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DxO PureRAW Impressions

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Paul_DS256

Paul_DS256

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Joined
Mar 29, 2015
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1,243
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
LrC 10.2
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I've already commented on another post on PureRAW but here are some of my personal conclusions.

For background, I shoot with a Nikon D5300 and Olympus E-PM1 micro four thirds. For post processing, I use LrC and Topaz DeNoise and Sharpen. I shoot mostly landscape.

I downloaded a trial version of DxO PureRAW and tried it on some older pictures with ISO ranging from 400-25,600. I have not tried DxO Photolab which someone suggested as a comparison.

PureRAW is not a product I will be using for the following personal reasons.
  • PureRAW is giving me a preprocessed version of my RAW file in DNG format but I am not clear about everything it is doing.
    • I am not sure if I'm gaining anything using DxO's RAW converter over LrC's.
  • I feel Topaz DeNoise and Sharpening do the job I need and I have control on how they are applied
  • I don't have a need for extensive lens correction.
    • A problem I found was that it applies lens correction to my E-PM1 ORF files even though those are done in camera. LrC recognizes this and stops me from applying them again.
  • I feel I'm loosing control of the workflow. There is only a control for method of denoise in PureRAW. Reminds me of the choices of Topaz DeNoise methods but there, I have tweaking I can do on noise and sharpening settings. No such refinement in PureRAW
  • As the ISO increase, and need for more aggressive denoise, PureRAW adjusts the tonality of the photo. One recommended workflow for noisy images is to denoise first then make edits but PureRAW seems to be doing both.
  • The DNG file imported into LrC with "Development Settings" showing. Some of these are documented. The only items I could find changed is
    • The Amount control is showing for Adobe Color profile which it normally isn't.
    • Sharpening and denoise are zeroed which makes sense because of the preprocessing. You can reset the image but the lens correction stays.
I would urge others to download and try it themselves especially if they don't use an external DeNoise/Sharpening tools. There are limited controls so there is no learning curve.
 
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I would urge others to download and try it themselves especially if they don't use an external DeNoise/Sharpening tools. There are limited controls so there is no learning curve.
Click to expand...
Thanks Paul, that's what I did, and I'm quite happy with PureRAW so far. But yes, in the long run, I will have the need for fine tuning. Let's see what PureRAW 2.0 will bring.
My pros
  • Very good results without the need to do adjustments
  • Fits good into my workflow
    • Import raws into LR
    • Rating the photos (decide which photos are worth a closer look)
    • If a "rated" photo shows up noise, send the DNG to PureRAW
    • Set color label to yellow on the photos which were sent to PureRAW (to have a useable indicator)
    • Export the processed DNG and import them back to LR
    • Auto-Stack with time difference 0.0
My cons
  • No fine tuning in PureRAW
    • Sometimes the photos a bit too sharp.
  • Price is to high, at least for a tool with such less controls
By the way: To make my workflow even smoother, I developed a LR plug-in. It includes an export provider for PureRAW and allows to set some metadata on the sent photos (rating, color label, flags). Feel free to use it or even adopted it. For installation and usage see Readme.md.
 
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I just downloaded the trial version of PureRaw. I can see the improvement in the processed raw (DNG) file but the output file is massive. The average RAW file produced by my Nikon D810 is about 45MB and the average size of the DNG file is 140MB. This will impact my workflow as I may only want to process my 5-star images using PureRaw.
 
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murali said:
I just downloaded the trial version of PureRaw. I can see the improvement in the processed raw (DNG) file but the output file is massive. The average RAW file produced by my Nikon D810 is about 45MB and the average size of the DNG file is 140MB. This will impact my workflow as I may only want to process my 5-star images using PureRaw.
Click to expand...
That is to be expected. The name 'PureRAW' is misleading, because the DNG that is created is not a raw file. It is a linear RGB file, so it has three colors per pixel whereas raw has one color per pixel.
 
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Johan Elzenga said:
That is to be expected. The name 'PureRAW' is misleading, because the DNG that is created is not a raw file. It is a linear RGB file, so it has three colors per pixel whereas raw has one color per pixel.
Click to expand...
More specifically, a RAW file has no pixels. The correct term is photo site. It requires 4 photo sites to create 1 RGB pixel. It is a misunderstanding of many that the DNG file specification is a RAW specification. The DNG format is extensible. It can contain more than one data block. One of the data blocks can contain RAW photosite data values. Another can contain processed RGB pixel data and there is almost always a JPEG thumbnail data block. And this is a more correct explanation for what is contained in the DxO PureRAW DNG file format.
 
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murali said:
I just downloaded the trial version of PureRaw. I can see the improvement in the processed raw (DNG) file but the output file is massive. The average RAW file produced by my Nikon D810 is about 45MB and the average size of the DNG file is 140MB. This will impact my workflow as I may only want to process my 5-star images using PureRaw.
Click to expand...
Murali,
the same happened to me. So, I developed a small Lightroom plug-in (LRPureRAW). This plug-in provides an export provider for DxO PureRAW.
Possible workflow:
  • Import your RAWs in Lightroom
  • Make your rating
  • Even change development settings (PureRAW will keep development settings, but not lens corrections, sharpness, noice reduction, and vignetting (which is kind of obvious).
  • Export to PureRAW with the plug-in
  • Process in PureRAW
  • Export back to Lightroom
  • The (linera) DNG will be imported and your development settings will be applied
If you want, you may configure LRPureRAW, to set back the 5 stars from your original RAW, or/and give it an other color.
To stack the original you can use the standard auto-stacking of LR by setting the time difference to 0.
Feel free to use LRPureRAW.
 
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