Last year, Adobe added a new tool to Lightroom that allows photographers to edit photos for HDR displays. It will enable you to access the full colour range in RAW files. The video below is an excellent explanation of how to use this new tool.

The two images below were captured with an X100V1 camera; the first was processed using this new tool, and the second is the same image with the HDR button turned off. The difference between the two is that the HDR setting lets you extract up to four additional stops of highlight detail from the original RAW file. To my eye, it creates a much cleaner look with greater colour variation.

DxO Labs, a French software company, was a site I used to go when buying camera equipment to review their lens and camera test results. At the time, I was unaware that they were also producing software to correct issues in digital cameras and lenses. The testing division in 2017 was spun off as a separate company called DXOMARK. I suspect that much of that testing information was used to develop several DxO Lab software products. Today, those products are entering the mainstream in the photoprocessing industry.

In 2004, they released DxO Optics Pro, digital editing software, and then in 2012 they acquired the Nik Collection from Google. Software that had initially been developed in concert with Nikon. Then, in 2018, they re-released the Nik Collection as a DxO product; in 2021, they released Dx Pure RAW. To make a long story short, today they have the following products DxO PhotoLab photo editing software ; DxO FilmPack film emulation software; DxO ViewPoint distortion and perspective correction software; DxO PureRAW RAW development software with groundbreaking noise reduction and detail recovery; and Nik Collection now in version 8.2.

Today, several well-known photographers suggest that the DxO family of software can outperform Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop, which have long dominated the market. It has been suggested that Adobe accounts for about 58% of the market, while DxO likely accounts for around 2%. One has to wonder whether or not Adobe’s much-hated subscription model will survive one more non-subscription product.

One of the more popular YouTube photography channel broadcasters, Tony Northrup, a year ago began suggesting that it is a professional alternative to Adobe products. In his latest podcasts reviewing the new versions of DxO products, he is now suggesting it processes RAW files better than Lightroom.

This year, Andy Hutchinson, another somewhat irreverent YouTube broadcaster, suggested that the three high-end commercial photography editing programs are Lightroom, Capture One and DxO. He further indicates that DxO now offers the best demosaicing, denoising, lens correction, and masking. Others echo similar perspectives, including Todd Dominey.

Fstoppers is another well-known YouTube channel, suggesting that DxO products can hold their own against Adobe products.

Testing DxO Pure RAW 4

The image below was taken with a medium-format 100 MP camera at 500 ISO, 1/30, f/10. The image on the left is the RAW file in Lightroom; the image on the right has been processed in DxO. This section of the image is shown at 400%.

This is the same comparison, except that the Lightroom image on the left has undergone AI denoising in Lightroom.

Finally, the two images have undergone identical adjustments in Lightroom. It is striking that there would be such a difference in colour, contrast, sharpness, and resolution. Again, Lightroom on the left and DxO on the right.

Keep in mind, I did not use the more comprehensive DxO RAW plug-in. The image below shows the interface for manual adjustments. The Lens softness compensation offers four options, and the image crop provides three.

Finally, here is a comparison between the DxO file on the right and a RAW image processed in Capture One on the left, with the same Lightroom adjustments applied to both images.