, but all the functions you’d expect are here. You edit files in the Editor section, akin to Lightroom’s Develop module. Interestingly, the software will attempt to automatically edit a Raw file to match the camera’s JPEG, and while it never produced a result I was happy to immediately export, it does provide a starting point that may be particularly useful to software editing newcomers. The Queue section is where your finished images end up, so you can batch export.

RawTherapee’s adjustment controls are so extensive, they’re arguably too complicated at times and I did experience lagging slider effects and images that took a while to load. But ultimately, this is free software that’s able to provide a professional-grade workflow. And that’s mighty impressive in my book.

Read our full RawTherapee review.

Honorable mentions

How to choose the best photo editing software

With so many photo editing possibilities, it doesn't take long to figure out that one application alone is unlikely to meet all those needs. You can find more help on what to look for in the best photo editing software at the bottom of this page.

Today, there are many more options than just Adobe Photoshop. Adobe's Photography Plan includes Photoshop and Lightroom, which cover a lot more ground between them – but there are still plenty of non-Adobe rivals that can match their scope.

If you want advanced black-and-white effects, retro/analog filters, HDR merging, or one of a dozen other specialized 'looks', you're often better off using a custom-made plug-in or a different application.

Remember, though, it's not just about the software. The best photo-editing laptops, desktop computers, and monitors for photo editing can help you process images quickly and accurately, while the best external hard drives store your finished works locally and safely.

How I test photo editing software

Here are six factors my fellow reviewers and I evaluate when testing photo editing software. Think of this as a checklist. You might not need all of these features, but we do take them into account in our reviews.

1. Powerful retouching, masking and compositing tools: This is traditional Photoshop territory, and if you need to create complex illustrations or carry out detailed retouching and repair work, a program like Photoshop (or Affinity Photo) is likely to be your first stop.

2. Image organizing and cataloging tools: The more photos we take, the more organization they need. At the start of the digital imaging revolution, the novelty of being able to edit images caught everyone's attention, but now the task of keeping images organized, searchable and shareable has become increasingly important.

3. Non-destructive editing: Do you have to process or 'develop' RAW files before you can edit them? In Photoshop you do, via Adobe Camera RAW, but an increasing number of rival programs offer seamless RAW processing alongside JPEG and TIFF images. What's more, you can 'roll back' or change your edits at any time.

4. High-quality raw processing: All RAW processing tools are NOT the same. Adobe's RAW processing (in Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW) is used by millions, but the results certainly aren't the best. If RAW processing quality matters to you, then you'll want to know how well it works.

5. One-click creative presets: Very often, the problem for photographers is not knowing how to do something, but knowing WHAT to do. That's where programs with an extensive library of one-click presets can give you a real head-start, showing you how your images could look using adjustments you might not even have thought of.

6. Beginner friendliness: Software has certainly moved on and many photo editors are now much more novice-friendly than they used to be. The more technical photo editors on the market may offer more tools and give better results in expert hands, but if you're just starting out and you're baffled by all the jargon, a basic beginner-friendly program may be a much better choice than a more advanced one, even if, technically, it's not as good.

7. Value for money and buying options. When we look at software, we evaluate how it compares to similar programs on the market, and how you can pay for it. Subscriptions are unpopular with some, but that’s the way the world is heading. A few of the programs in our list are available as single-fee licenses, but more and more publishers favor subscriptions – Capture One looks to be choosing them in 2023, and Skylum has practically finished
the transition

DxO PhotoLab 6 is the company’s flagship photo-editing software, but it also produces two ‘add-on’ programs. FilmPack 6 authentically recreates analog film and darkroom effects, while ViewPoint 4 is dedicated to precise perspective and lens distortion corrections. 

We call them ‘add-ons’ because if you have PhotoLab 6 installed, FilmPack 6 and ViewPoint will integrate themselves into the PhotoLab interface with their own tools panels as part of PhotoLab’s non-destructive workflow.

Otherwise, ViewPoint 4 (and FilmPack 6) will work either as a standalone program or as plug-ins for Photoshop, Elements or Lightroom Classic. Keep in mind, of course, that Photoshop and Lightroom already have pretty decent lens and perspective correction tools of their own.

With PhotoLab 6 being one of the best photo editing software tools you can get, will ViewPoint 4 fall into the same category?

Key features

ViewPoint 4 has a series of adjustment panels. Starting from the top, these are:

Distortion: for applying automatic lens correction profiles, which can be downloaded as necessary.

Volume Deformation: a tool you won’t find anywhere else for correcting the artificial elongation of objects near the edges of the frame in photos shot with ultra-wide lenses.

Perspective: automatic correction for vertical convergence, horizontal convergence or both, plus manual tools which include powerful 8-point adjustment.

Reshape: a new feature in ViewPoint 4 which is like a local warping tool for correcting the perspective rendering of smaller objects within a scene.

Horizon: an automatic or manual tool for levelling up horizons.

Crop: you can apply different aspect ratios and rotate images to straighten them here, too.

Miniature effect: this seems like a bit of a departure for an optical correction tool, but it mimics the shallow depth of field effect of a tilt lens.

And that’s pretty much all there is to ViewPoint 4. If you launch it as a standalone program, you’ll also get a directory tree of all your folders in the left sidebar.

Usability and workflow

ViewPoint 4 is both very powerful and easy to use, and that’s very much to its credit. There’s nothing to complain about in its design and interface layout. But when you start to figure out how it might fit into your workflow, things become more complicated.

The first surprise is that in standalone mode ViewPoint 4 can only open JPEG and TIFF files, not raw. If you want to work with raw files you must use it as a plug-in from Lightroom Classic, Photoshop or PhotoLab.

The issue here is that all three have perfectly good perspective correction tools of their own built in, so all that ViewPoint 4 can add, in reality, is volumetric deformation correction, local ReShape adjustments and – perhaps – slightly better results.

You may also end up applying corrections twice. Our Olympus E-P7 bakes lens corrections into its raw files and JPEGs, as do most mirrorless cameras, but ViewPoint 4 doesn’t seem to know this and will apply its own correction profiles on top if you ask it to (if you don’t know any better, say). And if you use ViewPoint 4 as a plug-in, your host application will almost certainly apply lens corrections itself before it even sends the image to ViewPoint.

The other factor is that Lightroom will apply perspective corrections within its own non-destructive workflow, but if you send an image to the ViewPoint 4 plug-in, that creates a permanent JPEG or TIFF image with adjustments you can’t revisit later.

Finally, let’s not forget the Perspective Efex plug-in, part of the Nik Collection – this does much of what ViewPoint 4 does.

Good as ViewPoint 4 is (and it really is very good), the workflow options are a real tangle.

Results

ViewPoint 4’s automatic perspective corrections are so good that they make others look clumsy and unreliable. That alone makes it an attractive plug-in for programs that have these tools already. And if you do need to make manual adjustments, these are quick and easy to do.

