DxO PhotoLab 6 Elite Edition

DxO'’s latest raw editor boasts advanced denoising, market-leading lens corrections and slick workflow refinements. Will Cheung takes an in-depth look

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DxO, the company with PureRaw and the Nik Collection in its stable, has revamped its flagship editing and workflow software. The updates to PhotoLab 6 from the previous version aren’t huge but they are significant and worthwhile if you want the best image quality, especially from high ISO images.

DxO has possibly the best raw de-mosaicing and de-noising technology available in any software, although I’m sure ON1 and Topaz will have a view on that. It started with Prime, which evolved to the even more effective DeepPRIME. In PhotoLab 6, the technology has been advanced further with the addition of DeepPRIME XD eXtreme Detail).

As a regular and keen user of DeepPRIME, I was keen to check out the benefits of the XD setting. Before I do, I should first cover the other key changes in version 6 and also say that PhotoLab 6 is fully supported by DxO's renowned correction profiles with thousands of camera/lens combinations available.

DxO has re-engineered its colour-processing algorithms and there is a new extended working colour space called DxO Wide Gamut that has a broader colour range than its Classic colour space. Toggling between the two reveals notable differences, especially in the blues and greens which are much brighter.

Another addition is a soft proofing function so you can check how images look in different ICC colour spaces including those paper profiles that you use for home or lab printing. Relative and Perceptual intents are available too.

In any workflow, the odds are you will need to clone out the odd crisp packet, sensor spot or heal skin blemishes, and DxO has a new ReTouch tool (formerly called the Repair tool) to help you fulfil those needs. Essentially, the tool lets you perform complex cloning and healing tasks with finetunable brushes that can be modified, flipped and rescaled which means you can do more tidying up without having to go beyond PhotoLab.