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Thank you for the Tutorial. If sending the file out for print, do I just export the virtual copy and advise the printer of the rendering intent used with the specific ICC profile?

Actually the free Darktable raw processor is better than Photo Lab x - even better than Lightroom, ACR and Capture One. 'Unfortunately' it is open source and free for everybody to use, and that combined with a more advanced and layer like structure and an extended masking system and generally without any need for expensive addons makes it suspicious to many new users. The only weakness is a limited noise reduction with high iso. I use DxO PureRAW 4 up front to deal with noise, and the output DNGs are processed like any other native raw file in Darktable. I have PhotoLab 7 at hand, and sometimes with reluctant images I use it for comparison, but I have not yet been able to make a better edit in PL7 than in DT. Of course the open source concept makes it less interesting for potential affiliates as no money is involved, so the promoting parties on e.g. YT are the satisfied users.

I use DXO Photo Lab 8 with film pack 7, and NIK collection and the results are better than all of the other one's listed. I have everything except photoshop because they are pay by the month. Luminar Neo in the states is a set price, you can buy the software without a monthly fee here. I paid a one time fee of 99 dollars for the software. I like it for some things, and some quick edits but nothing compares to Photo Lab.

Hello Chris. This video popped up on my feed (amongst the usual click-bait rubbish) and I found it a refreshing change in that you're talking about approaches to landscapes rather than 'top tips' and the like that can often be done in 5 minutes! I used to do a lot of portraiture and living in deepest rural southwest UK there aren't a lot of potential subjects - so I've been moving into landscapes and asking much the same questions as you have - you've helped to clarify my thinking - many, many thanks. So I've signed up and subscribed :-) I'm also heartened and impressed by the fact that you emigrated at 63? for a new life. I'm 63 and often think about moving abroad - Ireland figures in a lot of my thoughts... tempting.

Hello Chris, Though I have LRC (mostly for cataloging) and Photoshop, now, since 3 years I only treat my RAW files in PhotLab. The only difficulty I have with PL is that I can’t delete parts of the photos properly. I've tried, but the results are not satisfactory.

Great tools for Landscaping ❤. Good choice, the only problem with KASE magnets is that the magnet is not very strong. Recently I lost my CPL mounted on the lens due to weak magnet.

Don't forget that every Black Friday DxO has some rather good Black Friday deals, on both new licences and upgrades and if you buy your software during the Black Friday Deals every year your cost of ownership for photography software goes down.

Thank you I learned a bunch, photolab 7 user.

Excellent demonstration and review!

Chris, thanks again to you for a well-presented and cogent comparison. I’m aware from other correspondence that you are less familiar with Affinity Photo, but it does offer the flexibility of Lightroom+Photoshop to offer a more seamless workflow for creative, non-destructive post processing. It also allows for reprocessing of RAW files during the workflow (modifying files without breaking the flow by leaving the program). I have made other comments in my reply to @stewartlogie further down this thread. Affinity Photo appears to be remaining outside the subscription model that caused concern following the Canva buyout and is thus possibly attractive to users who are not drawn to the Adobe and Skylum sales models.

As always, an excellent demonstration and discussion. Your videos on DXO have been a great help. Thank you.

Excellent review! Congratulations on the subscribers, as I am one of the 2000 from last year. I really like your photography!

I'm not an expert, but for what I do, it is terrific. I still think every MFT camera body should come with a one-year free trial.

This is really helpful - thank you. What I don’t understand though is when you were increasing and decreasing contrast on the colour wheel, why did it affect the colour patches at all? I thought changing contrast was about enhancing edges where colours butt up to each other? I can maybe understand that it would affect CYM, but not RGB?

I asked Luminar for clarification on their pricing model these are the questions I asked - Hi, I need clarification on pricing. 1.The 12 month subscription is priced at €49 discounted from €317 which is very generous - can you confirm that the discount is applied to every repeat billing for life? Or does it revert to the full price. 2. Can you also confirm that this discount is limited to the Black Friday sale and that it will not be replaced by another discount after the Sale completes? 3. Finally - the Lifetime Perpetual License - what does Perpetual mean in this license, I understand it does not include major upgrades so what differentiates Perpetual from Lifetime? And these are their responses.. 1. Yes, I can confirm that the renewal price will be the same next year and the discount will be applied. 2. Correct. We currently have a Black Friday sale, offering a great opportunity to purchase the software at the best possible price. 3. The Lifetime license is a one-time purchase. By "one-time purchase," I mean there are no recurring charges. This means you can purchase and use this version for a lifetime with no limitations. So I understand that as long as you buy during the Black Friday discount period, the discount remains active on renewal. Fair play to Luminar, I was mistaken and I withdraw that comment. It is worth noting that this price is not a permanent price, it is a Black Friday Discount and will presumably revert after the discount period. Although that part of the question was not answered. The use of the term perpetual in the Lifetime Perpetual license is redundant. It means Lifetime, no upgrades.

