My Lightroom to DxO PhotoLab Workflow Explained

In this video, I explain my workflow to integrate DxO PhotoLab with Lightroom. I also share the DxO PhotoLab settings that I like to use, demonstrating how to apply them to one of my images. These are the settings that I believe give my exceptional image quality and they can do the same for you.
DxO PhotoLab
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DxO ViewPoint
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[@wojciechskorza3051]

These short videos are fantastic and help me in my creative approach to image processing, for which I am very grateful. I will not mention the written guides, where you have included a compendium of knowledge necessary to understand how to work with a given program for such a low price that it would be rude not to mention this nice addition. Greetings from Poland, from the city of "Przemyśl Fortress".

[@RobinWhalley]

You're welcome. I'm glad you like the videos.

[@dominiclester3232]

Super clear, thanks!

[@RobinWhalley]

You're very welcome and I'm pleased you think so.

[@ChrisBishop0303]

Another great tutorial Robin, thanks

[@RobinWhalley]

Glad you enjoyed it. Thank you.

[@jasonlacey5979]

Excellent.. thank you . Certainly increased my understanding of DXO.

[@RobinWhalley]

Great to hear. Thank you.

[@sounderdavis5446]

Bravo! You packed this 8-minute video full of valuable tips for both newbies and veterans of DxO PhotoLab. I've been reediting old photos I shot of city architecture and needed to correct perspective but found myself regretting content lost in those black triangles. With such images, there is often a fix, as long as the triangles aren't too big: return the image to Lightroom Classic without constraining the crop; i.e. leave in the black triangles. Then in LrC, Edit In > Adobe Photoshop and use Generative Fill, drawing the Lasso tool loosely around the black triangle. The result needs to be checked with Zoom but often is quite good; sometimes Remove tool helps clean up introduced odd details. It would be better to shoot wider when possible, even doing a panoramic stitch of a series of shots of a building, to allow room for perspective correction, but when you're editing an image you can't go back and reshoot, DxO ViewPoint + Photoshop's Generative Fill can do wonders.

[@RobinWhalley]

I'm glad you liked the video. You're right about the alternative ways to deal with the black triangles. If I want to extend what was there I use either generative fill in Photoshop or InPainting in Affinity Photo. Both can do a good job. Most of the time I opt to crop.

[@sounderdavis5446]

@@RobinWhalley In the image in this video, I didn't miss the black-triangle material and agreed the shot was improved by cropping. But when perspective correction cuts off, for example, corners of a cathedral or art deco building, then filling those back in can work well.

[@RobinWhalley]

@@sounderdavis5446 Yes, I totally agree.

[@bens9599]

Robin, this is a helpful AND interesting video. I've edited enough videos to understand how much work goes into making a well illustrated video such as this. Just one suggestion that would maximize your effort: please render your videos in 4K. The added resolution would add needed clarity to your work. Thanks!

[@RobinWhalley]

Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately I don't have the bandwidth connection available in my area to upload the file sizes created by 4K video. It's a non-started until that get's fixed.

[@iandrury1542]

Would this workflow also work with Affinity Photo 2 and be of benefit to my m4/3rds image files, both Olympus & Panasonic Robin ? If so which DXO products might suit my needs. Thanks for your excellent videos that have helped me with Affinity.

[@RobinWhalley]

You can’t launch it from Affinity like you can Lightroom. I would suggest starting with PhotoLab to manage your files. You can then use the same adjustments and export the image as a Tiff and then edit that in Affinity Photo. This might make a useful video topic. Thanks for the question.

[@Hikebike365]

Thanks so much for this and several other DXO centric tutorials! Have 2 questions: I'm a long time Fuji and LR 6 user. ( I refused to join the subscription model and stuck with Lr 6. Which worked fine as I didn't feel the need to upgrade my Fuji camera bodies once they got to 24mp. ) Just upgraded one body and now I need to upgrade my SW. DXO looks like the best available for printing Fuji Raw files from what I'm seeing. Do you have any other strong candidates? Also, is there a way to easily reference and learn what all the controls do and how they operate in DXO 7? My understanding of Lr6 is pretty solid but much of the DXO controls aren't named similarly and there are names that don't really explain functionality? .... Hope that makes sense

[@RobinWhalley]

I don't follow your point about printing Fuji RAW files. DxO is excellent for processing Fuji RAW files and it has a good printing feature. If you want to stick with LR, try processing Fuji RAW files using DxO PureRAW. You will need to test this but it may be that the DNG files produced by PureRAW can be read by LR6. If you are interested in PhotoLab, then there is a guide available on the DxO website. userguides.dxo.com/photolab/en/

[@munckmb]

Is the Lightroom denoise option and perspective corrections not the same? What's the difference?

[@RobinWhalley]

The quality of the corrections. Lightroom Denoise and Perspective corrections are very good but I don't think they can match DxO PhotoLab. This does however depend on the RAW file you are processing. Nikon and Canon RAW files tend to process very well using Lightroom in my experience so you might not notice any improvement if that's what you use.

[@henkhenk4357]

What if you want to revisit the dng file a second time in PL7 from within lightroom (after it has been exported to Lightroom the first time). Apparently the edit setting from the first pass are not restored. Maybe I am doing something wrong ? Thx !

[@RobinWhalley]

Don't edit the DNG file. You should go back to the original RAW file where you applied your adjustment. That should still show the changes you applied in PhotoLab. Make your changes to the RAW file and then re-export the DNG. When you do this I would recomend overwriting the original RAW file when prompted (but that's my personal preference because I find it easier to manage).

