DxO PhotoLab 4 – review

DxO has just revealed a major update of their photo-editing software, DxO PhotoLab 4. As a DxO ambassador, I have had the great opportunity to use it in advance and below I’m sharing my thoughts and experience with it.

DxO DeepPrime

Thanks to 15 years of analysis of millions of photos DxO has created DeepPRIME that delivers mindblowing result with its denoising technology. It’s based on artificial intelligence technology that demosaics and denoises an image in one step resulting that the rendering of an image taken in low light with high ISO is as far as possible true to reality. It’s not very often that I shoot in low light situations, but it happens from time to time. It could be a milkyway, like the photo you can see in the beginning of this article or simply a sunset or sunrise when I’m not using any filters. One example is an evening this summer when I saw a beautiful sunset from my balcony and didn’t have the time to use my tripod nor filters. Instead, I increased the ISO, however, as you can see in the before photo is has lots of noise and doesn’t look very flattering to the eye. With just one click in DxO Photolab 4, DeepPrime made some magic and I’m very pleased with the result. In the photo below you can see a close-up of the same shot.

If you shoot in low light situations this feature will save the photos you thought were ruined due to high noise and bring back life to them.

Are you an astrophotographer? Or a landscape photographer who also enjoy capturing the stars in the sky or even the Milky Way? Then you will love DeepPRIME!

DxO Smart Workspace

When I was new to DxO Photolab I found it at times to be time-consuming to find the tools I needed, I already had my workflow I was used to in Lightroom and it took me some extra time to familiarize with the tool palette in Photolab. That’s why I’m happy that with the new DxO Smart Workspace, you can easily create your own customized workspace. The tools are all categorized under Lights, Color, Detail, Geometry, Local adjustments, Creative and you can also activate a star that is visible next to all the tools and they will show up when you click on the star in the workspace menu.

There is also a new search field where you can type in the specific tool you are looking for instead of searching for it in the palettes.

Using a smart workspace will save you time so you can spend more time on the fun part, editing your photos!

Batch renaming

Are you about to send a collection of photos to a client and you need to edit the file names? Forget about changing the names on all the individual files, thanks to the new feature with batch renaming now you can easily do it on multiple files. You can either search/replace text in the files, add certain text before or after the original text of the file names and rename the files entirely.

DxO Advanced History

Sometimes when I have been going a bit too far in my editing, I haven’t had any other option than going back separately or simply reset. Thanks to DxO Advanced history I now have a better overview of what I have done in my workflow and can reset the actual edits I wish. DxO PhotoLab 4 shows all edits you have made in chronological order so you easily can keep a track of what you have done previously.

DxO Instant Watermarking

Last but not least, DxO is also launching a new feature with instant watermarking. Now you can add your logo or simply your name on your photos that you are publishing online or if you are sending a proof sheet to a client you can watermark multiple images protecting your work. What’s unique with DxO instant watermarking compared to other editing-softwares that are providing the same feature is that here you can preview the final version directly. It also includes several blending modes letting you adjust its visibility. There are many fonts to choose among as well and you can also adjust the opacity.

Conclusion

It’s been some time I’m working in DxO PL4 and I really enjoy the new features and updates! The main takeaway from this version, in my opinion, is definitely that I can work more time effectively and use my time on the more fun part which is editing. I’m also very impressed by DeepPrime. Even though I rarely shoot in low light or with high ISO, but when I do, I also want a software that can handle it and denoise the image without decreasing the quality. The way DeepPrime renders the images is fascinating, I have never seen similar results when using other editing softwares. If you want to streamline your working process or if you are a photographer that often is shooting in lown light or with high ISO truly recommend this new updated version of Photolab by DxO.