The volume deformation correction is especially interesting. If you always taken it for granted that ultra-wide lenses will distort object and people near the frame edges and that there’s nothing you can do about it – well now there is. It’s very effective – though the diagonal adjustment can introduce barrel distortion and the horizontal/vertical adjustments will mess with the crop or aspect ratio. You have to decide which is the greater evil – this, or the volume deformation you want to correct.

The ReShape tool sounds a good idea but is difficult to use because it’s in the nature of node grids to bend the underlying image – it’s actually quite difficult and time-consuming to maintain the straight lines you’re probably keen to preserve.

The Miniature effect is rather good. The tool is easy to use but extremely flexible, and the blur is ‘good’ blur that looks realistic.

Verdict

ViewPoint 4 is very good at fixing lens distortion and perspective issues – and a very welcome arrival given that version 3 has been out for a long time. But the world has moved on, and many photo editors can now do the same job, or at least as far as the average photographer wants to go.

So ViewPoint 4 is quite a specialized tool that perhaps only a few people will need – and even they might have to make some concessions and compromises to slot it into their workflow. It’s a shame, because its interface and tools are a model of simplicity.

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DxO PhotoLab 6 is the latest version of a program designed for high-end RAW processing and lens corrections with a strong emphasis on technical accuracy in both color and detail rendition.

It’s basically a combined photo browser, raw processor and editing tool that can take you from a folder full of raw files straight from your camera to edited, corrected and enhanced images tuned just how you want them with a set of very powerful overall adjustment tools, and local adjustments, which mean you may not need any other photo editor –  though you can launch other programs from within PhotoLab if you need to.

PhotoLab 6 is a fully non-destructive photo editor. It works on raw files seamlessly with no ‘processing’ or ‘developing phase. It can also work on JPEG and TIFF images, though you get most benefit with raw files. All your adjustments can be changed, removed or added to in the future, and you can also create ‘virtual copies’ to try out different adjustments without having to physically duplicate your original files.

It's certainly one of the best photo editing software applications there is right now for desktop users, and its hardware requirements aren't especially demanding so the best photo editing laptops won't have any trouble running it. 

System requirements

Mac
OS: macOS 11.6 (Big Sur) or higher (macOS 12.0 (Monterey) recommended)
CPU: Any (Intel Core Processor with 6 cores or higher, or Apple Silicon recommended
RAM: 8 GBRAM (16GB recommended)
Disk space: 4GB (6GB recommended)
Graphics (recommended): AMD Radeon Pro 580X or better for Intel Macs 

PC
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 version 20H2 or higher (64-bit, and still supported by Microsoft)
CPU: Any CPU supporting SSE 4.1 (Intel Core processor with 6+ cores or better, or AMD Ryzen recommended)
RAM: 8GB (16GB recommended)
Disk space: 4GB (6GB recommended)
Graphics (recommended): NVIDIA RTX 2060, AMD Radeon RX 6600 or better with latest drivers 

Key features

PhotoLab 6 is primarily a high-end raw processing and editing program, but some steady evolution through successive versions means that its turned into something more.

One of the key new features in PhotoLab 6 is the ability to ‘nest’ Projects in the PhotoLibrary window in a hierarchical folder system. Previously, you could only have a simple linear list of Projects.

Projects are DxO’s term for Albums. Before, they were useful perhaps for short term tasks but little more, but the new ability to organize and structure Projects means that overnight the PhotoLibrary module has changed from being a simple Adobe Bridge style folder browser into a proper organizing/cataloguing tool. This is boosted by support for additional EXIF and IPTC data tags. It’s not quite in the same league as Lightroom, say, but it may be all that most photographers need.

Another new feature is DeepPRIME XD processing – the ‘XD’ stands for ‘eXtreme Detail’. It’s an evolution of DxO’s already highly impressive DeepPRIME noise reduction for high ISO images, and DxO has found a way to recover even more detail from high-ISO images with almost no visible noise. It honestly is spectacularly good. The only downside is that it’s processor intensive, so you cannot see the effect ‘live’ over the whole image, only a small preview window, and you have to Export an image, as a TIFF or a JPEG, say, to apply the process. 

In our version, too, it looks as if Fujifilm X-Trans raw files don’t yet have DeepPRIME XD support – but it’s only recently that PhotoLab has introduced X-Trans support in the first place, so Fujifilm users should still be reasonably happy.

DxO has also introduced new, upgraded Retouch tool. A key feature of this is that you can now rotate, scale or transform your clone ‘source, so that if you need to replace a window in a building, say, and the only source you can use is a smaller one nearby, you can now manipulate it to fit the dimensions of the window you want to replace.

PhotoLab 6 has a new, wider working color space too – an indication that DxO takes color management very seriously. It offers ‘soft proofing’ for different output devices too.

So what is PhotoLab 6? You could look at it two ways – as a massively more powerful Adobe Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw replacement, or as a Lightroom alternative with better tools, better output and no tedious import process. 

Design and interface

PhotoLab 6 has two windows. The first, the PhotoLibrary window, is where you browse and organize your images. You can view them as thumbnails or as larger previews. What you see is a full directory tree of the folders on your computer, and you can use this to move images around as required or organize them into Projects. This is basically DxO’s word ‘for ‘albums’. They are a way of collecting images together without moving them on your computer. 

If you double-click on an image it opens in the Customize window, which is where you do the serious editing work. A vertical toolbar on the right side of the screen shows all the available tools panels. There are quite a few, but they have been arranged in tabs which are loosely themed as exposure, color and detail adjustments, for example. There’s even a search field at the top to help you quickly find a panel you already known the name of.

Along the top of the window is a set of tools for cropping, perspective correction, zooming and panning, adding a local adjustment and more.

It looks technical, but it’s all logically arranged and, as with most software, you’ll find yourself using a handful of tools more than any others and you’ll quickly work out where these are. Better still, given DxO’s automatic lens corrections, tonal optimizations and preset looks, you might find that many of your images don’t need any further manual adjustments anyway.

Like all non-destructive editors, PhotoLab stores all the adjustments you make but does not apply them directly to your original images. Your adjustments are only visible within PhotoLab. You have to use the Export feature to generate TIFF or JPEG images ready for sharing or editing in other software.

Quality of results

PhotoLab 6 really is the best, or at least one of the best programs out there for raw processing quality. Its lens corrections are applied automatically as the images are first viewed and the previews are generated, so you rarely have to get involved in that at all – except to download new profiles when prompted. 

We’re used to software correcting lens distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration automatically, but PhotoLab 6 goes further in correcting edge softness too – the difference in quality, especially at the frame edges, is clear to see. The more ‘average’ your camera and lenses, the bigger the improvement.