Photoshop and I just don't get on because of the complexity and I don't like the way Lightroom does not allow me to use my own directory structure. I chose DxO PhotoLab because it worked with my directory structure and I could process a photo (albeit not particularly well) without completely tearing my hair out. Another factor with DxO PhotoLab was that it was reasonably priced and does not lock you into a subscription. I purchased Luminar in its early stages simply for the sky replacement feature. I use it very rarely now as I find it completely unintuitive and its interface completely weird. Although I have been using DxO PhotoLab for some years, it is a continual learning curve, with my processing slowly improving. Interesting video. Well done.

I wish DxO would support more sensors. I understand that some are low volume niche cameras, many customers own different camera brands. It’s about supporting the customer rather than the camera. Also the assett management aspect of Photolab is very rudimentary compared to Lightroom, for example. What DAM do people use? And no, the file manager of the computer is not detailed enough.

Thank you Chris

Another informative video - thanks Chris! I was thinking that instead of you coming to our houses to say thanks, we could come to yours...... Just kidding. I switched from Lightroom to Photolab, using Photolab for lens corrections and denoising, then finishing the editing in Lightroom as I was more familiar with it. I really liked the results, but was tired of paying for a subscription model that wouldn't allow you to further edit any photos if you stopped subscribing, so I switched to Photolab only and although I initially missed the AI masking, soon became familiar with the masking tools in Photolab and found that in many situations, I achieved a more natural mask effect. I also purchased the Viewpoint, Nik7 collection, and Filmpack software for the additional tools they provided me in Photolab. DxO's pricing is very fair, I think, and they have a generous upgrade policy - as you pointed out. In addition, they usually have further Black Friday discounts. I also found that when Lightroom introduced their AI denoising a couple of years ago, it was significantly slower on my gaming computer, than was Photolab....though this may not be an issue now.

the PL tonal control tools are less sophisticated than in LR or c1 both programs adjust for a loss in local contrast to produce natural looking resulted, dxo is really bad in this regard. sharpening tools are also not great beside bold claims. adobe NR is in some aspects even better than deep prime, adobe seems to have updated the tool with the latest version without announcing making it equal to xd2s in quality. PL is a nice software but with some clear limitations compared to LR or C1, adobe is so far ahead when it comes to masking that there is no way around.

You might want to take a closer look at the prices of Luminar Neo - it currently costs €49 per year.

I like your work Chris but your assessment of Neo simply tells me you know nothing about it.A deep dive will reveal it is a full pro app and many professional photographers are now using it.I t has everything DXO has and better masking which is a train wreck on DXO compared to the comp.

Another great video Chris.

I love DxO Photolab, and yes I think it’s the best RAW processing software. I tested the rendering of several software because I wanted to quit Lightroom. I tested Dxo Photolab, Affinity Photo, Lightroom, Capture One, ON1, Luminar, Darktable and Rawterapee on several raw images taken with Canon and DxO Photlab has always won. At the time of my test Photolab had a horrible interface compared to LR but now with version 7 it is a pleasure to use. The only thing I regret a little bit about LR is the selection of the sky and the radial masks that allowed me a fast and pleasant workflow, but thanks to your videos I’m learning to use Photolab 7 well. Thank you!

Do you really pay for the editing software?

Hi Chris, thanks for your interesting review. In response to your request for functionality current absent in PL8, I think it's important for potential purchasers to be aware of the fragmentation of functionality across the DXO software suite, which can lead to a very expensive bill for serious amateur enthusiasts: * HDR merging of bracketed images, which many landscape photographers value and use regularly. The DXO Nik Collection has an OK HDR tool (not as good as that built into C1), but you have to buy the whole collection at a cost of £145, in addition to £209 for PL8. * The overall price increases further if one needs the luminosity mask in Filmpack7 at £129, which is also available bundled into C1. * I don't know enough about Viewpoint functionality as compared to C1 built in functionality to comment, but this potentially means yet more outlay. This is not to detract from the overall high quality of PL8, which does have Clearview Plus and Smartlighting as unique functions.

