A very interesting video. I usually take bird photography and I think it will help me a lot in developing the raw. Photolab video and bird photography would be interesting one day.
Good information for people who are less familiar with DXO-Photolab and are used to "traditional" highlight recovery sliders that work, as they should, over a limited range of tones. One aspect to be aware of is that the Selective Tone Sliders, as well as being very broad, introduce local contrast effects. This makes it appear that more detail is being brought back in clouds etc. All well documented in the DXO-Photolab forums. So you are not comparing like with like, as no other software applies this to their highlight recovery slider. Another way that helps DXO-Photolab is to choose a low contrast colour profile to minimise the intial blow out of highlights during conversion. ON1, C1 etc provide a "linear curve" for this reason. I believe it is possible to import linear profiles from Adobe DNG converter into DXO PhotoLab using its dcp profile function.
Thank you for the helpful input. Now that you mention it, I do notice the local contrast effects more in the black slider not so much in the highlights recovery. However some viewers did say DXOs processing look too HDRish. What would be the easiest way to choose a low contrast profile? Doesn't DXO provide this out of the box?
@@takebetterphotos8132 Interesting that you notice the local contrast (clarity) in the shadows. For me it is very obvious in the highlights particularly with grey skies, where pulling down the Highlight slider appears to recover detail whereas in reality it is creating detail through local contrast which increases highlight edge tones and darkens darker edge tones. In other software you just need to apply clarity to the sky to replicate DXO. I wish DXO would introduce an industry standard highlight recovery slider as in LR, C1 etc. I think that the Neutral Colour profile has the least initial contrast but DXO, who have problems because their tools are not very effective, choose to not provide the easy answer of a linear profile. They seem to adopt the approach of if they didn't think of it first, then they are not going to copy. I find this approach arrogant and disrespectful of their customers. Note I have used Optics Pro and all versions of Photolab. The easy solution is to use the free create Adobe DNG converter and Adobe DNG Editor to create a linear profile for your camera. Once you have the software installed it only takes a couple of minutes to create the Linear profile: 1) Convert a raw file to DNG using Adobe DNG converter. 2) Load the DNG into Adobe DNG Editor 3) Select Linear curve from the Tone tab 4) Select Adobe Standard from the Colour tab 5) Export the Linear Profile - Give it a sensible name 🙂 6) Import the dcp profile into Photolab. It might be worth a follow up video to expand DXO Highlight recovery to cover "Difficult" images where the Linear profile is a must? You don't need the linear profile for most images as it is low contrast and you have to then build back to the contrast you need in the final image. However, for difficult images it is a life saver. 🙂
Thanks Ian for the detailed instructions. For sure DXO wants to do things their way or the highway! Unfortunately I do have a bunch of these difficult images so I hope to try this out and if it works make a video as you suggested! But yes, DXO should just improve their highlight recovery similar to ON1 which just improved their highlight recovery in their last release.
Hi, This is a great set of tips for DxO PhotoLab users to be experimenting with. Thanks for the Video. Michael
Glad it was helpful. I learned the hardway you need to know DXO's unusual behavior to get a better looking edit.
A very interesting video. I usually take bird photography and I think it will help me a lot in developing the raw. Photolab video and bird photography would be interesting one day.
Yes need to know the behavior of photolab or the edits will look subpar
Good information for people who are less familiar with DXO-Photolab and are used to "traditional" highlight recovery sliders that work, as they should, over a limited range of tones.
One aspect to be aware of is that the Selective Tone Sliders, as well as being very broad, introduce local contrast effects. This makes it appear that more detail is being brought back in clouds etc. All well documented in the DXO-Photolab forums. So you are not comparing like with like, as no other software applies this to their highlight recovery slider.
Another way that helps DXO-Photolab is to choose a low contrast colour profile to minimise the intial blow out of highlights during conversion. ON1, C1 etc provide a "linear curve" for this reason.
I believe it is possible to import linear profiles from Adobe DNG converter into DXO PhotoLab using its dcp profile function.
Thank you for the helpful input. Now that you mention it, I do notice the local contrast effects more in the black slider not so much in the highlights recovery. However some viewers did say DXOs processing look too HDRish. What would be the easiest way to choose a low contrast profile? Doesn't DXO provide this out of the box?
@@takebetterphotos8132
Interesting that you notice the local contrast (clarity) in the shadows. For me it is very obvious in the highlights particularly with grey skies, where pulling down the Highlight slider appears to recover detail whereas in reality it is creating detail through local contrast which increases highlight edge tones and darkens darker edge tones. In other software you just need to apply clarity to the sky to replicate DXO. I wish DXO would introduce an industry standard highlight recovery slider as in LR, C1 etc.
I think that the Neutral Colour profile has the least initial contrast but DXO, who have problems because their tools are not very effective, choose to not provide the easy answer of a linear profile. They seem to adopt the approach of if they didn't think of it first, then they are not going to copy. I find this approach arrogant and disrespectful of their customers. Note I have used Optics Pro and all versions of Photolab.
The easy solution is to use the free create Adobe DNG converter and Adobe DNG Editor to create a linear profile for your camera. Once you have the software installed it only takes a couple of minutes to create the Linear profile:
1) Convert a raw file to DNG using Adobe DNG converter.
2) Load the DNG into Adobe DNG Editor
3) Select Linear curve from the Tone tab
4) Select Adobe Standard from the Colour tab
5) Export the Linear Profile - Give it a sensible name 🙂
6) Import the dcp profile into Photolab.
It might be worth a follow up video to expand DXO Highlight recovery to cover "Difficult" images where the Linear profile is a must?
You don't need the linear profile for most images as it is low contrast and you have to then build back to the contrast you need in the final image. However, for difficult images it is a life saver. 🙂
Thanks Ian for the detailed instructions. For sure DXO wants to do things their way or the highway! Unfortunately I do have a bunch of these difficult images so I hope to try this out and if it works make a video as you suggested! But yes, DXO should just improve their highlight recovery similar to ON1 which just improved their highlight recovery in their last release.