iPhone and iPad image support: Edit HEIC, HEIF, and Pro RAW from iOS devices
It’s unclear to me at this stage, but I don’t think the world-class denoising and sharpening capabilities of PhotoLab will be usable on iPhone images There’s still a lot to love. Especially if you use a dedicated camera as well.
I’m sure I’ve said it here before, but I will say it again. Nothing else in the industry compares on basic image quality from RAW files. Even when I have recently been using Lightroom (for it’s until-now much-superior masking capabilities) I still did the initial conversion with PhotoLab. It really is like upgrading your camera.
You do need to ensure your camera and lenses are supported, but they recently celebrated their 100,000th module (camera-lens combination). If you’re a ‘Canikon’ user you’ll almost certainly be supported.
Like you, also use DXO for raw conversion before I process my Fuji and Canon images in Lightroom / Photoshop (I use PureRaw, rather than PhotoLab, though). I also rely on DXO’s Nik Collection in my processing workflow, especially for black and white images.
I used to use PhotoLab, but switched back to Lightroom for its (at the time) superior masking and catalogue management tools, so it’s good to see DXO beefing up its capabilities in both of those areas. (I should add that I now also rely Lightroom / Photoshop’s distraction removal tools in both their “regular” and “generative” flavors. I don’t know if DXO can yet match those tools’ capabilities yet.)
I can’t recommend PureRaw enough if you’re using a Fuji camera with an X-trans sensor.
DeepPRIME XD3 for X-Trans is out of beta with PL9.
No, the healing tools is not improved in this version. It’s also worth noting the masking is not (yet) as performant as Lightroom’s, and there are some display bugs with it — the UI, not the results.
One of the thing that annoys me about reviewers is they predominantly look at features. Many “best” or ranking articles take this approach. PhotoLab is unlikely to win on this metric. It’s missing some fairly basic stuff and what it does have can be a little esoteric.
But where PhotoLab wins hands down is on quality. I trialled ON1 some years ago, based on its feature set, but I only ended up using it for a few hours or so before I went back to PhotoLab. I loved the ON1 feature set. It was well rounded on the basics and with some cool extras. But… its RAW conversion produced what I regarded as mush.
If you have a 40+ megapixel camera with expensive glass and you really nail your shots, it doesn’t really matter. If absolute quality is not on your list, then it doesn’t really matter. But with PhotoLab, I’ve gone back to photos I took in 2009 on a 10 megapixel camera with a fairly pedestrian lens… and they look like they were nailed with a 20+ megapixel modern camera.
And that’s before we even consider noise reduction. With the latest release, I’m now back 100% in PhotoLab. Yes, there are competitive denoising tools and yes there are better feature sets, but I can turn out this level of quality from a 25 megapixel camera with modest glass, using only a single app. Including the watermark custom-set on this image alone.
1/2000s, f/7.1, ISO 12800. A 6 megapixel scaling of an ~19 megapixel original (accounting for cropping).
I should note, I do still use Lightroom for my catalogue because I am insane with keywords and nothing has yet matched Lightroom’s capabilities on that.
I strongly agree about reviews tending to look at a list of features without necessarily exploring the quality of those features and so missing the most important things I want to know.
In the end, though, it’s about the images you want to produce, and which tools most help you to achieve pleasing results for a price and workload that works for you. I’ve tried PhotoLab 9 and agree it produces technically excellent renders, but I was unhappy with the results I was getting: the colours and “feel” of the images was not what I wanted. Capture One (which I was also trying) was very much better. Both of those are eye-wateringly expensive for my purposes I just can’t justify them. I’ve ended up rendering the raws in the camera manufacturer’s own app (Fujifilm RawX - which uses the camera to process them and passes them back to the mac) and then using On1 for any further work. The raw processing in on1 is “meh” at best.
I have a strange love-hate relationship with On1 but it fits with how I want to use my images and it works well enough, and is good value. I wish they were less hooked on adding every possible new feature, and would spend much more time and effort on the basic quality of the features they already have, but it seems to be what wins them positive reviews and sells their product.
Yes, I hear you on the “one app” approach. That’s sensible if you have a moderate to high volume of new images coming in. I’m now in a situation where I can be much more selective with the images I choose to work on, so re-processing them from RAW, using a multi-tool approach isn’t much of an issue.
I will certainly do a few A-B tests, using both On1 and DxO to see if I can notice the radical difference you mention. FYI, I already was using DxO PhotoRaw over Lightroom for challenging files just because their RAW engine did give me less noise and finer detail.
The esoteric nature of DxO software is indeed a slight detractor for me, and so typical of the French Also, their licensing model has annoyed me more than once - releasing new versions with minor discounts to existing users. Once purchased and installed, I’ve found the new version to not live up to their marketing hype in several cases.
The most significant take-away for me is that Adobe’s once massive advantage is gone. Unless you work in an environment with an end-to-end Adobe workflow, you have so many good options for really competent/professional software from other vendors. I switched away from Illustrator for Affinity Designer a decade ago, but has only quite recently started going all in on Affinty Photo too.
Also, their licensing model has annoyed me more than once - releasing new versions with minor discounts to existing users. Once purchased and installed, I’ve found the new version to not live up to their marketing hype in several cases.