for the past week I've been using a beta version of DxO PureRAW 3 so that in this video I can share
what I like and don't like about the new software if you've never used PureRAW it's designed to
optimize the quality of your raw files using several DxO Technologies what it isn't trying
to do is replace your existing raw converter if you're already using say Lightroom think of DxO
PureRAW as a quality enhancing add-on now whilst these Technologies work well the previous versions
of PureRAW had a big problem they didn't give you enough control over the enhancements they applied
I'm pleased to say that this has been addressed in PureRAW 3 although I don't know if it will satisfy
everyone but before we get to that let's launch the application which we can do in one of three
ways the first is as a standalone application after opening the software we can add images that
we want to process I like to drag and drop them using my finder application but you can also use
an open dialog we'll come back to processing these in a moment because I want to show you two more
ways of launching the software the next is using the finder window on a Mac or the file explorer
on a PC when I right click on a raw file you can see that I have several PureRAW options in my
quick action section all I need to do is Click one of these to start the processing the third
way to launch the software is from Lightroom where it's available as a Lightroom plugin I've already
chosen some example files to process so we'll use one of these to see how it works the way to open
purr from Lightroom is in the plugin extras option in the Lightroom file menu please don't try to
right click on files and use it from the proper menu as you won't get the best results when the
software launches it automatically downloads any missing lens profiles before opening this dialog
these lens profiles are essential because they allow PureRAW to make its Optical Corrections
the dialog then allows me to choose the options to apply when I process the raw file if you're
familiar with the previous version of PureRAW you'll already recognize the dialogue and options
have changed for this example let's produce a dng file using the Deep Prime XD technology Deep Prime is
the dxo noise reduction technology and the XD stands for extra detail it uses AI technology
that's been trained using a huge data set of images taken over many years the example image
I'm processing here came from a Fuji xt3 camera using the Fuji 18 to 135 lens this lens is often
criticized as not being very sharp and for this example image that's certainly true now if you're
a dxo photolab user you may know that deep Prime XD isn't available for Fuji raw file yet at least
it wasn't until today as well as releasing PureRAW dxo has released a free update to photo lab to our
deep Prime XD for Fuji x-trans after selecting Deep Prime XD I can set my level of lens softness
if we compare the interface with the previous versions of PureRAW you can see this is new
previously you only had the option to apply Global lens sharpening or disable it there was no control
over the sharpening strength itself no we can set this to one of four levels as this is quite a soft
image I'm going to set it to strong I then have two more new options which are correct vignetting
and chromatic aberration these can be turned on or off as you need them by clicking with your mouse
after that we have a choice of lens distortions to apply in the previous version of pure raw you
can only turn this on or off now we can choose between one of three types of Correction we'll
come back to these later but for now I'm going to choose the original Crop ratio we then have the
output format which in the previous version only supported jpeg or dng file now in PureRAW 3 we have
the Tiff format that's been added it also notice that I can choose to Output all three formats at
the same time previously you could only output to one format at a time if you're wanting to produce
the image in multiple formats you needed to repeat the processing I can then choose the destination
to Output the new files to I'll leave this set to the original folder which will place the images in
a dxo subfolder there personally I'd like to see a subfolder option as something that you can toggle
on or off with the click of the mouse I'll also leave the file renaming set to add a suffix to
the original file name so that I know it's been processed by dxo finally at the bottom of the
dialog we have a new section where we can choose the application to export the files to again this
is a new feature as in the previous version of PureRAW plugin you would automatically export to
Lightroom now we can pick Lightroom Lightroom classic or photoshop as well as being able to
pick other applications so if I was exporting this as say a tiff image I might choose to send
it to one of the Nic collection applications or perhaps I want to export it to Affinity photo for
additional processing these are good improvements on the previous version of purera and it's made me
realize how restrictive the old version now feels after making my choices here I can click the start
processing button now on my seven-year-old Intel base Mac the processing takes around 30 seconds
for a Fuji raw file with these settings some people are critical of this performance but
personally I don't have a problem with it the Deep Prime XD option is certainly slower than the old
deep Prime version but it does render much better detail where performance may be a problem is if
you have a batch of images to process but don't worry because I'll show you something in a minute
that could be a game changer first though let's look at the quality of the results by comparing
the dng file from PureRAW 3 with the original raw file here are two versions of the image open side
by side in lightoom at 100 magnification if I start over on the left corner you can immediately
see the dng from PureRAW 3 is much sharper and more detailed this continues if I move up the left
side of the frame where you can see the trees are clearer and so too are the sheep in the field in
the center of the frame the Rock is now much more detailed and we can see the texture there then
over in the right corner we see plenty of detail in the grass and the Heather has just snapped
into Focus now let's go to the top of the frame because there's something you need to be aware of
notice the blue in the sky is different between the two images and we've got a color shift let's
go to the develop module for a moment because I'll show you what's happening if we check the original
raw file you can see that it's set to use the Fuji provia profile that's embedded in the image data
but when we look at the new dng file from PureRAW 3 that has the Adobe color profile this is why
there's a difference in the color between the two image files ideally PureRAW 3 needs an option like