The DeepPRIME XD processing is pretty spectacular. It can smooth out, sharpen up and restore detail to high-ISO images so successfully that you’re left checking the image EXIF data to make sure there’s been no mistake – it will change your mind about what you think your camera is capable of.

PhotoLab 6’s local adjustment tools deserve a mention too. It doesn’t offer. the AI-powered subject masking now appearing in other software, but its auto-masking control point adjustments are just as effective and very controllable too.

DxO is keen to dovetail its software with photographers' existing workflows where possible, so rather than pitching PhotoLab 6 as a Lightroom alternative, it's also made it work as a Lightroom add-on. If you decide you need a hike in quality from PhotoLab's own lens corrections and noise control, you can send your raw original. from Lightroom to PhotoLab, process it with DxO's tools, then have it round-tripped back to Lightroom.

Verdict

PhotoLab 6 can get technical, and it’s not really a quick-fix tool for Instagram posts. What it is, however, is a very powerful, very precise and very effective photo editor that delivers results every bit as good as the best of its rivals, and often a clear step above.

PhotoLab 6 Elite, the version we’d recommend, is at the upper end of the price spectrum, and you’ll need to shell out more again if you want DxO’s FilmPack 6 or ViewPoint 4 add-ons. So be it. This is software designed for quality, not cost-saving.

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PhotoLab 6 is the latest version of DxO’s powerful RAW processing, lens correction and editing software for photographers who want to extract the very best from their raw files. 

This version brings DeepPRIME XD, an all-new de-noising technology, a new ReTouch tool, improvements to the Library panel and the integration of perspective correction tools so that ViewPoint add-on is no longer needed for basic perspective fixes.

DxO PhotoLab 5 already features in our list of the best photo editing software right now, and it looks like PhotoLab 6 will cement its reputation even further.

PhotoLab 6 new features

Perhaps the biggest news is DeepPRIME XD, a development of DxO’s DeepPRIME technology, already the best on the market at removing noise and restoring detail to high ISO images. DeepPRIME XD (eXtreme Details) is driven by DxO’s own AI-driven deep learning tools, has been a year in development and delivers yet more fine detail than DeepPRIME.

DeepPRIME will only be available in the more expensive Elite edition. DxO is sticking to its two-tier software system, with a cheaper PhotoLab 6 Essential edition and a more advanced Elite edition.

DxO has also been working on its color management system and color processing algorithms, and in PhotoLab 6 it introduces a new, ultra-wide gamut color space to ensure that no subtleties of color are lost during the editing process. You can also use Soft Proofing to check how your images will look on different devices.

PhotoLab 6’s new ReTouch tool can now be fine-tuned with brushes to produce an accurate shape for object removal. It’s now possible to mirror, rotate or even scale the healing source. You can use other tools like Photoshop, of course, for complex retouching, but DxO’s aim is to keep this within a non-destructive workflow based on your original raw files.

In the past, PhotoLab’s Library panel for image browsing and organization has been pretty basic, but PhotoLab 6 introduces ‘nesting’ for Projects so that it’s easier to keep them separated and organized. Version 6 also extends the range of EXIF and IPTC tags supported, and adds color labels as another way to filter and organize images.

Alongside this launch, DxO has announced another batch of correction profiles, this time for the following lenses:

• Canon RF 24mm F1.8 Macro IS STM
• Nikkor Z 28-75mm F2.8
• HD Pentax-D FA 21mm F2.4 ED Limited DC WR
• HD Pentax-FA 31mm F1.8 Limited
• HD Pentax-FA 43mm F1.9 Limited
• HD Pentax-FA 77mm F1.8 Limited
• Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN | C
• Sigma 35mm F2 DG DN | C
• Sony E 11mm F1.8

We’re pleased to see that PhotoLab 6 also integrates perspective correction tools, so that it’s no longer necessary to purchase the separate ViewPoint add-on for basic corrections. However, DxO has just announced ViewPoint 4, which goes a lot further than the tools in PhotoLab 6.

DxO ViewPoint 4 released

ViewPoint 4 is a standalone application and Photoshop, Elements or Lightroom plug-in. It also integrates seamlessly with PhotoLab with its own adjustment panel. ViewPoint is designed specifically for complex geometric corrections. In previous versions of PhotoLab you needed ViewPoint 3 installed in order to be able to make perspective corrections. PhotoLab 6 now has its own in-built perspective correction tools, but ViewPoint 4 goes further.

One clever trick is ViewPoint's ‘volumetric’ distortion correction. With wideangle lenses, objects near the edge of the frame get ‘stretched’ unnaturally, but ViewPoint can fix this.

ViewPoint 4 also introduces a new ReShape tool which can be used to warp and repair specific objects or areas of a scene. Its closest equivalent as far as we can see is the Liquify tool in Photoshop.

ViewPoint 4 can now flip and mirror images, offers better integration between the Crop and Horizon tools and offers optional guides for more precise adjustments.

PhotoLab 6 and ViewPoint 4 pricing

PhotoLab 6 Essential Edition will cost $139/£129 (about AU$206) for new users, while existing users can upgrade for $75/£65 (about AU$111). PhotoLab 6 Elite will cost $219/£199 (about AU$325) for new users, and $99/£89 (about AU$147) as an upgrade.

ViewPoint 4 will cost $99/£89 (about AU$147) for new users, and $59/£55 (about AU$88) as an upgrade from ViewPoint 3.

Both programs are available as a free 30-day trial, so you have plenty of time to make your mind up.

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Users of PhotoLab 5, PureRAW 2, ViewPoint 3, FilmPack 6 and Nik Collection 5 can all now use DxO’s collection of 75,000+ camera-lens combinations.

DxO is not the only company to make lens correction profiles but the difference is that these are tailored to specific camera and lens combinations. DxO claims this approach assesses the true 100% field of capture without the cropping of generic lens profiles and with up to 10% more pixels in the end result

DxO’s profiles also use graduated sharpening across the frame to match each lens’s sharpness characteristics and counteract edge softness. As well as correcting regular lateral chromatic aberration (color fringing), DxO’s corrections are also designed to fix longitudinal (bokeh) fringing.

This update also adds support for a number of new cameras and lenses. New cameras supported include the DJI Mini 3 Pro, Fujifilm X-H2S, Nikon D810A and Nikon Z30.

New lenses supported in this update include the Canon RF-S 18-45mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM, Canon RF-S 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM, Fuji 150-600mm f/5.6-8 R LM OIS WR (also with profiles for use with the TC 1.4x WR and TC 2x WR teleconverters), Panasonic Lumix Leica DG Vario Summilux 25-50mm f/1.7 ASPH, Sony E 15mm f/1.4 G, Sony FE 24-70mm f/.8 GM II, Sony FE PZ 16-35mm f/4 G, Sony E PZ 10-20mm f/4 G, Sony FE 50mm f/1.2 GM.

