DxO Optics Pro - any questions?

[Ian]

DxO's Luc Marin is in town next week and I have a meeting booked with him so he can show me Optics Pro v.5.0.

If anyone has any questions I can ask him on your behalf, please let me know!

Ian

[StuartR]

DxO's Luc Marin is in town next week and I have a meeting booked with him so he can show me Optics Pro v.5.0.

If anyone has any questions I can ask him on your behalf, please let me know!

Ian

Personally, the main question I have for him would be "when does he expect DxO to have a stable release of v5 for windows?"

It's not meant to be a sarcastic question by any means, I know they will get there in the end, it's just a bit frustrating knowing we'll probably have a couple of months of regular maintenance releases to install before the majority of users are happy. (This is a similar scenario to v4 I'm reminded by several posters on the DxO forum). It could be that we're seeing more negative than positive posts on their forum and that this is not representative of the satisfaction of the actual user base. I guess happy users don't normally post "this software is great" type messages on forums!

There's a post on their forum from (allegedly) one of their beta testers who was really surprised they went to production when they did - he blamed it on "the suits" over-riding the "techies" at DxO. Be interested to hear his view on that - although I'm not sure which camp Luc is in :) .

Other questions would be:

"What happened to multi-core processor support in v5?"

"What's the ratio of Mac to Windows users of DxO Pro?" Another conspiracy theory is that Mac users represent the majority of the user-base and get a corresponding level of commitment to quality (which could explain why the Mac version hasn't been released yet :) )

Anyway, I managed to knock out a few more last night before a crash - be interested to see if you think it's all worth the fuss!

The following image is a pair of crops taken from the same RAW image displayed on-screen at 100%. One processed using CS3 only and the other as delivered by DxO (no other post-processing).

And the winner is......?

http://dpnow.com/galleries//data//500/CS3vDXO5.jpg

If I think of any more questions I'll post 'em.

[Stephen]

Well the right one for me Stuart, though I don't doubt the equivalent could be achieved in the left one with an extra tweak

[StuartR]

Well the right one for me Stuart, though I don't doubt the equivalent could be achieved in the left one with an extra tweak

You picked the right one obviously and, let me tell you, the one on the left had love and care lavished on it for hours...:)

[Patrick]

Well the right one for me Stuart, though I don't doubt the equivalent could be achieved in the left one with an extra tweak

Just my thoughts Stephen, both are very good the one on the right has just a touch more contrast, it also appears just slightly larger in the frame, any reason for that Stuart. To compare properly the full file would be needed.

Stuart
I must ask why you are so loyal to DxO when it is giving you so much grief?
If its the the lens correction options, I can't see that to be much of an advantage, I have rarely used the limited facility in ARC or Lightroom, the odd wide angle shot perhaps. I doubt in most cases any weaknesses in the lenses you are using will show, unless really big enlargements are called for.

Patrick

[Ian]

Just my thoughts Stephen, both are very good the one on the right has just a touch more contrast, it also appears just slightly larger in the frame, any reason for that Stuart. To compare properly the full file would be needed.

Stuart
I must ask why you are so loyal to DxO when it is giving you so much grief?
If its the the lens correction options, I can't see that to be much of an advantage, I have rarely used the limited facility in ARC or Lightroom, the odd wide angle shot perhaps. I doubt in most cases any weaknesses in the lenses you are using will show, unless really big enlargements are called for.

Patrick

Although I'm not a dyed in the wool user of Optics Pro like Stuart, I'm familiar with what it can do and although the latest version has teething problems, I'm pretty sure Stuart will say that the previous version worked reasonably reliably and did what was claimed on the packet. Basically it can knock image into a very good state without spending a lot of time on them. It's a lot more than optical distortion correction; it will intercept fringing, adjust various colour values and perform noise reduction, dynamic range enhancement and more all automatically and based on the measured characteristics of the camera body and lens combination. It may not produce a perfect result every time, but the idea is that it should get close so the finishing off work will be relatively simple.

Ian

[StuartR]

Just my thoughts Stephen, both are very good the one on the right has just a touch more contrast, it also appears just slightly larger in the frame, any reason for that Stuart. To compare properly the full file would be needed.

Stuart
I must ask why you are so loyal to DxO when it is giving you so much grief?
If its the the lens correction options, I can't see that to be much of an advantage, I have rarely used the limited facility in ARC or Lightroom, the odd wide angle shot perhaps. I doubt in most cases any weaknesses in the lenses you are using will show, unless really big enlargements are called for.

Patrick

Any slight size difference is probably down to the geometry adjustment in DxO (minor in this example) and resulting crop to square the image edges.

