Processing RAW using DxO - post your samples and tips - Part II

dan the man p wrote:

I use Linux, and while running DxO in a virtual machine is my normal workflow, a native solution has benefits. Recently I found out about ART, a fork of the well-known RawTherapee that streamlines the interface and adds some tools I find highly useful, including local editing with various masks and a tone equalizer (blacks, shadows, midtones, highlights, whites adjustment, some of which are available in RawTherapee but not grouped together in a convenient way). Another thing I like about it is that it can use RawTherapee's film simulations, which lets me easily change the look and feel of an image. I am really liking the results I'm getting out of ART and think I'll probably make it my main tool going forward.

Of course, the major advantage DxO has over the competition is its Deep Prime noise reduction. I wanted to give ART a torture test against one of my noisiest photos: a low-light portrait at ISO 5000 that was underexposed by two stops. Here is the best I could do straight out of ART:

Processed in ART

Still it's better than what I used to be able to get out of Canon's DPP 4 at ISO 3200.

Here is what I originally came up with last year with DxO:

Processed in DxO

Obviously, the noise handling is much better, as it's managed to get rid of most of the noise without smudging out all the detail. Next, I tried using DxO just to boost the exposure and do noise reduction, and export this as a TIFF. Then I loaded it into ART and did the rest of the edits there, including some local shadow lifting on the face, applied a film simulation (Fuji FP-100c Negative 1 --, which I arrived on by cycling through the available options and picking the one I liked best), and dialed down the colors a bit. Here is the result:

Exposure and noise reduction in DxO, then final processing in ART

The processing is a matter of taste, and I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with this particular version, but the point is that using DxO as a preprocessor is a useful way to go. That's not exactly groundbreaking information, but I thought I'd share an example.

Good point, processing is always a matter of taste of course. Even processing the same images six months apart I've found my preferences and workflows have changed.

The biggest PP change was when I first switched to DxO PL. I had a well-established, efficient workflow in DPP 4 before switching, and for non-noisy images was very happy with the DPP results. But there was a set of noisy images I could never get right with DPP.  After getting DxO PL I spent weeks going back through my images and re-processing many of them. With DxO it took far less time and I generally am happy with the results.  Now I couldn't go back to DPP!

I've also used darktable and gotten very good results. There are some very nice controls in datktable and its astro denoise was better than DPP, but DxO Deep Prime is far better so I no longer use darktable.