The turnaround time for new camera and lens support is proving pretty rapid – notably for the new Nikon Z30 and Canon’s new RF-S lenses. DxO’s corrections are effective on pro-level equipment, but the quality gain is even more noticeable with lower-end camera gear.

This is not a major version update, so it’s free to all existing users, and you should be prompted to download the update when you next use your software.

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DxO PureRAW version 2.1 has just been released, and as well as getting boosted performance on Apple Silicon, PureRAW 2.1 brings support for Canon’s latest EOS R cameras and smarter batch processing options.

DxO PureRAW takes DxO’s legendary raw processing, lens corrections and DeepPRIME processing and builds it into a simple batch-processing raw converter which can output either ready to use JPEG images or pre-processed ‘linear DNG’ files which can be used just like regular raw files in programs light Lightroom or Capture One.

DeepPRIME is one of DxO’s key technologies. It uses AI and sophisticated processing to reduce noise and maximise detail in high ISO shots and can transform your expectations about what your camera can achieve. Its unique selling point is that it applies its noise reduction as part of its raw demosaicing process, rather than later when the image has already been processed.

DxO software, including PureRAW, DxO PhotoLab and DxO Nik Collection features strongly in our list of the best photo editing software on the market right now.

Until now, DxO PureRAW has run under Apple’s Rosetta emulation for software designed for Intel Macs before the M-series processors arrived. Now, with native Apple Silicon support, PureRAW 2.1’s interface is 10% faster and it can use the neural processing architecture in the new chips.

PureRAW applies lens corrections using custom modules for specific camera-lens combinations. Many are installed as standard, but many more can be downloaded automatically, as the software can instantly identify the gear used from the image EXIF data. As of PureRAW 2.1, DxO now offers 74,000 different camera-lens modules, and adds support for Canon’s latest EOS R7 and R10 models. That’s quick work, given that these cameras are not on sale yet (at the time of writing).

PureRAW 2.1 also now supports the Canon EOS R5 C and the Leica M11. You can see a full list of supported cameras on the DxO website.

PureRAW 2.1 is available now and costs $129/£115 (about AU$200). It's a free update for existing PureRAW 2 owners and upgrade pricing is available for owners of older versions.

With the Nik Collection 5, DxO finishes its task of updating and redesigning the creative plug-ins at the heart of this suite. Silver Efex Pro and Viveza got an interface update and new features in the previous update, and now it’s the turn of two of the most powerful tools in this collection.

The Nik Collection actually consists of eight different plug-ins for Photoshop and Lightroom – though these can also be used as standalone applications and external editors for a wide variety of other ‘host’ programs, like Capture One or DxO’s own PhotoLab application.

Indeed, with Nik Collection 5, DxO is bundling its PhotoLab 5 Essential edition free, to make this an even more appealing proposition for new users.

PhotoLab 5 Essential is a non-destructive photo editor that offers DxO’s excellent raw processing, lens corrections and local adjustment technologies, and can also send images to the Nik Collection plug-ins directly. It does not have the DeepPRIME noise reduction or the ClearView contrast enhancement of the PhotoLab 5 Elite edition, but we understand an upgrade path will be available for those who want it.

The Nik Collection 5 plug-ins

DxO separates these into two groups: its ‘creative’ tools, which consist of Color Efex Pro, Analog Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro and Viveza, and its ‘technical’ tools, which include Nik Dfine (noise reduction), Nik Sharpener, Nik Perspective Efex and Nik HDR Efex.

The Nik Collection has been around for many years and has evolved steadily first in the hands of its creator, Nik Software, then Google (which added Analog Efex Pro) and now DxO (which added Perspective Efex).

Color Efex Pro and Analog Efex Pro

Both plug-ins get a substantial update in Nik Collection 5. They benefit from an interface update to replace their previously somewhat dated and technical appearance and bring them in line with Silver Efex Pro and Viveza.

The U Point adjustment tools are substantially upgraded too. It’s now possible to rename control points for easier identification and save them as part of presets for future use. On top of that, control points in these plug-ins now have Luminance and Chrominance sliders to fine-tune their masking effect.

Color Efex Pro goes one better, now incorporating the ClearView technology from PhotoLab. This is very effective at restoring contrast in hazy landscapes, but also adding ‘punch’ to flat looking images generally.

In one further change, Perspective Efex adds more than 4,300 camera and lens combinations to its database of correction profiles.

Nik Collection 5 price and availability

Nik Collection 5 is on sale now at a price of $149/£135 (about AU$214) for new users and $79/£69 (about AU$114) for those upgrading from a previous version.

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DxO PureRAW 2 takes the raw image processing and denoising technology in DxO’s flagship software, PhotoLab 5, and puts it into a simple image conversion utility. The idea is that you get all the quality of DxO’s processing but in a simple batch-processing utility.

PureRAW 2 can output processed JPEGs, with noise reduction and lens corrections applied or, more interestingly, Linear DNG files. These are like part-processed raw files that behave just like regular raw files in your software, but have DxO’s own demosaicing and denoising process pre-applied.

Key features

PureRAW 2 can be used as a standalone program, as a tool available directly in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer or – perhaps most significantly of all – directly from within Adobe Lightroom Classic.

DxO acknowledges the huge popularity of Lightroom and the fact that many photographers won’t want to switch software or workflows, so this new version of PureRAW tackles that with a new export plug-in that allows you to round-trip raw files from within Lightroom to DxO PureRAW 2, where they’ll be converted to Linear DNGs and returned to Lightroom as a new file alongside the original.

This new workflow means that you don’t have to batch process raw images in PureRAW before importing them into Lightroom, and you can be much more selective about the images you want to enhance.

With low-ISO images, you may not see much difference between Lightroom’s raw processing and DxO’s – at least not enough to worry about. But at medium-high ISOs, DxO’s processing advantage quickly becomes apparent. Adobe’s raw processing might the most convenient option for many photographers, but it’s pretty poor at balancing noise and detail at higher sensitivity settings.

Another new feature in PureRAW 2 is Fujifilm X-Trans support. This has been a long time coming, and at last opens the door to Fujifilm camera users. X-Trans support was introduced to PhotoLab 5 in ‘beta’ form, but its finished and fully-integrated into PureRAW 2. 

Interface and usability

PureRAW 2 is extremely simple to use, partly because it doesn’t offer any image adjustments, just a conversion process. All you have to do is tell it which images you want it to convert and the conversion options you want – typically either JPEG or Linear DNG, and where you want the new images to be saved – and set it to work.

DxO’s DeepPRIME processing is certainly faster, but still not fast. You can expect to wait up to, say, a minute for each image to be processed – but this will vary considerably depending on your hardware. It’s only a one-time operation, though. If you’re converting a whole folder of images you can get on with something else while it’s at work, and if you’re sending an image from within Lightroom, it just means a short delay while you wait for it to come back.