Lightroom to respect the original color profile tag in the Raw data something else to be aware of
is in the Lightroom details panel here you can see the sharpening and noise reduction as set
to zero this is correct and part of the pure raw design that's because pure raw has applied noise
reduction and sharpening already so we don't want to apply it again please don't think this
is a bug because it isn't Now using an example of the image quality PureRAW 3 provides let's go back
to the Standalone version this time I'll select a couple of sample images to process by dragging
them and dropping them from my finder window these then appear organized by date in the light box but
you can pick a different sort order using the drop down to the top right of the interface all these
images were shot using a Fuji xt3 camera and a couple of lenses and because I processed similar
files in the past the lens modules are already downloaded to the software if I click the DX on
module option in the menu you can see a list of the modules in use this also gives you the option
to disable the lens modules but I don't actually know what the benefit of this is let's look at one
of the images now in detail by double clicking it in the light box this opens a browser where I can
magnify the image so you can see the noise in the sky this image was shot at ISO 3200 which you can
see in the information along the bottom of the screen there's also a small strip of thumbnails
so you can pick the image that you want to view let's close the view and now and return to the
light box in the old version of purera you would click the process Now button to start processing
but in PureRAW 3 we can add images to a processing queue we can then select the settings we want to
apply to those images as we did earlier for this image we'll use the same settings as before then
I can click the add to queue button after which we see the paused Queue at the bottom of the screen
if we want to see what's in the queue we can use the show Q button now let's select the next image
in the light box as before I'll click the add to cue button this time I'm going to set the lens
softness to standard but leave the other settings the same then I can add it to the queue for
processing now if we look at the queue you can see that both images are queued and will be processed
in this order this allows us to build up a queue of images that we want to process but each having
its own settings when you're ready to process them you click the continue processing button now
even though the queue is being processed you can still open it and change the order of the
images it's also possible to select other images and add those to the queue even though it's been
processed but for some reason I can't seem to get this to work on my software even though
I've seen it demonstrated once the processing is complete we have the option to review the results
this opens the image in the viewer again and we can see the Improvement if we magnify the image
you can see the difference in quality between the two states and the emission noise is gone back in
Lightroom let's compare the new dng file with the original raw image using default Lightroom
adjustments this shows you just how much better the pure all 3 image is now earlier I said that
the lens Distortion correction now had three options and now is the time to look at these
it's also a good opportunity for me to show you another problem you might run into let's open a
new image in the PureRAW 3 Standalone application I'll then add this to the processing queue using
the option to crop the image to the original ratio then I'll add it a second time but using
the maximum option and finally I'll add it a third time using the complete option if we look at the
queue you can see that I now have the same image I did three times but with different processing
options let's process this now to check the results unfortunately the viewer only allows
me to see one of the images that's because I made a mistake I haven't used unique names for each
file so each one has overwritten the previous ideally I'd like to see the option added to
Pure raw to automatically generate unique names on export fortunately though I've already processed
three versions of this image so you can see the different lens Corrections here's the first using
the standard crop that you're used to seeing next let's look at the complete option which reveals
the entire area of the camera sensor notice how we now see vignetting in the corner of the frame
also notice if we compare the rocks at the edge of the frame you can see more of them the only thing
that's really needed now is to apply manual corrections to the edges to remove the empty
space now for the maximum option which shows much the same detail as a complete option but with the
black areas removed at the edge of the frame we still see the additional areas but in the
corners the vignetting is gone now for a couple of questions that have come up in the past when
I've reviewed pure raw the first is can I process JPEG and Tiff files using pure raw the answer
is no you need to start with the original raw file this product is all about maximizing image
quality and it needs the original raw data to do that and you can't use a dng file either because
that's also been processed the other question relates to what happens to color and exposure
if we choose to Output a JPEG we've already seen a color change in the dng file which was caused
by the color profile if we now compare the jpeg we still seeing a color shift we can also see
evidence that the Shadow and highlight recovery in the processing of a JPEG with the dng option this
doesn't happen because the software assumes we'll be using a raw processor to adjust it at this
point I should probably say a little bit about the price my understanding at the time I recorded this
is that the price for the full version will be 115 pounds or 129 euros and there'll also be an
upgrade option of 69 pounds or 79 Euros I also don't know if the upgrade pricing will apply
to both the earlier versions of the product but that information should now be available on the
website I'll include a link to it in the YouTube video information below now earlier I showed an
example of using the complete method for lens correction that produced an image with block
edges that needed to be removed and although we could try to crop them out we'd lose a lot of the
image one way to remove the black areas without cropping is to use photoshop's content aware fill
and another way is to use the Photoshop warp tool which had demonstrated in this video to create
a wide-angle lens effect thanks for watching today and if you haven't done so already don't
forget to subscribe I hope you've enjoyed the review and I'll see you soon for another video