[@henkhenk4357]

@@RobinWhalley Thank you, will try that !

[@theoweijmer]

Thanks for the video but when I use the plugin in Lightroom I get the message that my camera is not supported when I try to export from Lightroom to DXO 7, I use Om-5. This is pity because LRC is my photo library, getting photo's into DXO takes a lot of effort and therefore I hardly use DXO.

[@RobinWhalley]

The OM5 has been in DxO PhotoLab since version 5.7. Here's the link to check it: www.dxo.com/supported-cameras/. If you see an error message, I recommend reporting it to DxO support. I don't understand your comment that getting photos into DxO takes a lot of effort. DxO PhotoLab reads any RAW files and supported image files on your disk. You don't need to import them like you do in Lightroom.

[@theoweijmer]

@@RobinWhalley thank you for your respons. I will contact support. my workflow is mainly importing and converting to DNG in LRC. After importing I do a HDR merge (I shoot mainly landscape with exposure bracketing), when I export this last merged image I get the message, also if I want to open this HDR merged image directly in the DXO file browser the picture is rejected. My workaround is to export the HDR image as a TIFF and then opening that TIFF in DXO. After editing in DXO I need to import that picture in LRC again, and add the collection folder, that’s the effort :-)

[@henkhenk4357]

I am testing Photolab 7 but came upon a serious issue that seems to be present for Fuji medium format sensors. When you push the shadows in PL7, there can occur some serious banding in the preview. Have sent an example to DxO support, waiting for some feedback. Anyone else experienced this ?

[@RobinWhalley]

I tried a couple of test files that had been supplied to me from a Fuji GFX100 and I can't see an issue. Hopefully DxO will get to the bottom of what's happening. Out of interest, have you tested this in both the Wide Gamut colour space and the legacy colour space to see if there is a difference. Banding problems tend to be caused when editing low bit depth (8-bit) images in wide gamut colour spaces. I'm wondering if there is something going wrong with the internal calculations of the software because of the GFX 16-bit capture as most cameras capture 12 or 14 bits. Just a theory but it may be worth testing to see if it makes a difference.

[@henkhenk4357]

@@RobinWhalley Thank you for your thoughts. It are images from Fuji GFX 100 II with 16bit depth and edited in wide color gamut. I had this issue before with Fuji GFX 50s II and revisited the issue after I got the new GFX 100 II. Same problem. It is just now I have reported the issue. But I am not alone, I found ‘older’ threads reporting the same problem with Fuji medium format images. So the problem exists already for some time, which I find a bit disconcerning. I hope they can fix the issue, but until then I cannot trust and use this software. I could not reproduce the issue with Fuji X aps-c files. But nevertheless I am still not convinced that the quality of PL7 is better then lightroom’s rendering and lightroom already being very good and very versatile (masking, printing, …)

[@garavonhoiwkenzoiber]

5:16 "it takes a lot of effort so they only show you a small section" but DXO Pure Raw 4 can do a full image though?

[@RobinWhalley]

Yes, that's correct. Regarding PureRAW 4, you need to remember this is a recent release, coming after after PhotoLab 7. We may find a similar preview feature in the next version of PhotoLab whenever tht is released. Additionally, PureRAW 4 doesn't do a preview of the entire image, at least not showing the effects of DeepPRIME. When the full image is displayed, it's rendered (I suspect) with regular noise reduction and lens correction. Then when you zoom to 1:1, that's when you see the preview of DeepPRIME. If you watch, there is a pause while the system renders the detail. HOw long a pause depends on your computer.

[@garavonhoiwkenzoiber]

@@RobinWhalley thanks for the reply :) Interesting to know PureRaw4 is newer than PhotoLab 7. I'm currently using the trial for both, wondering which one to keep (I'm leaning towards PureRaw 4 + Lightroom)

[@RobinWhalley]

@@garavonhoiwkenzoiber PureRAW 4 is very convenient if you are a Lightroom user. PhotoLab is more of a Lightroom alternative but I tend to use it when I want more control over the processing, like with Micro 43 images. I have both so that I can make videos for this channel.

[@lensman5762]

Does Photolab work as standalone or it needs LR? I like DxO software, but I am not prepared to pay a subscription to Adobe, just to instal Photolab.

[@RobinWhalley]

No, PhotoLab is standalone and an exceptional RAW editor. You don't need Lightroom for it to work. You can also use it to manage your photos. I don't and still use Lightroom because I have so many years invested in my Lightroom Catalog that I can't easily make the switch. I therefore use the integration as I demonstrated in the video.

[@lensman5762]

Thanks for the reply, Robin.@@RobinWhalley

[@Dexter101x]

Is DxO compatible with Lightroom 6?

[@RobinWhalley]

I'm sorry I don't know. The best thing I can suggest is to download the trial version of PhotoLab and test it. I don't know if Adobe has changed the Plugin architecture since Lightroom version 6 or which version of DNG it supported or which version PhotoLab generates.

[@lexbraxman9270]

I dont know

[@Zealor365]

This software is obviously aimed at professional imagers who are creating files for publication or advertising.

[@RobinWhalley]

Not really, although you could use it for that. It's aimed at anyone who takes photography seriously and wants to produce the highest quality images whether they are pro or amateur. A good example is if you want to enter a photo competition or produce prints or are part of a photo club. But it all you want to do is post small images on social media, it probably isn't the right tool.