But what happens if you’ve already done some editing in Lightroom and only then decide that you need a superior Linear DNG version? This is where it gets clever – the original (unedited) raw file will be send to PureRAW 2 for processing, and when it returns the editing metadata applied to the original will be applied to the DNG. You keep all your edits, even if you use the PureRAW conversion after you’ve made them.

Quality of results

Even at low ISO settings, you can often see the difference between PureRAW’s Linear DNG files and Lightroom’s own raw processing, often as reduced noise in blue skies and other areas of even tone. DxO’s lens corrections are extremely good too, so that even if you don’t notice any difference in distortion correction, for example, a closer look at the edges of the image will often reveal sharper detail in the DxO version. The worse your camera gear, the bigger the potential gain!

It’s at medium-high ISO settings that the differences become obvious, and at super-high ISOs where Lightroom’s now processing can produce noise like marbles, DxO’s processing is uncannily sharp and noise free. It leaves you checkin the EXIF data to make sure they are actually the same image.

There are a lot of software publishers making a lot of claims about their noise reduction tools, but DxO insists it’s the only maker to combine raw demosaicing and denoising in the same process – and DxO’s high-IS noise reduction is spectacular. There’s no smudging, no ‘watercolor effect’, just more detail than you ever imagined your high-ISO raw file actually possessed.

Verdict

DxO PureRAW 2 is not cheap, it does demand a shift in your workflow, and its Linear DNG files are 2-3 times larger than the raw files they’re created from (it’s because they’re ‘demosaiced’ into full RGB images). It’s not for everyone.

But if you’re obsessed by image quality and, in particular, you struggle to balance noise and detail at high ISO settings, PureRAW is simply exceptional – especially if you use Lightroom.

Other programs can use its Linear DNGs too (though download the trial version to check). There are only a couple of really top-end raw processing technologies out there on the market right now, and DxO’s is one of them.

DxO PureRAW 2 brings a number of improvements to the company’s raw processing, lens correction and noise removal software, but the big news for Lightroom users is that you can now use it from within Lightroom.

The easiest way to think of DxO PureRAW is to imagine an up-market Adobe DNG Converter. It takes regular RAW files and applies DxO’s high-powered DeepPRIME demosaicing and noise reduction technology, plus its advanced in-house lens correction profiles, to produce ‘Linear DNG’ raw files. These are part-processed raw files that have all the image quality of DxO’s proprietary processing, but are still ‘raw’ files with all the extended tonal and color data that photographers like to exploit.

DxO PureRAW 2 can be used as a standalone image converter. You can give it a folder full of raw files and it will batch process them either as JPEG images, or as Linear DNGs. Its optical corrections don’t just include the usual chromatic aberration, distortion and vignetting corrections, but lens softness too.

• Read the full DxO PureRAW 2 review

What’s new in DxO PureRAW 2

What’s new in PureRAW 2 is that you can now send a raw file in your Lightroom catalog to PureRAW for processing – it will then return the processed DNG file to Lightroom. This means you can swap Adobe’s raw processing for DxOs, but without having to leave Lightroom.

That’s not all. With PureRAW 2 it’s also now possible to select and process images direct from the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer.

DxO says its DeepPRIME processing engine, the AI-driven tech behind its remarkable noise reduction and detail retention, is now up to 4x faster. 

DxO has also added Fujifilm X-Trans sensor support – which is huge news for the legions of Fujifilm camera fans out there – with over 2,000 correction modules available for 26 X-Trans camera models. This is on top of more than 1600 new correction modules and 14 new cameras. This brings to the total number of camera/lens pairings supported in PureRAW 2 to 70,000+.

DxO PureRAW 2 pricing and availability

DxO PureRAW 2 is available from the DxO store from March 16 2022 at a launch price of $129/£115 (about AU$178) for new users, or $79/£69 (about AU$109) for users upgrading from the previous version.

DxO, the company behind the highly-regarded DxOMark benchmarks that rank camera sensor and camera phone image quality, has announced that its expanding into testing the image quality of security cameras.

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This may seem like an odd decision, given few people demand Hollywood-grade video quality from their doorbell cam, but as DxO points out, security camera image quality is worth scrutinizing for other reasons:

Why benchmark security cameras?

Home security cameras are usually small so that they can be discreet and unobtrusive. The sensors are about the same size as those found in smartphones, meaning they are much smaller than what you find in  DSLR cameras. This presents some major challenges and limitations when it comes to image quality. Small apertures limit the flow of light to the sensor, which affects exposure and dynamic range. Small sensors mean less light is captured, which could affect the final image.

Another challenge, especially for outdoor cameras, is capturing a wide field of view.  Moreover, they use fisheyes lenses, which have smaller apertures,  to cover a wider field of view.  Fisheye lenses can sometimes create artefacts like distortion and color fringing.

The third challenge is detection, and image quality plays a role in this. The most important and basic function of home security cameras is that they must be able to quickly and accurately detect relevant motion in a use case such as a home invasion. The keyword here is relevant, and image quality from the camera is crucial in this case. If the image quality is poor, the security system could easily send too many false alerts, or worse, it might not send any at all because it did not detect anything.

The way a home security camera is installed also presents a challenge. Is it wired or battery-powered? A system that is battery-powered could be placed anywhere, but it could potentially limit the camera’s performance in terms of image processing so as to not drain the battery too quickly. A system that requires to be plugged in, on the other hand, might have to be placed in a less than ideal location and might struggle to capture good images. Other installation considerations include the ease of setup, the network, and power, application control as well as cloud usage and storage.

Another constraint on image quality is the network the security system runs on. The uploading of recorded images is subject to compression, which affects the final image, especially on battery-powered systems. The quality of the network will also affect the final image. If two bars of Wi-Fi are lost during an upload, compression artefacts will most likely show up in the final image.

Home surveillance cameras also face audio quality challenges and limitations. What’s important is whether voices are intelligible in these kinds of products—in playback and recording. Outdoor cameras are prone to artefacts such as wind noise, and as a result, speech becomes hard to understand. In the case of a doorbell camera, the audio quality is affected by the distance of the speaker to the device.  The loudness of the captured of voices is important, especially in comparison with the volume of the background (Signal to Noise Ratio) which may be affected either by the distance from the user to the device or by the environmental conditions (wind, rain, road noises, …).

DxO doorbell camera group test

With all these potential image quality issues in mind, DxO conducted a group test of four popular doorbell cameras to assess their daylight and infra-red night time image quality, focussing on attributes such as exposure, detail preservation, artefacts, and color.

To ensure good testing realism while also maintaining consistent repeatability, DxO has used realistic mannequins rather than human testers, as well as studio laboratory lighting for daylight and night-time illumination.