I've tried to bound the comparison with the core attributes of RAW Processing. If we were to extend the bounds to those of photo processing more generally, what would you most like to see DxO add to PhotoLab in terms go functionality?

The perspective controls in PL8 would seem to be adequate for most circumstances, I would suggest. Neverthe less thanks very much to you Chris for the tour round the additional and impressive functions offered in Viewpoint. Affinity Photo has some quite sophisticated perspective controls as well,

Fantastic photo of that waterfall! You have the perfect exposure.

Beautiful photos, Chris - thanks. Fall is my favourite time of the year here in Canada, with the fresh fruits and vegetables, fall fairs, autumnal colours, and of course, my birthday. I was at a Conservation Area a week and a half ago - it's very popular, so you have to reserve a 2 hour spot to get in to see Tew Falls and Dundas Peak lookout. The colours were gorgeous and the 134 foot waterfall was spectacular. Some of the people, not so much. I didn't take my tripod and filters because I knew that it would be crowded, but I did manage to get some unobstructed views and was shooting the falls handheld at 1/8s which turned out ok (only one of them, but that's all I needed!). I always have a circular polarizer in my bag, but usually forget to take it with me when I head off down the trail - need the equivalent of mitten strings it would seem..... Unfortunately, the gorge is mostly a limestone cliff, so there's no safe way to the bottom to get a different perspective.

Rainy season just finished here in Thailand so I must get round to some of the waterfalls where I live. Spoilt for choice 😊. Some nice images there from that location.

DXO Viewpoint is great software and I use Viewpoint 4 quite frequently, to the extent I sold my tilt-shift lens because I very rarely used it. What you didn't point out in your photo of the interior of the cathedral, is that you could have included more of the ceiling by forgoing the 3x2 format and using an unconstrained format. I tend to be non-conformist and use whatever crop gives me the most of what I want in my photo. A good demonstration of the software.

I shoot with Fuji 100s and 50r medium format and seven lenses. I’ve sold four of the seven and now use my Leica Q2. I also dumped my 50r as well. It’s refreshing g! I spent 2 months in the Northwest US past summer, came home with 19,000 images and more than 10,000 were taken with the Leica!!! I’m 68 and last December I broke my right arm; here I am 11 months later and I’m still having issues which ism why I’m reducing my load. And I’m dumping 12 of my 14 different bags. SUBSCRIBED!

Va a la Región de Valencia para documentar las consecuencias de la Dana?

For a number of years, I've been thinking of purchasing a used tilt shift lens, but always balked at the last moment, so using software to correct my images is a good workaround, although it's not the same as getting it right in the first place. However, it is - initially at least - cheaper than purchasing the lens! The sticking point for me is that I don't take many architectural photos; on the other hand, I don't usually like the distortion in the ones that I do take. A dilemma, for sure. As you point out, you have to leave room in your original capture to allow for the cropping that inevitably follows the corrections. Another informative video....thanks Chris. Wonderful photographs from inside the cathedral. As a side note, I just read about the major flooding in southeastern Spain. I hope that you're okay...

Great points on fixing wide angle lens images of buildings. I love the Stain glass windows in this Church.

Excellent and interesting video

Guess they need a “mountain” edition 😉

So this was an occasion where I used a single lens the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III for 95% of the shoot and for a few details, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS II. It was plenty on the day and although I struggled to get the full frontage in shot, I could have rescued one of the shots with ViewPoint 5 and added a little more sky.

So true. When cooking who concentrates on the saucepans?

What if I want to move the watermark where I want?

