hi i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft today i have the new photolab 4 software from dxo
the software is on general release from the 21st of october 2020 but dxo has kindly let
me have a pre-launch version which means i can make this video for the launch
if you're interested in what's new in photolab 4 keep watching
i'll start with a surprising statement the simple interface changes in photo lab 4 are probably my
favorite change as much as i liked photolab 3 i found the interface a little bit frustrating
it's not that there's any major problems with the interface it's just that it's
not very enjoyable to use in photolab 4 dxo has cleaned up and reorganized the controls
so that they make a lot more sense to the user if we look at the old photo lab 3 customized
tab interface where we do the editing you can see the controls over on the right
dxo arranged the controls vertically in sections which meant you were scrolling up and down to
find adjustments you needed in addition you could reorganize and add controls to any of the sections
as well as have them repeat this is very flexible but somehow not very user friendly
we can still add and remove controls in photolab 4 but now we have a series of tabs along the top
these organize the tools by function making it quick to find what you need
you don't find yourself continually scrolling up and down a long list of controls for example if
i want to apply the distortion correction for my lens i can click on the geometry tab and then turn
on distortion correction another way that you can locate adjustments is with the new search
feature enter the adjustments that you're looking for in the search box and it filters the view
just remember the search filters applied to the active tab so you may need to click on some of the
other tabs to check them another extremely useful feature is that you can mark controls that you use
regularly as favorites you can do this by clicking the little star to the right of the control
i can then click the option to filter the view to only show adjustments marked as favorites
the other extremely useful filter here is to show only the active controls
click this filter and you see only the controls where you've applied an adjustment overall these
are subtle changes to the interface but for me they've transformed the software's usability
the next thing that i want to look at are the workflow improvements as with the interface
changes these make the software more user friendly and in my opinion correct some
important emissions from earlier releases the first of these is the new battery naming feature
in the previous version of photo lab you could rename individual files from the menu but not
multiple images now you can rename multiple files at the same time if i select a group of
images and then pick rename from the image menu it opens the new battery naming dialog when you
use this you find that there are three options in the drop down that you can use to rename images
the add text option is simple and allows you to add a set text before or after an existing file
name after entering the text to add select the option to add it either before or after
the existing name at the bottom of the dialog you can see an example of the current file name
and how it will look once it's renamed this is a good option if you like to preserve the existing
file name but then prefix it with your own name and date of the image if you pick the rename and
add counter you can replace the existing file name completely with a new name this allows you
to define some fixed text and add a counter to make the file name unique you can define how long
the counter is as well as the starting number and if it appears at the start or the end of the name
the final option allows you to search the image name to find and replace a text string
for example i could replace dxo prime text in these images with the words youtube demo
the next improvement is to the copying and pasting of correction settings when i right click on an
image that i've already adjusted i can select to copy the correction settings in the pop-up menu
i can then select one or more images and paste those settings to them what's now possible in
photolab 4 is that i don't need to paste all of the settings by selecting the option to
paste selected correction settings i can see a dialog where i can select the settings to apply
for example if i don't want to apply the same lens sharpness settings
to all of these images i can uncheck that option now let's look at the new watermarking
feature water marking is unfortunately something we need to use a lot these days if we want to
prevent others from passing off our work as their own to help dxo has introduced an easy to use
water marking feature into photolab 4. you can use this to add either a text or image based watermark
i'll start with the simple example to add the word watermark to this image
after i've entered the text i can set the font and general position of the watermark
i can then use the scale and margin sliders to fine-tune its exact position on the image
there's also the option to set the blending mode and opacity of the text which allows
the underlying image to show through the text if you create a watermark and want
to reuse it in the future you can save it as a preset using the create new preset button
the preset then appears in the drop down at the top of this panel
here's an example of an image watermark i created using my logo you can see that there are similar
controls for the image watermark as there are for the text this is such a simple and
effective tool to use especially when you have lots of images you want to watermark
the final new feature that i want to discuss is one of the most exciting if you're a stickler
for image quality as i am if you already have dxo you'll know how great their lens corrections are
providing you're working with a raw file these settings can transform your image
quality even when shot with an old consumer camera
something else that dxo does well in photo lab is noise reduction the standard noise reduction
works well with any image format but if you're working with a raw file you can use the prime
noise reduction now prime noise reduction is very processor intensive so you only see a
preview of a small section of the image but you can reposition this to check different areas
what's new in photo lab 4 is something called deep prime which improves even further on prime this
example image was shot at iso 2500 if i applied deep prime and export the image to photoshop we
can check it at 100% magnification even when i zoom in further than 100 the image is clean
sharp and has lots of fine detail look how the detail on the bird's feathers have been preserved
but the thing about this example and a lot of the other images i've been using for this video
is that dxo supplied them and they're from high quality cameras some were shot with full-frame
dslrs and some are even shot with medium format cameras this type of raw file should perform well
so i decided to do some of my own testing with raw files from micro four third cameras
some of which are really quite old let me show you this sample file that i downloaded
from the dp review website it's shot with a panasonic g9 micro four three camera at iso 3200
when i zoom into 100% magnification you can clearly see lots of noise
if i apply the clear view and smart lighting settings the noise becomes even more obvious
now watch what happens when i turn on standard automatic noise reduction
the noise vanishes but so too does the fine detail in the image
let's compare this with the prime noise reduction and check the results on the guitarist's hand
prime noise reduction appears to preserve some of the fine detail in the skin but when i switched
to deep prime the results are nothing short of amazing with even the finest details being
preserved when i move over the eye you can see the detail in the hair and the eyebrows
and it's the same with the old image files that i've tested now i don't know how this will have
come across on the video because youtube does a lot of video compression and other things the
only thing i can say is that you need to see for yourself what this software can achieve if image
quality and noise reduction are important to you go download the trial version of the software and
test it with your own raw files which reminds me as well as all these new features and enhancements
dxo has also added support for several new cameras i'll leave you to check the list on their website
but i'll include a link to that and the trial software in the youtube video information
now for the big question of how much does all this cost as you would hope there's a valuable launch
discount which runs until the 19th of november 2020. dxo photo lab 4 is available in two versions
like photolab 3 was and the cost depends on the version you choose for the essential version the
discounted price is 89 pounds 99 or 42 pounds 99 for the upgrade and for the elite the discounted
price is 129.99 for the software of 54.99 for the upgrade if you want to understand the difference
between the two versions i'll include a link in the youtube video information and the final
question will i be upgrading from photolab 3 yes i will i find photolab 4 much nicer to work with
and dxo has addressed a lot of the limitations of photolab 3 but what's really sold me on photolab
4 is deep prime i just love the results i hope you found today's video helpful
i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another video