In this four-camera round-up, Google's Nest Hello doorbell cam produced the best image quality benchmark results. DxO says that it's planning to evaluate other types of security camera - outdoor and indoor - in the near future.

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DxO has released Nik Collection 4.3 with 35 new “nature inspired” presets, while PhotoLab 5.1 gets user interface improvements and FilmPack 6’s neat Time Machine feature is made more intuitive to use.

Nik Collection 4.3 is the big winner, with 35 new presets added to the 250 presets already included in the Nik suite of plug-ins. The new presets are spread across several tools, so that Color Efex Pro gets four new “Seasons” presets to reflect the hues and tones of each season, while HDR Efex Pro – the Nik Collection’s HDR plug-in – now has five new “Tonal Landscapes” presets designed to enhance spring foliage, enhance the ‘golden hour’ or intensify the calm blue light of dawn.

Analog Efex Pro, the Nik Collection’s film and darkroom simulation plug-in, now has six new “Landscapes of Yesteryear presets, while Silver Efex Pro, the Collection’s black and white plug-in, adds six “Dramatic Landscapes” presets.

Also new are six Meta-presets – these are used within Photoshop to combine and blend filter effects from different Nik plug-ins.

The updates to PhotoLab 5.1 are more modest and include the display of GPS co-ordinates on Google Maps and a revamped photo filter menu. DxO FilmPack 6.1 takes the innovative Time Machine feature introduced in version 6 and makes the vintage effects shown available with a single click.

DxO software 30% off until the end of December

Hot on the heels of DxO’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals comes this one. From now until the end of December, you can get a 30% discount on all DxO software, including the Nik Collection 4, PhotoLab 5 and FilmPack 6, plus DxO PureRAW and DxO’s ViewPoint 3 perspective correction tool.

DxO PhotoLab 5 is part raw processing tool and part image editor, with some basic but effective image browsing and organizing tools thrown in. Its main claim to fame is its exceptional raw processing quality, combined with DxO’s lab-developed lens correction profiles.

PhotoLab 5 is sold in both Essential and Elite editions, but if you want the best that DxO’s raw processing can offer, we would recommend the more expensive Elite edition. Quite apart from anything else, it comes with DxO’s very effective ClearView contrast enhancement and its uncannily effective DeepPRIME noise reduction – which could completely change your mind about ‘acceptable’ ISO settings on your camera.

What PhotoLab does not have built in is perspective correction tools, even in the Elite edition. Both versions will correct lens distortion, chromatic aberration, corner shading and even edge softness automatically, but to get the perspective correction tools we now take for granted in other software for fixing converging verticals, for example, you need to get the DxO ViewPoint add-on, which is more again.

DxO also makes FilmPack 6, a standalone or plug-in analog film simulation tool. Once installed, many of its tools and features integrate seamlessly into PhotoLab 5.

Specifications

CPU: Any CPU, i7 4th gen or later recommended, M1 support under Rosetta emulation (Mac), any CPU supporting SSE 4.1, i7 4th gen or AMD Ryzen recommended (PC)
RAM: 8GB, 18GB recommended
Hard disk space: 4GB, 6GB recommended
OS: macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina), 11.0 (Big Sur) or 12.0 (Monterey) (Mac), Windows 10 version 1809 or higher (64-bit, and still supported by Microsoft), Windows 11 supported (PC)
Graphics: Graphics card with 512 MB of video memory for handling GPU acceleration, AMD Radeon Pro 580X or better for Intel Macs (Mac), NVIDIA GTX™ 1060, AMD Radeon RX 5500 or better with latest drivers recommended (PC)

Key features

So let’s take a look at what DxO PhotoLab 5 can do from a workflow perspective. First, it has an improved PhotoLibrary panel where you can browse your images by folders, carry out basic searches based on image parameters and even create virtual Projects (or albums).

It’s not Lightroom by any means, but for those who like to organize their images with physical folders it’s fine. It’s a bit like using Adobe Bridge.

New in PhotoLab 5, though, is support for EXIF and IPTC metadata. Specifically, you can apply keywords and search for images with specific keywords too. These keywords conform to IPTC standards and are visible in other programs too.

When you want to edit an image, you switch to the Customise window, where PhotoLab will automatically apply lens corrections based on its inbuilt profiles – or prompt you to download them if you don’t have them yet.

From here, you have a huge array of image adjustment tools for shadow and highlight control, curves, hue and saturation, vibrance, micro-contrast and much more. Or you can simply choose one of PhotoLab 5’s preset ‘looks’. 

The tools are pretty complex and sophisticated, but PhotoLab can also be used for simple one-click optimization of your raw files.

New in PhotoLab 5 is support – at last – for Fujifilm X-Trans raw files. The different color filter array of these sensors has always been incompatible with DxO’s raw demosaicing process in the past, and while X-Trans support is still in its beta phase, it worked fine for us.

DxO’s local adjustment tools are even more formidable, and use the U-point automatic masking feature that DxO inherited when it took over the Nik Collection. You can drop a control point where you want to make a change and it will automatically mask those tones corresponding to the point where you clicked. 

PhotoLab also has a gradient mask tool and, new in version 5, a Control Line tool which appears similar but comes with an eyedropper for selecting only those tones you want to adjust. It’s great for darkening skies while preserving the tones and colors of building jutting up into the sky, say.

DxO’s U-point technology is made even more precise in PhotoLab 5 with controls for adjusting the color and luminance sensitivity.

Other things to note about PhotoLab 5 is that it is a non-destructive editor, so until you export a new, processed version of your photo, your changes are purely ‘virtual’ and visible only inside PhotoLab. Speaking of ‘virtual’, you can create as many virtual copies of an image as you like without duplicating the image file itself on your computer.

Interface and usability

PhotoLab’s PhotoLibrary window is pretty straightforward, with a folder tree and search field in the left sidebar, histogram and metadata panels on the right and thumbnails in the middle – the interface is actually highly customisable.

The Customise (editing) window is more complicated. We have ours set up with a histogram and navigator panel in the left sidebar and adjustment tools in the right sidebar.

It would be easy for new users to be intimidated by the sheer number of tools and panels, though DxO has made improvements here. The tools are now organised into groups according to their purpose – Light, Color, Detail, Geometry, Local Adjustments and Effects.

This does actually help a lot. What’s more, you can collapse panels you don’t need or customise the workspace so that it’s pared down to just those tools you need.

If you can get your head around Photoshop or Affinity Photo, you’ll be fine with the level of complexity in DxO PhotoLab. Some of the tools are different (and some you won’t find anywhere else) but the principles are easy enough to grasp.

It’s not the fastest software we’ve used. Preset thumbnails take a few moments to render, switching from Library to Customize view takes a few moments too, and if you use the DeepPRIME noise reduction, images take a minute or so to process on export (the process is too hardware intensive to apply ‘live’ during editing).

