24 February 2019

DxO's Unusual Approach to Photo Editing

The most widely used photo editors for professional photographers and serious amateurs is probably Adobe's Lightroom Classic and Photoshop combo. The newer mobile-centric Lightroom is more for non-professionals and for professionals who want to be able to perform some basic edits in the field. Several other applications that can be used as standalone applications also play well with Lightroom as plug-ins to add features that aren't built in to the Adobe products. One of those is today's topic, DxO's PhotoLab 2.

 Click any small image for a full-size view. To dismiss the larger image, press ESC or tap outside the image.

DxO is a French company best known for its OpticsPro lens correction technology and for its Prime noise reduction technology. Their first attempt at a raw photo processor application was Photo Lab, but the interface was cumbersome. Then DxO acquired the Nik collection from Google and used it as the basis for PhotoLab 2. Last year, I took a look at PhotoLab 2 and liked it, but an update late in the year caused some serious problems for users. A second update early in February resolved those problems and I decided to take another look.

Although PhotoLab 2 does have an organizer, I prefer Lightroom's approach. One important point to be aware of, though, is that any changes made to an image in Lightroom will not be recognized by PhotoLab. That means that it's better to use PhotoLab to perform the initial editing and then export images to Lightroom or to use Lightroom for the initial import and then export images to PhotoLab only when you need that application's special capabilities. After all, Lightroom can handle most images all by itself.

PhotoLab is the go-to application when you have only a single high-contrast raw file and want to create a realistic high-dynamic-range image, when luminance or chrominance noise is a problem, or when an image displays haze that can't be fixed with Lightroom's dehaze function. Let's take a look at such an image.

The image on the left is a raw image the way it came out of the camera. I realize that some people might prefer this look. It's slightly red because of the lighting, but there's little detail in the dark areas. I decided that I'd prefer to have more realistic color, so I used Phyllis's shirt, which is a neutral gray, to set a white point. PhotoLab's Smart Lighting combined with the HDR Realistic preset brought out detail in the dark areas but also accentuated the image's noise. This photograph was taken with a point-and-shoot camera at ISO 6400 so there was a lot of noise. The DxO high-dynamic-range preset illustrates one of the reasons you'll want to use PhotoLab.

Reducing noise usually introduces a visible amount of image blurring, so another reason for using PhotoLab 2 is its ability to reduce chrominance and luminance noise, two problems that are common when high ISO settings are used, without objectionably degrading the image's sharpness. Prime (Probabilistic Raw IMage Enhancement) is a noise-reduction tool that DxO says will let you shoot at a higher ISO. It works only on raw camera images. Prime is slow, though, because it needs to analyze the image carefully.

Looking at a 100% (1:1) view of the image, you'll see an enormous amount of noise on the right side. The noise is gone on the left side of the image. Noise reduction is important for images that will be printed, but less important for images that will be viewed at a reduced size on a screen.

Two versions of PhotoLab exist: Essential ($130) and Elite ($200). The Prime noise reduction feature and ClearView are available only in the Elite version, which is what I'm showing here. DxO specializes in optical analysis and lens corrections, so I wonder occasionally when Adobe will acquire DxO and incorporate DxO's noise reduction, HDR capabilities, and haze reduction that edges out Adobe's dehaze function.

The PhotoLab interface now has a PhotoLibrary panel that's more than just an image browser, but it's still far less capable than Lightoom's organizer, particularly when used with Excire, which I described in January.

I'm impressed by PhotoLab 2's ClearView feature, which cuts haze in landscape shots. At least that's its intended use, but you may find that it improves contrast and saturation in many images. Lightroom has a similar feature, but the DxO function seems not to introduce as much of a color cast as Lightroom's De-haze does in some situations.

Possibly the most remarkable feature of PhotoLab 2 is its ability to apply corrections automatically. Lens correction profiles are applied from information embedded in the camera’s image files and DxO has profiles for more than 40 thousand different camera/lens combinations. But it also selects and applies many other functions, as needed -- from color correction and lighting to noise reduction and clarity. As a result, the initial view may be considerably different from what any other image editing applications display. Users can then modify the automatic settings, turn on functions that PhotoLab didn't activate, and turn off functions that it did.

A new Microcontrast tool can improve image sharpness without introducing problems that sharpening often causes.

Let's take a look at an image from Wild Lights at the Columbus Zoo last December. The sky was dramatic, but the contrast (or dynamic range) was too much to be captured by the camera.