Number of points: DXO make no claim for AI in their lens softness control. Lens softness characteristics are based on the results for each supported lens obtained in their optical labs. Sharpness is applied in varying amounts across the frame to match the lenses optical characteristics; generally lenses are sharper in the centre and sharpness decreases as you move towards the edge of the frame. There is a control, (bokeh) which attempts to limit sharpening of out of focus areas which we don't usually want sharpening. Most programs use the manufacturers lens data embedded in the raw file, which is what is used for jpg corrections. In the case of lenses designed for software correction, which is very common in modern designs, DXO's lens corrections are often far superior. In order to overcome the restrictions of in camera jpg processing (limited computer power and time 20 FPS) these corrections can often involve a crop to remove barrel distortion, a simple distortion to correct by computer. Thus some lenses have a true optical FOV which is wider than the data engraved on the lens and the crop delivers the quoted FOV. By varying the lens correction and unchecking maintain aspect ratio, in DXO you can see what is happening. Due to the demosaicing process where each individual pixel has to be reconstructed from the surrounding information (pixels) essentially 3/4 bayer pixels are interpolated to produce 1 RGB pixel, sharpness is related directly to the accuracy of the demosaicing process. You see this for example in LR where over the years they have improved their demosaicing engine and I think refer to them as Process Version?, it's a long time since I used LR. This is also why Foveon sensors produce such sharp images as each pixel is an RGB pixel and no interpolation is needed. Traditionally, a raw file is demosaiced into a RGB file and processing such as noise reduction is carried out on this RGB image, not the raw data. DXO is unique in that noise reduction is applied as part of the demosaicing process (apart from HQ) which is why DeepPrime noise reduction is so good. Applying noise reduction during demosaicing also means that you can resolve more detail/sharpness as you are processing a noise reduced data and therefore it is easier to define edges etc. Other processing such as white balance and chromatic aberration is also part of the demosaic process. Therefore when looking at DXO you need to be aware that using the different noise reduction methods fundamentally impacts the final result you see in the exported file. Prior to exporting you can only see the true result in the small preview window found in the noise reduction tab. It is also worth bearing in mind that when you look at the full screen image it will contain far fewer pixels than the camera image, you can determine how many pixels are displayed by simply measuring the screen image and relating it to the camera pixels. Even on a high resolution 4K monitor the image may only contain 2,500 pixels so what you are seeing is the result of throwing away most of the pixels eg 60mp Sony file, and the processing used to do this directly impacts what you see. DXO does not apply sharpening to the screen image correctly below 75% magnification. Other programs like LR do a better job but you are still looking at an image where most of the data has been thrown-away and reinterpreted into the small version you see on screen. You can only truly assess sharpness at 100% magnification ie pixel level. Programs like Capture One have a soft proof function that not only soft proofs colour but also sharpness. I hope this extra geeky information helps.😃

Thank you! at 72 I some time ago decided to limit myself to one body and 2 lenses for any given outing. I think the way you explained your intent to tell a more personal story by limiting focus (no pun intended), is a little different approach. I'll be more mindful of decluttering my compositions going forward. At least I'll try. Thanks again. (new subscriber)

Two years into a new hobby, 66 yrs old, using local UK bus service and carrying the day's food and water. I soon realised carrying too many lenses/possibilities was a pain and stopped taking the tripod. Yesterday I was thinking about the flash as I trudged along. I'll get to where you are, kit wise, Chris, when it all falls into place. ( hopefully soon). PS good video and one lens approach is on the horizon.

Thank you, Chris! As a 69-year-old busyhead myself, this was a refreshing video that inspired me a lot!

Best wishes for a speedy recovery Chris. I really enjoy your channel for its content and your laid back style.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Chris. As it happens, I just got my COVID shot this morning, as well as a flu shot, so both arms will be a bit sore for a day or so. A thoughtful and inspiring video, thank you very much. A technical question: I have an APS-C sensor Nikon D500 camera which means that any lens that I use has an equivalent field of view 1.5X that of a full frame sensor. Thus I would need somewhere around an 8 to 16mm wide angle lens to get a similar field of view to your Canon 11 to 24mm. I'm worried about the edge distortions that this could cause. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Alex

Ich wünsche Dir recht gute Genesung. Grüße aus Deutschland

I wish you a complete recovery. I have had some serious health problem myself in the last few months and I know how it can impact the creative process. I have just returned to photography after a hiatus of a few weeks. This video has inspired me to think about doing more photography and creativity in general. Thanks very much.

A great video Chris. I can certainly agree with your approach. Like you, I shoot just about everything but people. I have just turned 75 and a couple of years ago I went on a shoot and took everything I thought I could possibly need including the kitchen sink and struggled to get it all back up the steep climb from the beach to the car. I realised this was somewhat stupid and resolved to always take less. Now, I think long and hard about the shoot I am undertaking and take the bare minimum I think I will need - sometimes just one body and lens; sometimes two bodies and lenses attached as I hate changing lenses in the field. This generally works very well and has not limited my photography, but effectively makes me think more about what I am taking and become more creative. I also have the 11-24mm F/4 lens which is a great lens, although probably a little niche. I also use DXO PhotoLab 8 and enjoy your videos.