But you can copy and paste adjustments between images (you can now select which you copy) and leave PhotoLab 5 to batch process whole folders of images in its own time while you get on with something else. PhotoLab is not the quickest, but it’s quite quick enough.

Results

If it all sounds like mixed praise so far, all that changes when you see PhotoLab’s results. Its raw demosaicing and processing is just about the best there is – at least as good as Capture One’s and easily better than Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw’s. The Adobe software can’t match the blend of noise control and micro-detail that these programs offer.

DxO’s lens corrections are a step above the norm, too. Most programs can now correct distortion, corner shading and chromatic aberration – the usual suspects – but PhotoLab goes further with edge softness correction, to make even mediocre lenses look good.

Two of DxO’s technologies – ClearView and DeepPRIME – are available only in the Elite edition, and both are spectacular. ClearView is like Lightroom’s Dehaze tool but without the wild faux-HDR effects when you push it too far. ClearView gives a really nice ‘punch’ to flat images without showing any sign that it’s been at work.

DeepPRIME, meanwhile, is just amazing. You won’t notice its effect on low-medium ISO images, but when applied to high-ISO shots, particularly those from older cameras, it’s just uncanny. You have to keep checking the EXIF data to confirm that this level of detail and lack of noise could possibly have come from those raw files.

DeepPRIME doesn’t yet work on X-Trans raw files –  the X-Trans support is still in beta – but otherwise our X-Trans raw files already look very good indeed. Already we’d say it’s a close match for Capture One.

DxO PhotoLab 5 is ultimately about image quality. It has some flaws and foibles, but the images that come out of it are quite superb – and the worse your camera/lens, the more remarkable the transformation (within reason, of course).

Verdict

DxO PhotoLab 5 is not cheap, especially the Elite version, it’s not the easiest program to learn or the fastest to use – but the results it can extract from your raw files can make you forget all that in a moment.

It won’t suit everyone. If you need large scale asset-management more than you need top-tier image quality, get Lightroom. If you like PhotoLab’s output but not its complexity, get DxO PureRAW, which automates lens and color corrections to output high-quality TIFFs, JPEGs or Linear DNG raw files for use in other programs. And if what you actually want is in-depth layering, masking and retouching, get Photoshop or Affinity Photo.

But for the best possible raw processing and lens corrections, powerful non-destructive local adjustments and exceptional noise control when you need it, PhotoLab 5 is in a class of its own. 

At the same time as its launch of DxO PhotoLab 5, DxO has released a long-awaited update to its analog film simulator, DxO FilmPack. FilmPack 6 brings new films, new effects, new light leaks and new frames – and like PhotoLab 5, it now brings support for Fujifilm X-Trans cameras.

FilmPack 6 shows another side to DxO’s digital expertise. Where its flagship program, DxO PhotoLab, aims to deliver pixel-perfect processing and lens corrections to digital images, FilmPack 6 celebrates the evocative imperfections, unpredictability and nostalgia of classic analog films and processes.

FilmPack 6 can be used as a standalone program but once it’s installed, many of its key features are also integrated into DxO PhotoLab, where you can apply classic film looks at the same time as the latest digital corrections. 

DxO also publishes the Nik Collection, of course, so there is some crossover between FilmPack 5 and, especially, Silver Efex Pro and Analog Efex Pro, but FilmPack 6 takes a more scientific approach whereas the Nik plug-ins are arguably more experimental.

DxO FilmPack 6 new features

DxO says FilmPack 6 accurately renders “the soul of analog photography”. Using the same laboratory analysis applied to its raw processing and lens correction tools, with FilmPack 6 DxO aims to reproduce the grain and colors of legendary analog films. 

Now offering a total of 84 analog film looks, including iconic films like Kodak Tri-X 400, Ilford HP5, Fujifilm Superia and Polaroid 690, DxO has added 15 new films such as Ektachrome Professional Infrared EIR color slide film and Impossible PX 600 Silver Shade black and white for Polaroid 600 cameras, together with 7 film simulation modes from X-series Fujifilm cameras, to mark its new-found support for Fujifilm cameras.

As with DxO PhotoLab 5, this X-Trans support is still in ‘beta’. It works right now, but its final features are still under development.

On the technical side, FilmPack 6 now offers 8-channel hue, saturation and lightness (HSL) adjustments rather than the previous 6, for more precise color adjustments, in addition to the software’s split toning tools and highlight/shadow hue adjustment.

Perhaps the software’s most striking feature, however, is its new Time Machine mode, in collaboration with the Friends of the French Museum of Photography in Bievres, and which DxO describes as a unique and interactive introduction to the history of film photography. Separated into 14 historical periods, it offers both an illustrated history of photography, with sample images and insights into the developments of the time, plus suggestions and presets for creating the same looks with your own images.

FilmPack 6 pricing and availability

DxO FilmPack 6 is available in both Essential and Elite editions, and with special upgrade pricing for existing users. Prices are also discounted up until November 14.

FilmPack 6 Essential will cost $85/£75 normally, or $54.99/£48.99 with discount. The upgrade price from FilmPack 5 Essential will be $55/£49, or $39.99/£35.99 with discount.

FilmPack 6 Elite will cost $139/£129, or $109.99/£99.99 with discount, with an upgrade price from FilmPack 5 Elite of $79/£69, or $59.99/£44.99 with discount.

A full 30-day trial version is available.

DxO has released PhotoLab 5, the latest version of its high-end raw processing and editing software, now with support for Fujifilm X-Trans cameras.

DxO’s raw processing and optical corrections are amongst the best on the market, and PhotoLab 5 Elite, the top version, includes the company’s ground-breaking AI-powered DeepPRIME noise reduction process, which combines noise reduction the the raw demosaicing process itself.

PhotoLab 5 is aimed at photographers who want the best possible image quality from their raw files, and has been developed using the company’s own optical testing laboratories to include automatic lens correction profiles that don’t just correct distortion, chromatic aberration and corner shading, but lens softness too.

PhotoLab also incorporates the U-point technology inherited from its takeover of the Nik Collection, so PhotoLab 5 adds sophisticated local adjustments to the mix.

DxO PhotoLab 5 new features

With PhotoLab 5, DxO says it has made its DeepPRIME denoising process up to 4x faster on a new M1 silicon Mac, and 1.5x faster on the “best” Windows architecture.

Local adjustments have been improved with the addition of a new Control Lines adjustment to allow more sophisticated and controllable local masking.

The big news, though, is ‘beta’ support for Fujifilm X-Trans sensors. DxO has previously said that its demosaicing technology worked solely with regular bayer sensors, and that re-engineering it was not practical. The company has clearly changed its mind, however, so now Fujifilm camera owners can also get the benefit of DxO’s raw processing engine.