Why am I so loyal, good question! I guess Ian's put forward the case for the defence quite well but for me it was all about finding a solution to a problem.

The problem was I was despondent :rolleyes: , I'd been out of serious SLR photography for a while and I'd just spent a reasonable amount of money on a digital SLR (350D). Happy with the camera but unhappy with the kit lens (with the benefit of hindsight just as much down to me as the lens..) I'd splashed out even more money on the Canon EF-S 17-85mm lens to replace it. Initially I was happy with the new lens but after a while the evident distortion and vignetting at the wide end started to get to me.

I'd spent £1200 (the price then!) and was getting curvature so bad I could see it on a 6"x4" print from 50 paces and vignetting so marked you could be forgiven for thinking Stephen had processed the picture (now you know where my abject dislike of vignetting comes from Stephen :) ).

At the same time (bored yet?) I was really getting into RAW and trialling a number of RAW converters, my favourite at the time was RawShooter (especially as it was free at the time :D ) . Then I tried DxO - can't recall if someone told me about it or if I read about it somewhere - it might even have been a tip from someone on this forum.

Anyway, I downloaded the trial and tried a batch of images and that was it, I was hooked. All the edges in the pictures were straight, other noticeable optical distortions at the centre of the frame were gone, the vignetting was no longer noticeable and the pictures looked really vibrant - all this on the default settings! I think my mouth actually did drop open :)

All of a sudden I felt that I hadn't wasted my money after all and I had a camera & lens capable of turning out images that met my expectations. IIRC, I paid for my licence the same day that I had downloaded the trial.

I have no doubt that experienced users will get results just as good, if not better, using the other mainstream RAW converters out there but for me it was <corn warning> love at first sight </corn warning>. I'll continue to moan about reliability and performance issues that manifest themselves every time there's a new release but as the version matures I just know it'll be better than the last one - and I'd still be happily using that if it supported the 40D.

Now, if I hadn't bought the 17-85mm it might have been a different story...

[Ian]

Met with Luc this afternoon and had a comprehensive demo of DXO Optics Pro 5.

To answer Stuart's questions:

The current release 5.02 is pretty stable.

DXO released 5.0 initially with multi processor support disabled because there was an elusive bug. This has now been fixed and MP support is back in.

The performance issues with the initial release are down to missing Intel libraries that accelerate some image processing functions. Beta testing failed to detect this because the testers had the libraries already installed. The fault was in the installer. These issues have now been solved.

The break down of sales for Optics Pro are: 75% Windows, 25% Mac.

I am extremely impressed with the new RAW converter and low level noise reduction. If the comparisons I was shown are to be believed, DXO have clearly raised the bar on high ISO noise management and fine detail accuracy thanks to the new RAW converter.

Integration with Lightroom has been further improved, though Luc admits it can be improved further.

Overall, I was very impressed.

Ian

[StuartR]

Met with Luc this afternoon and had a comprehensive demo of DXO Optics Pro 5.

To answer Stuart's questions:

The current release 5.02 is pretty stable.

DXO released 5.0 initially with multi processor support disabled because there was an elusive bug. This has now been fixed and MP support is back in.

The performance issues with the initial release are down to missing Intel libraries that accelerate some image processing functions. Beta testing failed to detect this because the testers had the libraries already installed. The fault was in the installer. These issues have now been solved.

The break down of sales for Optics Pro are: 75% Windows, 25% Mac.

I am extremely impressed with the new RAW converter and low level noise reduction. If the comparisons I was shown are to be believed, DXO have clearly raised the bar on high ISO noise management and fine detail accuracy thanks to the new RAW converter.

Integration with Lightroom has been further improved, though Luc admits it can be improved further.

Overall, I was very impressed.

Ian

Hi Ian,

I'd agree that 5.0.2 is pretty stable but there's still complaints about it on the DO forum and I still get the occasional unexplained crash or a picture that just "disappears" from the project you're working on - a bit unsettling to say the least.

I think it would have saved DxO a lot of grief if they'd been upfront & honest about the multi-processor bug.

I guess the Intel libraries problem makes sense although a beta program that included a few voluntary testers in the user community would probably have identified it sooner.

The Windows / MAC split will certainly shoot down the conspiracy theories on the DxO forum :)

I'm quite happy with the results I'm getting although I've been of off ill (yes again!) and I've not spent much time with it since 5.0.2 came out. Hopefully I'll be back to normal (whatever that is) soon and I'll do some 4.5 <> 5.0.2 comparisons with some 350D RAWs.

I don't use Lightroom as I can't quite see why I need it in my workflow. I'm probably wrong and perhaps I'll revisit it, I know there are some on here who really find it useful.