DXO Optics Pro

[Big Mike]

Has anyone seen or used this Software http://www.dxopro.com/ ?

A co-worker of mine said he is considering getting it and was asking me about it. I hadn't heard about it so I did some reading...and it looks pretty freaking good.

Basically, it's an automatic image editor. It can do things like correct color (like auto levels in PS), bring down highlights (looks to be about the same as Highlight/shadow), sharpen & reduce noise etc. But the really impressive part is that it automatically corrects for barrel distortion and chromatic aberration. How does it do that, you ask? Well, it uses specific profiles for your camera and lens...which they created after extensive testing....and it's all automatic. You can have a folder of images shot with different cameras and lenses and as long as they are supported...you apply any or all of the corrections to the images as a batch. (it reads the EXIF data)

The brightness, sharpness, highlights etc. is all stuff that you could batch in Photoshop...but the automatic correction of barrel distortion is really amazing.

Micheal Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape said (paraphrase) that it can turn a poor lens's performance into above average...and a good lens into something really great.

The new version is supposed to integrate right into Photoshop.

My Co-worker said that it's $149. But if you consider that it will make a $300 lens perform like an $800 lens...it may be well worth the money. Especially for someone who wants to edit large numbers of images (wedding photographer).

I'm really surprised that I've never head of it before...anyone else know anything about it?

 

[newrmdmike]

i have heard about this program and want it. i've been told that the distortion correction is unreal, and have seen examples of it, you could do this in photoshop, but i doubt many people including myself could do it as accuratly or as quickly.

however, i don't know anyone who has it personally. i think bambi cantrell has it, but she didn't glorify it at the seminar, but she did glorify some filter sets etc. so i'm not sure about this one. i would definatly buy this if i had lenses that i wasn't super happy with, or if i was having distortion problems.

but i'm not sure . . .

 

[Big Mike]

The person that I know is getting it mostly because he wants the Canon EF-S 18-85 IS lens...but he is worried about the distortion and CA that is suffers from.

 

[slickhare]

hmmm, this sounds like something i could really use. auto levels keeps doin me wrong

 

[JohnMF]

hasn't CS2 got a barrel distortion filter already built in?

 

[Alex_B]

dxopro has distortion correction for various lenses, that means the correction is calculated from a database with respect to lens and focal length. in photoshop CS2 you have to correct by hand, which is much more tedious.

distortion correction is becoming more or less standard in raw converters currently. I myself got very good experience with Bibble, which also does spot healing and noise reduction. but there are many other similar programs out there.

I remember there were some bad reviews on DxO where people said one would realise it was made not by photographers and the workflow was terrible. As I never used it myself, I could not comment on this.

 

[mrcoons]

Bump.

Has anyone tried DxO Pro lately? Any new comments?