Lightroom did a fine job with this image, but I wanted to see what PhotoLab2 could do.

In most cases, using an application as a plug-in involves (1) right-clicking the image in the film strip view, (2) selecting Edit In from the menu, and then (3) choosing the plug-in application you want to use. DxO PhotoLab 2 isn't there, though.

Instead, after selecting the image in the film strip, the user opens (4) the File menu, selects (5) Plug-in Extras, and then chooses (6) Transfer to DxO PhotoLab 2.

PhotoLab 2 doesn't read any Lightroom edits, but significant corrections had been made. There's quite a bit of detail in the sky.

My final PhotoLab edit retained good detail in the lights and brought out more detail in the sky and the clouds, so I was ready to return the edited image to Lightroom. Clicking the Export to Lightroom button in the lower right corner should accomplish the task, but sometimes the result is a PhotoLab 2 crash. Fortunately, you'll find that your edits have been retained when you re-open PhotoLab 2.

Organization and workflow are important and DxO has improved both, the the main features of PhotoLab involve processing raw files and getting the most out of the camera and lens. Organization and workflow are shortcomings, even with this year's improvements, but PhotoLab is still worth considering because of its specialized features such as noise reduction and haze removal. The automatic modifications are often sufficient. If not, they at least create an excellent starting point because of Smart Lighting and ClearView Plus.

 Be sure to consider DxO's PhotoLab 2

Because the interface is still somewhat confusing and file management is limited, PhotoLab 2 would earn a still respectable 4 cats; but the application's automatic corrections and its remarkable de-haze function push it into 5-cat territory. It plays well with Lightroom Classic so be sure to check it out.
Additional details are available on the DxO website.

Short Circuits

If Your Windows 10 Computer is Slow, Maybe Somebody Else is Using It

Microsoft wants you to download apps only from the Microsoft Store because files you download from other locations might contain unwanted components. This week Symantec called Microsoft on sloppy vetting of applications.

Specifically, Symantec named 8 programs in the Microsoft Store that contain hidden code that uses your computer to generate Monero cryptocurrency secretly.

Monetizing free applications is a challenge. Some free applications display ads and offer to remove the ads if you pay. Others offer an option that allows the application to use your computer for cryptocurrency mining. The key word here is "offer". The applications cited by Symantec make no offer; instead, they surreptitiously install code that can slow your computer.

Symantec says that the apps are all from DigiDream, 1clean, and Findoo. The apps claim to provide a computer and battery optimization tutorial, internet search, web browsers, and video viewing and download functions. The apps use shared domain name servers and this means that they were probably published by the same developers using different names. [Image provided by Symantec]

The point of the Microsoft Store is to protect Windows users from this kind of abuse. Someone who downloads, installs, and uses one of these apps won't see that they secretly download a coin-mining Javascript library. The mining script then begins using a lot of the computer's CPU capacity to mine Monero for the developers. The apps have privacy policies, but the policy statements make no mention of Monero mining.

Guidelines for safe computing tell us to download applications only from trusted sources, but when Microsoft misses cryptojacking code in apps they approve, can the Microsoft Store still be considered a trusted source? In March of last year, Kaspersky Lab documented how one cryptomining gang made $7 million by infecting 10,000 computers with mining malware.

Microsoft has, of course, removed those apps; still, if you downloaded one and installed it, it's still on your computer and still using the hardware you paid for. The apps were published between April and December 2018.

If you'd like to learn more, including how the malware works, visit the Symantec blog.

Toast the Windows 10 Toast with Focus Assist

One of the questionable enhancements Windows 10 has brought to our computers is those little notices that slide in from the bottom right corner and then disappear before you've had time to read them. They're called "toast", I suppose because of the way they slide in, but no toaster I've ever seen slides bread out horizontally. But I digress.

Maybe you find these to be more of an annoyance than a help when you're trying to concentrate on a task, play a game, or use the computer to make a presentation. It's possible to make a lot of these little messages go away.

Open Settings and Navigate to System > (1) Focus Assist. Here you'll be able to specify how you want Focus Assist to work. I selected (2) only priority messages. Choosing alarms only is even more restrictive. Clicking "Customize your priority list" will allow you to specify which applications can interrupt you.

In the (3) rules section, I set Focus assist to be active from Midnight to 11:59 pm and specified that it should be active regardless of what I'm doing. Except for priority alerts, all messages will be stored in the Action Center. You can also use a Focus Assist button at the bottom of the Action Center to toggle between off, priority only, and alarms only.