DxO describes this as ‘beta’ support, not to indicate that it might not work properly but to flag up that it’s still in development and that the company is keen for feedback from the Fujifilm community.

Other improvements in PhotoLab 5 include EXIF and IPTC metadata support in its PhotoLibrary module and an ‘interactive’ tree structure for creating, applying and managing keywords.

PhotoLab 5 also supports a series of new cameras, including the Canon EOS Ra, DJI Air 2S and Mini 2, Nikon Z fc, Olympus PEN E-P7, Panasonic GH5 II, Pentax K-3 III and Sony ZV-E10. X-Trans support has been added for a host of Fujifilm cameras, including the Fujifilm X-E2, Fujifilm X-E2S, Fujifilm X-E3, Fujifilm X-E4, Fujifilm X-H1, Fujifilm X-Pro2, Fujifilm X-Pro3, Fujifilm X-S10, Fujifilm X-T1, Fujifilm X-T2, Fujifilm X-T20, Fujifilm X-T3, Fujifilm X-T30, Fujifilm X-T4, Fujifilm X100F, Fujifilm X100T, Fujifilm X100V and Fujifilm X70.

DxO PhotoLab 5 price and availability

DxO PhotoLab 5 is available now in two editions. PhotoLab 5 Essential is the cheaper, at $139/£129, or $109.99/£99.99 with discount. You can upgrade from PhotoLab 3 or 4 essential for $74/£65, or $54.99/£47.99 with discount.

If you want PhotoLab’s more advanced features, however, including DeepPRIME noise reduction and ClearView contrast enhancement, you will need the PhotoLab 5 Elite edition, which costs $219/£199, or $164.99/$149.99 with discount. Upgrade pricing from PhotoLab 3 or 4 Elite is $99/£89, or $79.99/£69.99 with discount.

Both editions are available as a fully featured 30-day trial, as is the DxO Nik Collection 4 and DxO’s PureRAW automated raw processing and correction tool.

DxO has released a Nik Collection 4.2 update which brings native support for the Mac M1 processor, improved responsiveness in Silver Efex Pro and fixes issues when using the freshly redesigned Silver Efex Pro and Viveza with Capture One.

Apple's new M1 Macs, including the Mac Mini M1, MacBook Air M1, MacBook Pro M1 and more recently the iMac M1, have brought huge performance increases but left older Intel-based software running under Apple's 'Rosetta' emulation. 

"Users of Photoshop 22.3 (and later) working on a Mac M1 can run it in 'native' mode or with the Rosetta emulator. Up until now, they had to use Rosetta to be able to run Nik Collection." recalls Jean-Marc Alexia, Vice President Product Strategy. “With the 4.2 version of Nik Collection, users can now opt to run the software in ‘M1 native’ mode and enjoy an optimized user experience.”

What this means is that the Nik plug-ins now work with Photoshop in M1 mode, not that the plug-ins themselves have not been made M1-native.

The improved responsiveness in Silver Efex Pro is for local U-point adjustments, one of the strongest features in the Nik Collection and enhanced in this plug-in with Lightroom-style color range and luminance masking. With Silver Efex Pro 3, a new version for Nik Collection 4, the U-point adjustment sliders have been moved to the sidebar to allow a clearer view of the image being edited.

The Capture One compatibility fix is especially welcome. Where Photoshop and Lightroom use the Nik tools as plug-ins (they do now have this issue), Capture One uses the Nik plug-ins as standalone external editors, and changes to Silver Efex Pro and Viveza in Nik Collection 4 produced issues where editing changes did not appear in Capture One. (We checked and can confirm that editing from Capture One now appears to work exactly as intended.)

The Nik Collection 4.2 update is available to download now from the DxO website; DxO is also offering a discounted price on the Nik Collection up until October 10th.

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DxO PureRAW 1.2 adds the Fujifilm GFX 100S, Hasselblad X1D II 50C, Leica CL and TL2, and Sony Alpha 1 to its list of supported cameras. 

DxO has also added correction profiles for a whole series new lenses, including telephoto lens and teleconverter combinations, which will get their own profiles.

Here’s the full list of new lenses supported in DxO PureRAW 1.2:

Canon lenses
Canon RF 70-200mm F4L IS USM

Fujifilm lenses
Fujinon GF80mm F1.7 R WR
Fujinon XF27mm F2.8 R WR
Fujinon XF70-300mm F4-5.6 R LM OIS WR
- Fujinon XF70-300mm F4-5.6 R LM OIS WR with XF TC 1.4x WR
- Fujinon XF70-300mm F4-5.6 R LM OIS WR with XF TC 2x WR

Hasselblad XCD lenses
Hasselblad XCD 65mm F2.8
Hasselblad XCD 80mm F1.9
Hasselblad XCD 120mm F3.5
Hasselblad XCD 35-75mm F3.5-4.5

Leica lenses
Leica Vario-Elmar-T 18-56mm F3.5-5.6 Asph.
Leica APO-Macro-Elmarit-TL 60mm F2.8 ASPH.

Nikon Z lenses
Nikkor Z 20mm F1.8 S
Nikkor Z 70-200mm F2.8 VR S
- Nikkor Z 70-200mm F2.8 VR S with Z TC 1.4x
- Nikkor Z 70-200mm F2.8 VR S with Z TC 2x

Sigma lenses
Sigma 35mm F1.2 DG DN A (A019)
Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM A (A012)
Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN A (A020)

Sony lenses
Sony FE 600mm F4 GM OSS
- Sony FE 600mm F4 GM OSS with SEL TC1.4x
- Sony FE 600mm F4 GM OSS with SEL TC2x

Tamron lenses
Tamron 17-70 F2.8 Di III-A VC RXD (B070)
Tamron 70-300mm F4.5-6.3 Di III RXD (A047)

How DxO PureRAW works

Usually, you’re stuck with your own software’s rendition of raw files. If you use Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, you have to use Adobe’s own demosaicing and raw processing engine, which isn’t the best for detail and noise.

But DxO PureRAW uses the little-known ‘Linear DNG’ format to apply its own demosaicing, noise reduction and lens correction processes to produce Linear DNG file that other programs still see as a raw file, with all the white balance adjustment and dynamic range recovery still intact, but with DxO’s superior raw processing already applied.

The only downside is that DxO PureRAW doesn’t work with all cameras – Fujifilm cameras with X-Trans sensors, for example – and Linear DNG files are nearly three times the size of regular raw files.

It's not remotely technical. You give DxO PureRAW a folder full of raw files, tell it what format you want to use for saving them (it can also output regular JPEGs), tell it where you want them saved and then leave it to get on with it.

Where to get DxO PureRAW 1.2

DxO PureRAW 1.2 is available now from the DxO website. It’s a free upgrade for existing users or, if you want to try it out, there is a free 30-day trial. The price is currently $89.99/£79.99, reduced from the regular price of  $129/£115.

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